The Lost Season
I’ve made it. Somehow I’ve made it to practice. My mother and I have just returned from visiting my sister in Madrid. The eight-and-a-half-hour flight to JFK and the hour and a half flight to Syracuse were both on time. We didn’t encounter snow on the Thruway, and after throwing my luggage in my room and quickly changing my clothes, I am only minutes late. It is a miracle.
It’s the first practice of the season, my senior season, the one in which I’ve been voted captain, the one I’ve been patiently waiting for, eager to gain the minutes I deserve, the confidence I’ve lost, the escape I’ve longed for.
My body tells me it’s midnight, yet it just past six. The gym smells different at practice than it does during school, and I breathe deeply. I inwardly smile as I retrieve a ball from the rack and join my team in shooting. I love the feel of the bumpy grip, the scent of the fake leather, the echo of the bounces on the hard wooden floor. As I shoot, working my way into a rhythm, the sad, bad, fearful thoughts are left behind. This is my serenity. If only the coach knew.
I’ve done what he’s asked of me. I moved up to varsity as a sophomore. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to play. To develop. To stay with my classmates and play for the JV coach who was kind, encouraging, and wise. Instead, I spent the past two years sitting on the bench, my confidence waning, biting my tongue as the coach screamed. I don’t talk back, as many of my teammates do. My parents haven’t complained as others have. I put my head down and work, finishing first in sprints, staying positive, avoiding conflict. But I’ve gone from being a confident, consistent, high assist, high scoring player to being a tentative, passive, fearful one.
The coach tells us to get our heads out of our asses. He throws his clipboard. He says we suck. He tells me that as long as I don’t get sick, I’ll get a lot of playing time, but I’d better not step a toe out of line. He acts like our team is in NCAA Division 1 rather than a league of mediocre high school farm girls. He forgets that the whole purpose of school sports is to provide kids with a healthy activity after school, to teach teamwork, responsibility, respect, discipline, and for some, allow an escape from less than desirable circumstances at home. He is there to feed his ego, and every time we fail, his ego is bruised. He neglects to notice that he has been handed winning junior varsity teams every year, and every year, under his regime, those teams no longer win.
He doesn’t like me. Perhaps it’s because of my mother’s job at the clinic. Perhaps he thinks I’m spoiled. He is mad when I have to work rather than go to a team bonding event. My employer has kindly scheduled all of my hours around my practices, games, and concerts. Team bonding wasn’t on the schedule. I can’t ask her to make another concession. He ignores my dedication, my efforts, my good grades, my respectful attitude; and he makes no attempt to know me or my situation.
Yet I still love it. It is a game that makes sense to me, and though I am slight at 5’5” and 115 pounds, I am quick, a decent ball handler and shooter. I see the court, I feel it. I understand it. My team has put its faith in me by voting me captain. I want to lead. I want to be the player I used to be. I want to succeed. I want it to be fun again. I have waited, and now it’s time. This first practice has me salivating for the next.
After practice, by the time I get home, unpack, shower, and ready things for the next day, I’ve been up a full twenty-four hours. I get a few hours of sleep and groggily make my way through my Friday, jet lag setting in, exhaustion looming. I work to catch up on homework from both high school and the college classes I am taking, go straight to my job after school and am there until 11 that night. My boyfriend is waiting in the parking lot when I finish. He is watching to make sure I’m not speaking to any of the boys I work with, assessing my outfit for any sign of suggestiveness. I just want to sleep but he follows me home and we watch TV while eating the food he demanded. He is angered that I doze rather than pay attention to him, already looking to punish me for going to Spain where I was out from under his control.
I go to bed around 2:00am and I am up for a double session practice in the morning. After practice, I shower, eat, and go to work, finish at 10:30 that night, get followed home by my boyfriend and go to sleep again around 2. On Sunday, he demands my time, my neglect eating at him, and we make our way to several sporting goods stores. I am bored and tired, and weary of his passive aggression, wondering if he will snap. As he peruses hunting gear, I gasp for breath. The room spins. I am lightheaded. I tell him I don’t feel well and my step falters. He helps me out of the store and drives me back to his house. I just want to go home, but he senses this, so he prolongs the afternoon. He finally takes me home for dinner and I go to bed soon after.
Monday, the cycle resumes. School, work, practice, boyfriend. I have a scratchy throat, but I can’t get sick. I can’t let my team down. I can’t lose my minutes. Games don’t start for a few more weeks. I have to be ready. I have to prove myself. Head down. Mouth shut. Work.
