Pounding the Rock

by Marc Skelton

  His son, who looks just like Luis, stood there dribbling a ball that had been bleached from the sun. His white tank top revealed a small scab on his right shoulder. It looked similar to the ones I used to get when I would fall off my bike at his age.

  “You know, Coach, I wouldn’t have graduated if it wasn’t for you and basketball. You remember? Sophomore year I was failing a bunch of classes and you made me get serious about school.”

  Luis was now a dental assistant at a local hospital.

  “I want to stop by and see a game this year.”

  “I will send you a schedule,” I promised.

  “Thanks, Coach.”

  “Anytime, Luis.”

  Luis got me thinking. So I sent Jimeek Conyers, the starting point guard on the 2013 team, a text: “How did basketball help you?”

  “If it wasn’t for basketball I wouldn’t even come to school,” Jimeek responded.

  “Without basketball would you have graduated?” I asked.

  “Hell no!” Jimeek emphasized. “For real though, it made me want to come to school. It made me have a bond with people around the school. I hated school, but as I played more I started having bonds with people. Like I even got cool with the principal.”

  * * *

  —

  My idea was never just to create a winning basketball tradition. I was a teacher first, coach second. I believe that winning forms the necessary bonds to ask teenage boys with very little desire to come to school, to have a selfless spirit. There’s no other way. Many of my guys have had little success in the classroom, and for years success on the court transfers into the classroom. Unfortunately, in almost two decades of teaching I’ve had to battle against the tentacles that poverty attaches to children. As a coach, I have figured out a way to transform lives with basketball. When you grow up poor, you quickly realize basketball can be a temporary relief from life as well as a motivating factor.

  I asked Shateek Myrick, another former player, what basketball meant to him.

  “Basketball always motivated me with school because I knew if I didn’t meet a certain GPA I couldn’t play, so it always pushed me through all my years of school.”

  Shateek graduated high school at twenty years old. He entered Fannie Lou as a sixteen-year-old freshman, played three years, and was ineligible his final year due to age restrictions. The odds of a sixteen-year-old black male graduating in four years are extremely low. I’m proud of Shateek. He enrolled at Cayuga Community College in the fall of 2017.

  We know that high school dropouts earn less and live shorter, poorer, more complicated lives than those with a diploma. The young men I coach aren’t good enough to play professional basketball, but that doesn’t stop them from dreaming that one day they could. While they are playing and dreaming about basketball, the staff at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School is preparing them for a world after basketball. Over the years it seems to be working, against the odds.

  In ancient Troy, the horse was a sacred entity. So is basketball in the Bronx. The horse was also a ruse that the Greeks used to defeat the Trojans, and so are hoop dreams. My Trojan Horse Basketball Theory works like this: The boys welcome basketball into their sometimes stressful lives as a gift. They want to be part of the winning tradition at Fannie Lou. It looks like an innocuous present. Yet inside this synthetic leather ball game lie lessons in accountability, commitment, nutrition, civic responsibility, and a shot at self-actualization. Teenagers can be blind to the myriad possibilities that exist in this world. Basketball, I’ve found, can be a means of opening their eyes.

  As they wait for their basketball dreams to come true, a type of incubation happens. The boys become enraptured with the sneakers, new gear, game preparation, winning, highlights, film breakdowns, scouting reports, off-season workouts. At the same time, they are coming to school and doing their work, forming bonds with the people around them—other players, college and high school coaches, reporters, officials—and for the most part staying out of serious trouble. After four years of high school, the dreams of NBA glory usually fade, and they wake up with a decent GPA, a chance at getting into college, and an opportunity to improve their lives. The innocence of playing high school basketball circumvents some of the manifold temptations of the city: gang violence, truancy, crime, and drugs.

  My former players are my first line of defense. I asked Jamaal Lampkin several years after he graduated if he thought basketball helped him through high school.

