This is one in a series of posts reflecting on the most recent basketball season. My goal in each of the next several posts is to look at a separate aspect of what made this year such a memorable experience for me personally.
I'm a lot more mature now than when I started coaching. I both fear this and hope this - fear it for my former players and former self, hope for it in the name of personal progress. Either way, it's probably true. I'm mature enough now to recognize that players who don't approach the game the same way as I do are not necessarily immature or wrong. This season was a prime example of that.
Fifteen years ago I wouldn't have viewed the player demand of picking out my tie 25 minutes before the tip to a district game as a good sign. This year I knew it to be a necessity.
The group this year was a loose group. Constantly loose. Practice, pre-game, walk-throughs - it didn't matter. As coaches we eventually figured out that being loose meant that all was well with them. Some nights they were downright goofy. But they were goofy together. They were goofy and playing well. Some nights they compared the power of the stench from their armpits. Another night they referred to a player on an opposing scouting report not with a number or name, but as "the eyebrow girl" to a chorus of knowing recognition from the whole group.
They liked each other. It's that easy. And hard. Ask ten coaches, and all ten will tell you that having a group that likes each other is rare. Some overcome that. Many don't. From my seat, it looked like a non-issue for us. The gym was a great place to be because they liked being there. I think many of them would like being just about anywhere, as long as they were together. It just happened to be basketball season, so I got to be a part of it.
I always dread the locker room after the final game of the season. Having yet to win a state championship, I don't know the experience of ending on a winning note. Instead, the pain of losing is typically magnified by the finality, particularly for seniors. I didn't know what to expect walking in to ours after the final horn of the final defeat. They were sad, yes; that was obvious. But too much heaviness would have been off for this group. I had to try to hold in my own heaviness, for I knew what I was leaving, and I knew I could be leaving it, and them, for good, depending on the decision-making of the powers that be. When it was my turn to talk, there were a thousand things I wanted to say but couldn't. Instead, I managed to stutter out, "I think you guys know what you mean to me." And then I added, "I know I can be a crabby bastard, but I really enjoyed my time with you." In the middle of the laughter, they were not shy in agreeing, that yes, Coach Dykstra, you were in fact a crabby bastard at times.
And perhaps that was the magic dust for me personally. They put up with me telling them to read more books. They tolerated my anti-cell phone rants. They rolled their eyes plenty, but they tolerated it. I'm sure I rolled my eyes plenty as well. They knew exactly what I was, and who I needed to be in order to bring what I could bring as a coach to the team. And I figured out who they were and who they needed to be in order to bring what they could as players to the team. There is a freedom in that. I don't know when we all came to that understanding, or to that maturity, as I called it at the opening. But I'm glad we did. Because being in the gym was a lot of fun with that kind of chemistry.
Previous Posts in this Series:
- Part 1: The People
- Part 2: The Grit
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Epilogue to a Season Part 2: The Grit
This is one in a series of posts reflecting on the most recent basketball season. My goal in each of the next several posts is to look at a separate aspect of what made this year such a memorable experience for me personally.
I never imagined that dealing with 3 concussion diagnoses within a 2 week time period would be a positive thing. And it's not, of course. If I could go back and undo those and play the season out at full strength, I would. But the fact remains that the concussions did happen, as did a season-ending broken nose, a relentless flu bug, and a case or two of bronchitis. That was how we ended the season - short-handed and scrambling, not knowing from day to day who could play or how long they could play and even if they could play the positions we were going to have to ask them to play.
That was rewarding. And I don't think we could have appreciated what was going on without the adversity.
Going into what turned out to be one of the biggest wins in several years for the program, we were without three major contributors to the team due to injury, all of them post players. We were left with one post player who had played the position at the varsity level, and we were accustomed to having two on the court at all times. Also, we were facing a first team all conference post player. No matter. We won anyway. We won because we asked kids to do more than they were capable of doing, and they didn't flinch. They just said okay and went out and won the game.
At the end of that game we lost another player to a concussion. We were facing about 6 games in 9 days, three of them back-to-back-to-back. It was an easy time to say, "Well at least we had this win. It was a good run." Instead they just kept fighting.
