Pounding the Rock

by Marc Skelton

  HAVE A GOOD PRACTICE

  “Use the glass,” I encourage. “It’s your best friend.”

  Today practice starts with a shooting drill, steps from the rim, using the backboard. The backboard rests in midair, almost invisible, but an essential part of the game. The gym has an earthy smell. The heating duct blows hot air like a hair dryer as the guys take turns aiming for the perfect spot on the tempered glass.

  “Serve the platter. Reach for the cookie jar. Hold your release.” I impart essential shooting instructions.

  Good shooters all have one thing in common: the hand that pushes the ball toward the hoop ends up resembling the Hebrew letter Vav. After a shot, great shooters extend their shooting hand for what seems like minutes, long after the ball has gone through the net, as if a spotlight should shine on just the shooting hand. What most people don’t see is that behind every perfect shot is the off hand or the guide hand. The hand that helps the ball stay balanced. The hand that leaves the stage right before the shot is released. The guide hand is central to the success of any decent shooter.

  Jessica is my guide hand.

  My wife has a significant influence on my coaching and teaching. Through the highs and lows of a season, she nudges me to be consistently kind and understanding on and off court. She’s the balance and support I need.

  “Have a good practice” Jessica’s text read before every practice.

  * * *

  —

  The setting sun amplifies the translucent stains on the backboards. Glass backboards are eternally smudged. Yet like all windows, they still work even when they are dirty. We look beyond the grime. The boys are aiming for the white square on the glass, searching for the most sacred spot, where the ball hits the glass and the net and avoids the rim altogether. I’m watching their release and where the ball hits off the glass; each shot, examined precisely for where it strikes the glass. Every shot is as distinctive as a fingerprint.

  Coaching high school basketball is hard. Being married to a coach is even more difficult. Work infiltrates all marriages. My wife can measure the seriousness of a practice by the hoarseness of my voice. She experiences firsthand the jagged differences between a win and a loss. She counts the hours I am away from home, and senses when I am thinking about the game when we are home.

  At times I’m too attached to the game. Too focused on an incident that may feel like vandalism but is just part of the game. I get caught up on the blemishes. Sometimes her texts are more serious: “I never have enough, enough time from you, less worry about the girls, taking care of myself, the family, never feeling I have enough to give the ones I love what I would like to. And often feeling like I don’t get what I want.”

  Yet when I get home, she always asks how practice was. Jessica rectifies my bad moods. She improves my tunnel vision, not just for the team, but for the family. She cures myopia. She operates in perspicaciousness.

  Jessica is my Windex.

  She’s there to remind me that it is just a game. She wipes clean the self-pity and doubt.

  “Figure out what happened. Fix it. Make sure the boys are okay and get ready for tomorrow.” This or something similar is said as we sit down for dinner.

  “And when you are done, can you hang the new shower curtain, change Salome’s diaper, check Nina’s homework, fix the printer, unclog the toilet, and take out the trash?”

  Jessica reminds me that it is okay to be imperfect. It is also not okay to become fixated on perfection. Teams that succeed aren’t bothered by their imperfections. They embrace their strengths. Their confidence grows. And she reminds me that I am responsible for helping young men feel confident about themselves. Additionally, she points out there is also a bunch of household chores that I need to do.

  Jessica is the axis on which this team rests.

  One thing I have come to discover about life as a coach is that there are two essential rituals that happen around mid-January. The first brings about a certain unhappiness in the team. They have spent too much time together. Too many two-hour practices. Too many bruised egos. Too many injuries that never get a chance to fully heal. Teams and coaches have to come to terms with these facts.

  The other rite of passage for any coach is the inevitable quarrel with the spouse. I swear, the shorter days of the basketball season play a serious role for basketball coaches. I wonder, do the coaches who coach a spring sport get yelled at as much? Basketball is a long season, and each season I don’t spend enough time with my wife and kids.

  The middle of the season is when a coach’s team and personal life are at the extremes. There’s a pull to stay at home and do ordinary things with the kids, like watch another episode of Elmo or go sledding or just sit and build with Legos for an hour. Jessica and I both know we need to get a babysitter and go see an off-Broadway play or a movie with subtitles. But we don’t. We are usually too tired. January leaves me stranded on an emotional island: stuck between ambition and familial obligations: “But reflecting I am reminded that I am so blessed with more than enough. Each year I struggle with your connection to basketball, but at the end of the season I am always so proud of you and the boys.”

  I can tell when the cup of patience Jessica poured before the season started has evaporated. I am an imperfect husband. I can’t pretend there is full reciprocity during the season. It’s very unequal. Each year’s a complete overhaul, and it’s really unfair to the family. The support Jessica has given me is beyond appreciation. I rely on Jessica for balancing and edification. Jessica allows me, sometimes begrudgingly, to devote a lot of time to coaching. And I’m a coach my team can rely on because I have someone at home I can rely on.

  Jessica is also my best friend.