  “Marc, why do you keep asking questions you know the answer to? Basketball is the reason I have a diploma. Basketball taught me time management and a whole lot of things. Honestly, I wake up on time because of Sunday practices.”

  He will never let me forget the time I wouldn’t let him into practice because he was late. He was never late again. “Because if you are late you could get kicked off the team. Just like work. It got me ready for the real world.” Jamaal now works in IT for Barclays.

  In the early years of coaching, I had conversations like this: “What are you going to do after basketball?”

  “I’m going to the NBA,” declared a young man I’ll call Terrence.

  “Terrence, you are five-ten and don’t even start here.” I stated the simple facts.

  “I might grow. There’s still time. Males don’t stop growing until they’re nineteen.”

  “What happens if you don’t grow another ten inches?”

  “Coach, you’re a dream crusher.”

  “I guess I am.”

  Terrence, like so many other young men, planned on making it to the NBA. Even though he knew the odds, the dream had been etched into his mind, and there wasn’t space on his palette for alternatives. Youthful confidence is indomitable. Terrence is now a junior in college majoring in business administration. He no longer plays basketball.

  So the question is, how do I prepare kids to play basketball, win games, win championships, and then expect them when their four years are up to give up the dream of playing in the NBA and prepare for life without basketball? Imagine wrestling a salmon out of a grizzly bear’s mouth, simultaneously trying to convince him you have one already cooked, so he should just let it go and come sit at the table. I wrestle dreams out of kids’ minds and try to give them goals.

  * * *

  —

  The first person I tried this Trojan Horse Basketball Theory on was myself, unknowingly. Basketball was the vehicle that drove me to do well in high school. I had dreams of playing college basketball. Yet when it was time to go to college and play, I walked away from the sport. My freshman year in college was an adjustment. I missed the game. I attempted to get a work-study job in the gym, but the only work-study job I could find was stacking books in the library. That is where I discovered the Natya Shastra, the Bauhaus, Hieronymus Bosch, La Nouvelle Vague, and Henry Miller. It was a whole new world. Strangely, Miller led me to Dostoevsky. Unearthing and reading Dostoevsky was the closest I have come to nirvana. Dostoevsky moved me so much that I started teaching myself Russian.

  When time ran out on my basketball career, I wasn’t trying to change the sail in the middle of a storm. I was safely in the harbor of a university. This is the road I want to provide, not some glory-filled path, but a more realistic, honest way forward, because the game ends for all of us at some point.

  I think the earlier a kid gets to see what life is like on a college campus, the better. I was thrilled when I learned that Tyree applied and won an award for a free academic enrichment program. He spent the 2016 summer at the University of Texas in Austin, all sponsored by Verizon. He loved it. The only problem was he wasn’t able to play basketball. They orchestrated academic classes in the morning and field trips in the afternoon. On the last night, in the August Texas dusk, they were playing a game of “Man-hunt,” a teenage version of hide-and-seek, and trying not to get caught, Tyree put his hand through a plate
of glass. “My hand was black with blood,” he said. The coagulated blood stained his shooting arm and caused a pronounced fear in the young man: Would he ever be able to play basketball again? Tyree confessed, “I started crying when I got by myself, and I was thinking my arm wouldn’t be able to move the same. I had pains and everything, but once the stitches came out, then I was stretching a little and played through the pain.” Now Tyree is fine.

  When I stepped into the classroom seventeen years ago, I learned right away that you can’t say, Hey, just do like me, watch me, it’s easy. It’s not easy. Life is not easy. Teaching in the south Bronx is challenging. I try to create trust with kids from difficult circumstances and move my players and students to become the best version of themselves against the odds. In the gigantic wind tunnel of the human experience, I am trying to extend my teaching and coaching into meaningful longitudinal relationships. And my vehicle—my Trojan Horse—is basketball.