In one of the games, we found ourselves with the score close in the 4th quarter of a game we really had no business being in. We had been down big. Then all of a sudden we weren't. It was a battle. Two or three of our kids were playing heavy minutes while sick. One of them was wrapped in a blanket and lying on the bleachers before the game. Up 2 with just a few seconds to go, the game was ours. It was ours until a player of theirs air-balled a shot, which was rebounded just as awkwardly and thrown in to tie the game and send it into overtime. Our players looked shocked and exhausted heading into overtime. They had climbed the mountain, overcome the deficit, on nothing but guts, and now they had to go play some more. And they did. Victoriously.
I'll never forget the locker room after that game. Walking in, there was a general silence. Typically after a game like that you can expect a raucous congratulatory chorus. Instead, mixed in a sea of coughing and hacking, was a look of relief. They got to be done for a bit. They had used it all - everything they had left. There was no energy left to celebrate a come-from-behind overtime victory. Just a silent satisfaction to reward their exhaustion. And the knowledge that we had to play again in 18 hours.
Our point guard scored 32 with the flu. She was on the couch for the next 3 days. On her first night back, she managed another 20.
Our concussionees were told by doctors they probably wouldn't get cleared before the end of the season. They kept working anyway. They came back. We were desperate to have them, and they looked desperate to come back. They didn't choose to get an early start on Spring Break.
Going into the first round of districts, we weren't even able to go 5-on-5 for most of the practices due to all the illnesses attacking the team. We won that one by 20, against a team we had squeaked by in a 2-point win earlier in the week.
It's easy to be disappointed in high school kids. Really easy. They are not consistent. Toughness is a rare commodity. They seem self-centered and easily discouraged. Self-demeaning jokes trump perseverance and effort on most days. Daring to even try at that which is not guaranteed success is a foreign concept, particularly when their educational lives have been dominated primarily by concerns for self-esteem and personal exploration. To put all this bluntly, it was just really nice to not be disappointed in them, our players. To have somebody to believe in, and have those somebodies be 16 and 17 and 18 year olds who risked failure by caring and striving instead of accepting the free pass of excuses that was offered at their feet, one medical report at a time.
The losses were just as sweet. It's easy to talk about grit and hard work when you win. That same approach was there when they didn't. That fact was not lost on me. As a coaching staff we worked damn hard to find ways to win games in that stretch. Typically, the reflection after a loss is about who didn't play well, or what went wrong, or what we need to work on the next day. In the last month of the season, after a loss, the only real thought that came to my mind was, We just can't ask for anything more out of them. Even the losses revealed their character.
It's a hard thing to describe, but it just got to the point where we honestly didn't know exactly what we would see each night going into a game. We knew they would show up, they wouldn't disappoint, and there was a chance we would see something special. At the risk of overusing the word, this group is special to me because I came to expect the special out of them.
I am not thankful for the injuries. I'm not thankful for the illness. But we couldn't have been who we ended up being without it. Adversity is what allowed me to expect anything, and always the best, out of a group of teenage girls.
***Read "Part 1: The People" here.
I never imagined that dealing with 3 concussion diagnoses within a 2 week time period would be a positive thing. And it's not, of course. If I could go back and undo those and play the season out at full strength, I would. But the fact remains that the concussions did happen, as did a season-ending broken nose, a relentless flu bug, and a case or two of bronchitis. That was how we ended the season - short-handed and scrambling, not knowing from day to day who could play or how long they could play and even if they could play the positions we were going to have to ask them to play.
That was rewarding. And I don't think we could have appreciated what was going on without the adversity.
Going into what turned out to be one of the biggest wins in several years for the program, we were without three major contributors to the team due to injury, all of them post players. We were left with one post player who had played the position at the varsity level, and we were accustomed to having two on the court at all times. Also, we were facing a first team all conference post player. No matter. We won anyway. We won because we asked kids to do more than they were capable of doing, and they didn't flinch. They just said okay and went out and won the game.
At the end of that game we lost another player to a concussion. We were facing about 6 games in 9 days, three of them back-to-back-to-back. It was an easy time to say, "Well at least we had this win. It was a good run." Instead they just kept fighting.