  “MY FOE OUTSTRETCHED BENEATH THE TREE”

  When we walked in, all I saw were rules! Lots and lots of rules posted everywhere! After a few minutes, I expected to see some type of five-year plan or a warning against tomfoolery or you’d be sent to the gulag public school down the street where all the inmates, like the crew of the Pequod, were made up of “mongrel renegades, castaways, and cannibals.” We were in the lobby of the decadent Uncommon Charter School franchise. The information desk was not unlike the one at your local hospital or law firm, except this one had a litany of school safety agents who easily could have been mistaken for local gendarmes. We were instructed that food or beverages would not be permitted, but we could buy drinks and food in the gym. The charter school heist is for real.

  By now most folks are aware of the well-meaning charter school plan to bring flawless education to the inner city. Under the banner of choice, they empower parents to have a say in their child’s education. But deeper underneath the banner of choice, charter schools are tightening the noose around struggling public schools. Charter schools have swapped out the underperforming students, the special education students, and students with behavioral issues with the docile and the ultra-motivated. Their motto is: “Work Hard. Go to College. Change the World!” Or rather: “Work Hard. Be Nice.”

  The noise coming from charter schools tends to obscure rather than clarify their intent. They want us to think they are providing an excellent education, and they might be. But at what cost?

  This is what is known as the “paradox of the positive.” In a paper written by the educators Robert Heath and Damion Waymer, they suggest that these grandiose claims usually marginalize populations and promote exclusion. How can we allow the most marginalized and excluded people in this country to be squeezed even more?

  A specter is haunting the urban public school system. It’s dressed up like a public school, it takes public money, yet it is exempt from the rules, very important rules that the rest of schools play by. Charter schools have cast off the fraternity urban public schools have had with each other. Tacitly, if not willingly, we have agreed to have missing lights in our bandbox gyms, where teams wear uniforms that are faded
, or worse, where the colors have run into each other to form a unique color combination. We have agreed to take all students. Charter schools don’t.

  The charter school boom is an opportunity for profit. It’s replete with financial incentives. We should be troubled by the success of charter school expansion because it robs neighborhood schools of many resources. We are witnessing the birth of a charter school industrial complex. It is unclear what the future holds for them in New York City, but at present, one thing is clear: they have now increased their sphere of influence to include producing top basketball teams. The only way I can fight this menace is by beating their basketball teams.

  The top eighteen teams in the B classification were invited to play at the annual Class B Showcase on the last Saturday in January. Here the PSAL officials could get their eyes on teams throughout the city and help accomplish the herculean task of seeding sixty teams for the citywide playoffs in February. We were scheduled to play Democracy Prep, the Harlem-based charter school. The games were hosted at the Uncommon Charter School, the larger and richer uncle of the charter high schools in New York City. This was the second year in a row the PSAL had scheduled us to play a charter school at another charter school. Last year we played Uncommon Charter School at the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) in the Bronx.

  In the years since charter schools entered the PSAL, they have performed exceptionally well on the court. Last year for the grand finale, KIPP, the McDonald’s of the charter schools franchise, won the PSAL basketball championship. The story could have been a small progressive public school slays a corporate charter school in the finals, but that wasn’t to be, since we lost in the semifinals.

  We entered the gym. “Yo, Fannie Lou, you guys play upstairs!” a handsome, bald black man in a yellow bow tie and blue shirt yelled out. The Uncommon Charter School gym, was, well, uncommon. It was the Taj Mahal of basketball courts: three full courts on the second floor.

  “Upstairs?” I asked. We were trying to catch our collective breath.

  “Yeah, on the fourth floor,” he directed.

  We walked up the stairs and entered an exact replica of the one on the second floor: three more full courts, and of course all the lights were working.

  New York City is an extremely unequal and segregated city. Asking us to come to a lavishly appointed charter school was insensitive at best. And playing a charter school inside another charter school was like sailing by Scylla and Charybdis while fighting with the Cyclops in the saltbox. It was double indemnity.

  I rely a lot on poetry and literature to navigate experience. I don’t know any other way. A moment like this sent me running to William Blake’s “A Poison Tree”:

  In the morning glad I see

  My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

  Charter schools may soon dominate the PSAL. Brand-new coaches. Brand-new buildings. Donors with hands in their padded pockets patting themselves on the back. They laugh at our ancient interiors and shabby exteriors. The PR department of the charter school complex publishes articles by the dozen about the bravery and sacrifice of all those on board charter schools, not so subtly hinting that the teachers at the public schools may not be as smart or as brave or as good-looking as theirs are.

  We were escorted to a classroom to change. It was complete with a view of the Manhattan skyline, and was more Ikea than Bed-Stuy, where the Uncommon High School is located. The school reminded me of Switzerland with black and brown people. I can see classroom rules everywhere. Rules for grammar. Rules for life. No-excuse pedagogy reigns. I was trying to get ready for the game, but I had too many questions. How can the plebeian public schools compete? How do charter schools teach resistance when they want everyone to act the same? So many important movements in history are about informed dissent; this place looked like it wanted blind obedience.