Practice gets me away from my boyfriend. It’s a volatile relationship. Why not just leave, people ask? Research abusive relationships. The answer is not simple. Basketball, my job, my music, school, these are my escapes from the personal hell I can’t seem to extract myself from, as much as I long to. The relationship hangs over me. It is a cloud, a fog that permeates all other aspects of my life. It has ended most of my friendships. It has alienated me from my parents. I am isolated. I am lonely. The few precarious tethers I have to normalcy lie within my activities, and I am desperate for them, particularly this game of dribbling, passing, shooting, defending. When I’m playing, I forget that I was shoved into a wall, or threatened, or stalked. I am only thinking about what is on the court, what I need to work on, where I need to go. I am with peers. I am laughing. I am free.
Monday again. School, work, practice, boyfriend. Sore throat. Cough. Exhaustion. Head down. Mouth shut. Work.
The following weekend, I can no longer deny my illness. By Monday I have a fever. By Tuesday I cannot even swallow my saliva. On Wednesday, my mother takes me to the doctor, concern etched on her face. I cannot sit upright in the waiting room. I rest my head in her lap, my eyes closed. In the exam room, the doctor pokes and prods as I sit limply. I tell them I will pass out if they take blood and I am true to my word. The sore throat is so severe, I haven’t eaten in days. They give me orange juice to revive me. I groggily take a sip, then spit it out when it hits my throat like shards of glass. Tears stream down my face. Mononucleosis. I surrender.
I miss a full month of school. I miss our first scrimmage. I miss a tournament over Christmas. I miss lots of practice. In January I go back to school part time, tiring by mid-day. I go back to the doctor. They tell me my spleen is enlarged. They say I can’t play. That evening I put on my practice clothes. I am determined. My mother asks me where I am going. I tell her. She says I can’t, my spleen could rupture. I say I don’t care. I can’t miss any more practice. She says I could die. Still, I don’t care. I just want to play. She and my father physically restrain me as I try to go out the door. I am sobbing, begging, desperate to save my season- my last season, my last chance after so many disappointments. My boyfriend arrives and even he agrees that I shouldn’t go. He never agrees with my parents. Whether he does so out of selfish desire for me to be more available to him or out of genuine concern I do not know. My father tells me that my mother is having an anxiety attack because I am so upset. I retreat to my room and cry myself to sleep, defeated.
A week later, the doctor says I can go to practice, but I can’t have any bodily contact. I go. I drill. I run. I practice shooting while the team plays. I weigh 97 pounds. The racist fuckwit coach calls me little Ethiopian girl.
I am still exhausted but determined not to show it. I have only missed two games. The season is really just beginning. At the end of practice, coach pulls me aside. He says he told me I couldn’t get sick. He says I am no longer captain of the team. He says I will only get two minutes of playing time per game for the rest of the season. He has no idea what I’ve been through. No idea of who I am, or what I deal with, or the fact that a week ago I was willing to risk my life to play on his stupid team, that it’s my lifeline. He doesn’t care. He can’t be bothered.
If I stay, I know he will relent. His desire to win will outweigh his desire to punish me. I’ll get court time. In a few weeks, my spleen will be back to normal. In the meantime, I can get back into shape. I can hone my skills. I’ll be ready.
The next day I arrive at practice. I tell the racist fuckwit that I quit. I tell him that I had done everything that was asked of me, and that I deserved better. He says he told me not to get sick.
I have no answer to this. I am broken, but I leave the gym composed. I lost my last season, and one of the last bits of childhood remaining within me. The abusive relationship with my boyfriend was more than enough. The abusive relationship with my coach was over. It would take several more years before I broke free of the other.
I can’t help but wonder how different things could have been had I only been given a little support, had I been able to maintain that lifeline. If only someone had taught my coach that his job wasn’t about him, and it wasn’t about winning. That he could have measured his success by how much he helped a team of girls to navigate the teetering bridge between girlhood and adulthood. I wasn’t the only one struggling. The year before a girl had been raped. Another had severe depression. Another had an undiagnosed learning disorder and struggled to keep her grades up. They all got castigated and benched. Had he behaved differently, he would have won, perhaps not in game wins and losses, but in the positive influence on the lives of these girls. He could have won our respect. He could have gained a win for humanity.
The lessons I learned from that lost season weren’t the ones I should have been learning nor wanted to learn, but in the end, they made me stronger, smarter, and, admittedly, just a little bitter. Still, I wish that wisdom could have waited one season longer.