In one of the games, we found ourselves with the score close in the 4th quarter of a game we really had no business being in. We had been down big. Then all of a sudden we weren't. It was a battle. Two or three of our kids were playing heavy minutes while sick. One of them was wrapped in a blanket and lying on the bleachers before the game. Up 2 with just a few seconds to go, the game was ours. It was ours until a player of theirs air-balled a shot, which was rebounded just as awkwardly and thrown in to tie the game and send it into overtime. Our players looked shocked and exhausted heading into overtime. They had climbed the mountain, overcome the deficit, on nothing but guts, and now they had to go play some more. And they did. Victoriously.
I'll never forget the locker room after that game. Walking in, there was a general silence. Typically after a game like that you can expect a raucous congratulatory chorus. Instead, mixed in a sea of coughing and hacking, was a look of relief. They got to be done for a bit. They had used it all - everything they had left. There was no energy left to celebrate a come-from-behind overtime victory. Just a silent satisfaction to reward their exhaustion. And the knowledge that we had to play again in 18 hours.
Our point guard scored 32 with the flu. She was on the couch for the next 3 days. On her first night back, she managed another 20.
Our concussionees were told by doctors they probably wouldn't get cleared before the end of the season. They kept working anyway. They came back. We were desperate to have them, and they looked desperate to come back. They didn't choose to get an early start on Spring Break.
Going into the first round of districts, we weren't even able to go 5-on-5 for most of the practices due to all the illnesses attacking the team. We won that one by 20, against a team we had squeaked by in a 2-point win earlier in the week.
It's easy to be disappointed in high school kids. Really easy. They are not consistent. Toughness is a rare commodity. They seem self-centered and easily discouraged. Self-demeaning jokes trump perseverance and effort on most days. Daring to even try at that which is not guaranteed success is a foreign concept, particularly when their educational lives have been dominated primarily by concerns for self-esteem and personal exploration. To put all this bluntly, it was just really nice to not be disappointed in them, our players. To have somebody to believe in, and have those somebodies be 16 and 17 and 18 year olds who risked failure by caring and striving instead of accepting the free pass of excuses that was offered at their feet, one medical report at a time.
The losses were just as sweet. It's easy to talk about grit and hard work when you win. That same approach was there when they didn't. That fact was not lost on me. As a coaching staff we worked damn hard to find ways to win games in that stretch. Typically, the reflection after a loss is about who didn't play well, or what went wrong, or what we need to work on the next day. In the last month of the season, after a loss, the only real thought that came to my mind was, We just can't ask for anything more out of them. Even the losses revealed their character.
It's a hard thing to describe, but it just got to the point where we honestly didn't know exactly what we would see each night going into a game. We knew they would show up, they wouldn't disappoint, and there was a chance we would see something special. At the risk of overusing the word, this group is special to me because I came to expect the special out of them.
I am not thankful for the injuries. I'm not thankful for the illness. But we couldn't have been who we ended up being without it. Adversity is what allowed me to expect anything, and always the best, out of a group of teenage girls.
***Read "Part 1: The People" here.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Epilogue to a Season Part 1: The People
This is one in a series of posts reflecting on the most recent basketball season. My goal in each of the next several posts is to look at a separate aspect of what made this year such a memorable experience for me personally.
The other night we had friends over for supper. They're a couple we've planned to eat with often, both of us waiting for the end of the season to catch our breath and be able to make it work He is an old assistant coach of mine, and we've been friends ever since. Our kids are around the same age, and we share a love for the Chicago Bulls, 90's bands, and banter. He is part of one of the reasons this season was such a positive experience for me.
The other night we had friends over for supper. They're a couple we've planned to eat with often, both of us waiting for the end of the season to catch our breath and be able to make it work He is an old assistant coach of mine, and we've been friends ever since. Our kids are around the same age, and we share a love for the Chicago Bulls, 90's bands, and banter. He is part of one of the reasons this season was such a positive experience for me.
I'm a relational guy. When I got into coaching, I was passionate about the game and about leading. That was enough. It's not, now, if I'm being honest. Somewhere along the way I figured out that who I work with matters. A lot. And if I don't enjoy who I'm working with, then coaching is simply not a responsible use of my time. When I left coaching for a year, I knew that the only way back was with the right people, and I only said yes when the right person to work with came along.
Most of my best friends are people I have coached with. That's just the way it is. We understand each other. We understand the competitive fire, the frustrations, the challenges, the rewards. Everything I will say in this post, they know. They get it. We've been through the battles together - the daily practice grind, the road trips, the nail-biters, the blowouts; one knowing glance is all it takes to communicate the joy, relief, frustration, exasperation, fulfillment that we share.
