Epilogue to a Season Part 3: Chemistry

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