  THE TALE OF TWO FORWARDS

  Sometimes the good intentions of basketball have unintended consequences. Early in the season, I will sometimes stay up late and watch some West Coast basketball. In an NBA preseason game, I saw some early offense from the Portland Trail Blazers that I liked. They were able to get their guards to post up on the weak side. This would be perfect for Charles Davis and Latrell Anderson, our two best athletes. They are best friends. They went to the same middle school and decided to come to Fannie Lou as a dynamic duo. When Charles was a freshman, he boasted that he would leave Fannie Lou as its all-time leading scorer. Now a junior, Charles is the best player on the team. Over the past two seasons he has been a paradigm of growth and dedication. Charles reminded me of Bill Russell, the great Celtics center. Russell blocked shots not only to intimidate, he blocked shots to his teammates. He kept the ball inbounds. That is Charles. Once I overheard a kid teasing him that he had only 15 points in a game. Charles calmly reminded him that we won. He cared only about winning. He had led the team in scoring and rebounding last year, and he looked stronger than the last time I saw him in June.

  Latrell, on the other hand, had shown flashes of brilliance, but he was streaky and inconsistent. He was always the best shooter in practice. His strong shoulders formed two perfect, symmetrical ninety-degree angles with his head. He called himself “Chill-Balla.” It was an apt nickname, because he never got upset. He was always the coolest guy in the room.

  Each of the last two seasons, it always looked as if Latrell was ready to puncture the starting lineup. He did a few times, but then suddenly his ascension would be derailed by an asthma attack, a malfunctioning alarm clock, babysitting duty, a toothache, a stomachache, a sprained ankle, or a family emergency. Last year he told me his sixteen-year-old cousin had been shot. This happened right before the playoffs. He would miss a few practices and be out of the rotation. He was always emerging, but never fully arriving. We could depend on Charles. We were counting on (but really hoping for) Latrell to be the starting small forward. His size—six-two—and his athleticism would give us a competitive edge.

  When I got to school, I saw Kenneth Castro in the hallway. “Good morning, Coach.”

  I thought it was a bit presumptuous to assume I would be his coach since we still had a few more tryouts left, and Kenneth hadn’t quite won me over with his basketball sorcery.

  Kenneth Castro is about five-seven when he is wearing sneakers and if you include his amber-brown flat-top. He has the tan face and goatee of your favorite alternative band’s bassist from the 1990s. The wispy goatee has been growing since eighth grade and hasn’t been quite as prodigious as he would like; nonetheless, he has grand plans for it. Kenneth’s baseline personality shifts between extremely polite and insanely polite.

  “Can you clap and cheer for the team all season long?”

  “Of course.”

  “What happens if you don’t play for three or four games—will you come to practice?”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s your favorite team?”

  “The Panthers.”

  “Good answer, but I meant in the NBA.”

  “Golden State.”

  “You see how everyone is always cheering for the guys on the floor, during a time-out they are high-fiving them, giving them positive vibes? Can you do that for us?”

  “Yes!”

  His Facebook profile page captured Kenneth’s endearing quality. It read, “One of these days I will be a champion, either in high school, college, or the NBA.” Kenneth fulfilled one criterion of what we needed to have: a mensch on the bench.

  Later that day I entered the gym, and everyone was dressed and standing at half-court waiting for me. “Today is the last day of tryouts,” Gaby warned everyone.

  Gaby Acuria, warm and well liked by teachers and students, was my right-hand man. He helped the team immensely. After school Gaby assisted at practice, games, and scouting. During the school day he defused situations, ran interference, and intercepted more potential conflicts than a Patriots cornerback playing against the Jets. His permanent disposition was helpful. Gaby graduated from Fannie Lou in 2008. He is now a special education teaching assistant and paraprofessional. He is working toward his bachelor’s degree.