The people I was around this season made many of the nights in gyms special to me. I remember one night in particular. It was in our gym, but the opponent was a familiar one. On the other bench coaching against us was a former player. I now call him a friend. In the boys game coached my former assistant, the one with whom I would share a supper table and stories and a exuberant game of UNO around a table full of our young children. I remember coming home that night and telling my wife that it was a great, great night. I barely remember the game. I know that we won, and there is little else that I recall. But I do remember all the stories we told that night. I remember the hugs and handshakes and shared X's and O's and fatherhood tales. I remember knowing that without basketball as a setting, we wouldn't all be in the same place, in the same time, sharing what we were sharing.
So much of what coaching is to me now is that: being in the same place at the same time with people I really enjoy. A couple of times a year my parents are in the gym. My in-laws are there for nearly every game. A college buddy of mine came to one on his way through. I had so many conversations with people I respect and enjoy - those I've coached with and against, those I've umpired with, others I've taught with. We can say that we don't need a ball and a crowd and some lights and a couple of whistles to get together, but the reality is that we do. Why? I'm not sure. Life, I guess. And this is why coaching basketball can be a good part of life.
One night I sat next to a guy I used to coach against and listened to him talk about how he made the decision that this was his last year. On another night I was a spectator supporting one of my coaching friends, and I got to sit next to another former coaching opponent. Two other friends of mine who I don't get to coach with much now both volunteered to come and work with my players on a Saturday. A college friend I hadn't spoke to in at least five years ended up recruiting one of our players.
People matter. Of course the players matter, and they will receive their time and place in this account. But I cannot ignore all the good people I saw over the course of 4 months and the smiles they allowed me to have. Coaching has given me some of the most important relationships in my life. The rewards are deep.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Epilogue to a Basketball Season
When the most recent basketball season ended for me, I began writing again. I needed to get a few ideas down. Ever the optimist, I figured that it would all come out in the writing and I'd have a clean picture of what I was looking for. Having worked on this project off and on for a couple of weeks, I know now there's nothing clean about it. But there is something there.
My next few blog posts will be what came out, in the most organized manner I could find. Whether you care about basketball or not, I think there's something there for you. Either way there's something there for me, and I know that makes the writing worth it.
What follows in this post is the beginning of the writing and the direction for the next few posts. I started it about a month ago. Thanks for reading. . .
I have exited another basketball season, this one number 15. And it is the exit that is always hard. I have been a basketball coach, and almost nothing else, for months. Now I hit the reset and attempt, as soon as possible, to be a different man. A nightly father who checks homework and helps to set the table. A husband who woos his wife on Friday nights rather than making eye contact from across the gym and an adrenaline-cluttered post-game rehash on the couch. A friend who communicates. A writer. These have been foreign to me. How long will it take to make those clothes fit once again and recognize myself in them?
Some years the transition is easier than others. I have never been okay with losing. I've got to state that right away. But some seasons - the ones without chemistry, the ones with unnecessary strife, the ones with uninterested players - those seasons I was more ready to turn the page. Those seasons I walked out of the gym after the tournament loss and breathed the air of newfound freedom. There are years like that. Any coach telling you the truth will say that.
This year was not that way, though. Not even close. I've been telling a few people close to me that there was a 3-4 week stretch at the end of our season that was as good as any month that I've coached in my 15 years doing this. The joy in the gym was palpable for so many reasons, reasons I could never have predicted. If I could only bottle it. . . And now it's done.
I'm stuck now, because I'm a week out of it, and I'm sitting here at this keyboard wondering if I should, in fact, be at the keyboard. On the one hand, I've had my mourning process. I was sad last Tuesday night when it was done. Really sad. I knew what I was saying goodbye to. Whether or not I get to coach with this program next year, it doesn't change the fact that what this group was and what this experience was will not occur again. So I allowed myself to be sad, and my family not only allowed me to be sad but were sad right along with me. But I did that already. I lost the sleep. I wandered about the house aimlessly in the middle of the afternoon the day after, wishing I were in the gym. I tried to inject myself back into the daily rhythms of our home, stumbling in and out of the way. That's all done now. And to sit here and write about it risks me thinking about it at 3 AM when I'm awoken by any random nothing and left to the wanderings of my brain. Much of me wants to make a clean break and move on.