  I changed into my Chinese New Year Kobes for this game. This was not vanity. This was coaching. I couldn’t match the school’s facilities, so I let the team focus on my sneakers. I wished they’d notice my Dražen Petrović shirt too, but alas they didn’t. The sneakers were enough to release the pressure of the game and to distract them from the immaculate surroundings. I can’t rock Armani suits like Pat Riley did, but it’s the same idea: when your coach is fresh, everything else is fly.

  “Ooohh, Coach, when did you get those?” Josh asked.

  “Fire,” Tyree said. “Pure fire.”

  It’s all about peacocking at the right moment to relax the team before a big game. They got dressed and prepared to face the best B team in Manhattan, the Democracy Prep Dragons. The team we were warned about before the Maspeth game a month ago. (In my mind I kept thinking that I wanted to open up a school called Socialism Prep.) The coach of the Dragons was Dominic Fanelli. He had a telegenic Midwestern smile, like a weatherman who promises and delivers sunshine every day.

  He said, “I like your warm-up.”

  “Thanks,” I said curtly.

  On this particular day it did look good. The ball was sharply thrown, heels were off the floor on the pivots, hands were ready for the catch, the cuts were timed perfectly, the passes on target. I looked at the armada and right away saw that the Dragons were missing their center, Alihassane Soumahoro. Coach Fanelli was searching my face for sympathy. I could see he was nervous.

  * * *

  —

  The older of the refs blew his fearsome whistle to start the game. Shamar’s cheek was cobwebbed with toothpaste, and a little sleep caked around his right eye. Time to wake up. There were ten scoreboards around the gym. They all worked. The game started off the way a bus leaves the Kiev bus station in January: slowly. Tyree’s hair was growing back, and he seemed to be getting his stroke back with it. He hit three threes in the second quarter. At halftime, we were winning 26–15. On the way to the classroom, we walked by plaques recognizing students’ achievements and where they were going to college.

  “Coach, we should have something like this at our school,” Walfri said.

  “I’d like to see a list of all the kids they kicked out of here,” I replied.

  We were playing our trademark defense that day, and Democracy Prep was locked out of the paint. They started settling for three-pointers, some of them launched from the Apollo Theatre back in Harlem. On the other hand, Shamar kept getting layups against them, and by the end of the third it was 42–28. We eventually won 66–34. Tyree finished the game with 19 points. Charles had another double-double, 21 points and 10 rebounds. Shamar was once again brilliant, with 10 assists and 15 points.

  South Bronx Prep played Adams Street after us and won easily. The dust was settling: it looked like they would be the number-one seed and we would be the number-two seed. That meant the only way we could meet again was in the championship game.

  A SECOND CHANCE

  We piled inside the van. Our victorious white omnibus drove us back to the Bronx. Playoff seeds were on my mind. It was January, but it felt like February. The season was coming to a close. A year ago, my daughter Salome was jiggling around inside Jessica. Now she was almost walking. Soon she would be a one-year-old. The team had also grown up a lot in a year. Without the bus, Uncommon High School would have been impossible for us to get to. I was very thankful for having a supportive administration. I couldn’t have become a good coach without a strong administration behind me. First Nancy Mann and now the new principal, Jeff Palladino. I was lucky to have supportive principals. Gaby always says, “Takes teamwork for the dream to work.” He was right.

  We arrived back to the Bronx faster than expected. We hopped off the bus, and the team huddled around me on the sidewalk next to the school.

  “Great game,” I said.

  Twilight was falling.

  “Hey, what’s going on here?”

  An NYPD police car had driven up on the curb. Two policemen jumped out and shielded themselves behind the open do
ors.

  “Just a coach talking to his team, Officers,” I said.

  “Okay,” they replied in unison. The cops pulled away.

  “That was crazy!” Charles said.

  “It was like magic. You waved your hand and they went away,” Bryant said.

  “They didn’t even ask us if we won,” I replied.

  “Imagine what would have happened if Coach wasn’t here?” Frankie asked.

  At this point everybody used Mohammed, the freshman cameraman, to demonstrate their experience with police. They feigned headlocks, arm bars, frisks, choke holds, curb kisses, and wall hugs, mimicking encounters—real or imagined, it didn’t matter. After everyone had exhausted their police experiences, we went home; some up Jennings Street, some to the 4 train, the rest down West Farms Road, all of them still shaking their heads at what just happened. The next few days we talked about white privilege. Incidents like this allow us—force us—to talk about race, poverty, privilege, and justice.

  In the cab home we passed by Timmy Hariston’s building. Timmy graduated in 2016 and was off playing college basketball at Corning Community College. Since freshman year, Timmy had buried himself in basketball to escape his difficult life. He played center; at six feet eight inches tall and 290 pounds, his job was to take up space, which he did very well. He gathered rebounds when they found his hands, and by senior year he was a crucial part of our run to the final four. One of the highlights of his senior season was Timmy making his first and only three-point shot of his career. After the shot he moonwalked back on defense, licking his hands and then like a sharpshooter in a Western putting them back into his imaginary holster. It was one of the funniest moments of my coaching career.