  We had used the remaining tryouts to stress communication. Gaby and I reminded the guys that you have to hustle on every possession. Some listened, but most were distracted. Before I got to the gym, they wanted to see who could jump the highest. There were smudged fingerprints left high above the rim on the pellucid backboard. I figured they had to be from Charles, Latrell, or Tyree, as nobody else could jump as high. Suddenly, our attention left the evidence on the Plexiglas and turned to the roof. Rain dribbled like marbles, operatically, on the tin roof.

  “I guess we aren’t going outside today.” Their collective sigh filled the gym and was met with the solitary smirk I permanently wear on my face. “Let’s watch a movie.”

  Relief filled their spirits. Instead of shooting layups or making outlet passes, we watched a film. They needed to know what we needed to do to compete. I decided it was time to watch last year’s buzzer beater at Morris High School, a rainy-day movie with a happy ending. Plus, there was one last criterion to make the team: I wanted to see who could stay awake during the film. The DeWitt Clinton season-opening game was a month away. It loomed larger on the calendar at the end of each day.

  * * *

  —

  We settled into my classroom. The game was already on my desktop. I turned on the Smart Board while guys dragged chairs and moved into position.

  “You have to hustle on every possession,” I hear myself repeating to the team in a mise en abyme moment. It is like a dream within a dream. All my prior seasons are locked in this one. I can’t separate them. I attempted to censor my own negative thoughts about last season’s triumph, of a 26-3 record, but the loss in the semifinals still seemed like an ultimate failure.

  On the screen there is a loose ball and multiple guys are diving on the floor. I paused the film for effect. Last year, it became obvious that we consistently outhustled teams. I write in my notebook now: “Outscore teams this year.”

  “What just happened?” Three Fannie Lou players were on the floor scrambling for a loose ball.

  Watching last year’s Morris game was like unspooling a dream. Expectations were high. But the memory of last season’s semifinal loss still stung. The locker room after that game felt like a funeral. Last season seemed like a broken promise I needed to amend. Seasons are written in chalk in October. They are not tattooed until March.

  * * *

  —

  I was eating breakfast the next day when I received an early text.

  “Coach, I want to thank you for everything, but I can’t play this year.”

  Xavier quit the team. How do I solve for X? I was surprised that he quit, but not shocked.

  “X quit,” I told Jess,
my wife.

  “Is he okay?” Jess asked compassionately.

  I kissed Jess and Salome, my youngest daughter, good-bye. Nina, my oldest daughter, and I walked to the bus stop. The October mornings are dark and cool. Nina got on the bus and found a seat near the window. She then made some funny faces at me, and as the bus pulled away she made a heart with her tiny hands. I pretended to race the bus. On Broadway the police were questioning a well-dressed man. Was he robbed? Was he the suspect? The light turned green.

  I headed toward the High Bridge on my bike. This part of my ride to work was still a novel treat. I pretended I was riding into the woods. It’s a short path, but the tree canopy was like a cocoon. I liked the smell of decaying leaves, and the cold morning air was making my nose run. The wet leaves on the path were also littered with acorns. Acorns cause flats. So does broken glass. The fear of getting a flat tire consumed most of my commute, but I couldn’t forget about Xavier. The steel gates of the newly opened High Bridge were open, taking me from upper Manhattan to the Bronx. A man sat on a bench scratching lottery tickets while his white puppy thought about chasing me. I’m not upset when someone quits; it generally means they have found something outside basketball. You hope it is something positive. As a coach, I’m disappointed that we lost a starter; as a teacher, I think I’ve done something to get him at least to this point in his life.

  This is the scene when you cross the High Bridge, the bridge that first sent potable water to thirsty Manhattanites in 1845. To my left is the twisting, clogged, descending intestines of the Cross Bronx slowly dumping commuters onto the Major Deegan. To my right is the skyline of Manhattan. The conspicuous, ultra-skinny towers of “oligarch’s row” growing taller and taller. My bike rattled over the beige brick, the cuff of my new gray pants was now tattooed in black bike grease, and I thought: Who sleeps in those synthetic obelisks pointing to the stratosphere?