But there's another part of me that wants to make sense of it by writing about it, that wants to figure out what made it so, so good and get it down so that I can understand it. There's a part of me that knows I'll forget it, that I've already forgotten pieces of it, and if I don't get it down now I may never remember exactly how this felt and why it felt that way. And there's the part of me that wants to be a writer again, wants to prove that I can focus on something longer than 15 minutes, that I can write what I know and write so that I can know because I haven't been that guy in a while. That's probably the guy who found 6 other things to do tonight before I faced the keyboard, the same guy who waited a week to do what he said he wanted to do when the season was over.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I've decided the journey is worth it. I'm going to get the words down and find out what's there.
Over the next several posts I'm going to attempt to explain, partly to an audience, mostly to myself, why this was special. I haven't got it all figured out, but it's in pieces. And the pieces fit together somewhere inside of me, in the part that appreciates these couple of months and knows it wasn't just another season. Little by little, I'll be sharing those pieces here.
My next few blog posts will be what came out, in the most organized manner I could find. Whether you care about basketball or not, I think there's something there for you. Either way there's something there for me, and I know that makes the writing worth it.
What follows in this post is the beginning of the writing and the direction for the next few posts. I started it about a month ago. Thanks for reading. . .
I have exited another basketball season, this one number 15. And it is the exit that is always hard. I have been a basketball coach, and almost nothing else, for months. Now I hit the reset and attempt, as soon as possible, to be a different man. A nightly father who checks homework and helps to set the table. A husband who woos his wife on Friday nights rather than making eye contact from across the gym and an adrenaline-cluttered post-game rehash on the couch. A friend who communicates. A writer. These have been foreign to me. How long will it take to make those clothes fit once again and recognize myself in them?
Some years the transition is easier than others. I have never been okay with losing. I've got to state that right away. But some seasons - the ones without chemistry, the ones with unnecessary strife, the ones with uninterested players - those seasons I was more ready to turn the page. Those seasons I walked out of the gym after the tournament loss and breathed the air of newfound freedom. There are years like that. Any coach telling you the truth will say that.
This year was not that way, though. Not even close. I've been telling a few people close to me that there was a 3-4 week stretch at the end of our season that was as good as any month that I've coached in my 15 years doing this. The joy in the gym was palpable for so many reasons, reasons I could never have predicted. If I could only bottle it. . . And now it's done.
I'm stuck now, because I'm a week out of it, and I'm sitting here at this keyboard wondering if I should, in fact, be at the keyboard. On the one hand, I've had my mourning process. I was sad last Tuesday night when it was done. Really sad. I knew what I was saying goodbye to. Whether or not I get to coach with this program next year, it doesn't change the fact that what this group was and what this experience was will not occur again. So I allowed myself to be sad, and my family not only allowed me to be sad but were sad right along with me. But I did that already. I lost the sleep. I wandered about the house aimlessly in the middle of the afternoon the day after, wishing I were in the gym. I tried to inject myself back into the daily rhythms of our home, stumbling in and out of the way. That's all done now. And to sit here and write about it risks me thinking about it at 3 AM when I'm awoken by any random nothing and left to the wanderings of my brain. Much of me wants to make a clean break and move on.
But there's another part of me that wants to make sense of it by writing about it, that wants to figure out what made it so, so good and get it down so that I can understand it. There's a part of me that knows I'll forget it, that I've already forgotten pieces of it, and if I don't get it down now I may never remember exactly how this felt and why it felt that way. And there's the part of me that wants to be a writer again, wants to prove that I can focus on something longer than 15 minutes, that I can write what I know and write so that I can know because I haven't been that guy in a while. That's probably the guy who found 6 other things to do tonight before I faced the keyboard, the same guy who waited a week to do what he said he wanted to do when the season was over.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I've decided the journey is worth it. I'm going to get the words down and find out what's there.
Over the next several posts I'm going to attempt to explain, partly to an audience, mostly to myself, why this was special. I haven't got it all figured out, but it's in pieces. And the pieces fit together somewhere inside of me, in the part that appreciates these couple of months and knows it wasn't just another season. Little by little, I'll be sharing those pieces here.
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