Catch a Star

by Tamika Catchings

  She reminded me how trying, keeping on, even when the odds are against you, is what counts. I never felt like she disapproved of me or that I wasn’t measuring up or wasn’t qualified for the game if I wasn’t my best—or, worse, messed up—one night.

  It’s such a huge gift to have someone tell you, I see you as you are. I see you as you can be. I know you are getting better every day. Even if you’re not better now, I love you anyway.

  Anyway closes a lot of gaps that can separate people.

  I wish Dad could have understood that. I wish he could have seen how important it is to say, “I think you’re great anyway,” or, “You did great tonight and will do even better tomorrow.”

  Now I think he maybe just applied the same standard to me that he did to himself—and that he’d tried to put on Kenyon and Tauj before me.

  Kenyon got that weight first. He played basketball really well and was an All-American. By his junior year in high school he already had a number of scholarship offers. Then, before his senior year, he was really ill. He had incredible pain, lost weight, couldn’t eat. He went through a series of tests, and just before his senior year in high school he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract. He couldn’t play. He lost all the athletic scholarships, but he got an academic scholarship because he’s so smart and worked so hard to learn and excel in school, one of so many reasons I’ve always admired him and wanted to be like him.

  All Dad’s pressure on Kenyon turned to Tauja because she was so good at basketball too. Only she didn’t really want to hear his criticisms and analysis, his pointers and all those pushes. She played because she was good at it. She saw how you could get a scholarship for what you were good at, and so she kept playing, but basketball wasn’t her thing. Besides, she and Dad had a different relationship from mine and Dad’s.

  I was the youngest. And in the end, Dad’s wishes and expectations for at least one of his kids to excel in basketball fell on me. And I felt the pressure.

  But the difference was that I had the passion for basketball. And I felt it was my game. Not Dad’s.

  For a lot of years, I didn’t know how to get Dad to hear me. His “coaching” just made me feel, once again, like I didn’t fit in, that I wasn’t acceptable. I felt silenced. For a long time, I just took it all in and stuffed it, all the hurt and frustration and confusion about how to get him to see I could play the game well my own way.

  I journaled a lot during those years.

  Once, in high school, I did sit down with Dad to talk about his expectations. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I cut right to the point. “You want too much. You expect perfection. You’re putting too much pressure on me. It’s as if you’re living through me and it’s not fair.”

  He didn’t hear me. To him, this was another opportunity to say, “I see so much potential in you—why don’t you see what I see? These are the things I want for you.”

  I wanted to say, “Yeah, but I’m living my life, not yours. The things you want for me are the things I want. The standards you want me to achieve, I want to achieve. Getting to that goal of excellence may take me a little bit longer, but this is my road and my journey, not your road and your journey. Can you see that I love what I do, but you’re taking away that love by putting more expectation on me than there needs to be?”

  Only I didn’t say any of that to him then.

  I never talked back to my dad. And even if I could have said what was in my heart and soul, for whatever reason I don’t think he could have heard it. Maybe because he had such high hopes, such intense desire for me, and each of his children, to succeed in the game he loved.

  That didn’t change how all those hopes, all that desire for something good for others, made life so hard for me.

  Part 2

  Noise

  I hear it . . . the noise.

  Like a drill through my mind.

  It’s loud, demanding, pressuring and unwanted.

  It’s constricting me.

  Surrounding me.

  Squeezing me.

  To hear or not to hear?

  The voices, the shame, the names.

  I’ve come to conclude,

  Sometimes silence is better than noise . . .

  Noise IS a loudness to the reality of what I don’t want to hear.

  5

  Split

  What I saw was a really, really quick, rather thin, high jumping young lady who didn’t play the kind of defense she does now. By the time she was in eighth grade, though, she had filled out. I’d see her sitting in the stands holding a basketball and watching Tauja play as a freshman on the varsity, and it was then I thought to myself how good we could be with her on the floor.

  Frank Mattucci, coach, Stevenson High School Patriots

  I hoped the move to Chicago would change my life for the better. It didn’t.

  School was still hard. I was still different from others, only now I was significantly taller than most of the kids my age. I was still self-conscious of how I talked (when I talked at all). I still struggled to hear my own voice, let alone others’. I was still asking huh? A lot.

  The big box hearing aids were never replaced. But I learned that wasn’t what really set me apart anyway.

  My problems at school weren’t the worst of what was going on. Dad was gone a lot now—more than ever before. His new job was consuming his time and attention.

  It wasn’t going so well between Mom and Dad. I don’t know if it was the move, or Dad’s absences, or something else, but they were fighting a lot. And we kids were caught in the cross fire.

  Tauja tended to side with Dad. I found more comfort with Mom and tended to drift toward her during this time. Kenyon . . . I don’t know. He was caught in between.

  I didn’t want to take sides. I wanted us all to be together. I wanted to be a team player, even in the family. So when Mom and Tauj would argue, I would try to stay out of it. Most of the time, I looked for a chance to get away from it all.

  The court became my sanctuary. When I had discovered basketball was my language, it also became my outlet for all the emotions, anything going on in my life. When I was happy, I’d play basketball. When I was sad, I’d play basketball. When I was frustrated or mad or overwhelmed, I’d play basketball.

  Not long after we’d moved to Deerfield, the kids in the neighborhood knew this too. Beginning in fourth grade and throughout high school, guys would call our house for me.

  Mom would answer the phone. She’d hear, “Is Tamika going to the court? Is she already at the court?”

  Mom would turn to me, eyebrows raised. “Wait a minute,” she’d say. “You’re too young for this to be going on!”

  But it was all about the game. The guys were my friends. Basketball friends. I didn’t have any girlfriends, just guy friends—and Kenyon and Tauj.

  Nothing started on the courts till I got there. All the neighborhood guys would be waiting for me. We’d pick our teams and we’d play. They all wanted me on their teams. We’d play all day if we could. If Mom couldn’t find me around the house, she knew I was at the court. She would bring lunch and I’d take a break. We’d sit there and eat, talk, joke around, and then we’d go back to the game.

  The game was my life, the way life was supposed to be.

  Sunday nights, Dad would go to Deerfield High School for pickup games with some guys he knew. He took us kids with him. He’d get us there early so he could teach us stuff and so we could play against him. But his other friends would eventually show up, and they’d play their game while we watched. That would always upset me because I thought I should be able to play with them. I felt, at the age of ten, that I could maybe hold my own against them.

  The tension between Mom and Dad got worse. They were becoming torn apart from each other and from the family.

  Of course, we were torn with them. For a family that had been so close, this was devastating. Kenyon, Tauj, and I had done everything together.
We felt tension too. We started to take sides. There wasn’t just an us anymore. There was now a her and him and us.

  Tauja and Mom clashed more and more on little things that turned into big things. I tried not to let that become a rift between Tauj and me, but sometimes we couldn’t avoid it. She became critical of Mom. I tended to be critical of Dad. Some things we couldn’t talk about now.

  Kenyon, the oldest, probably was affected the most by our parents’ tension. He was heading into ninth grade and trying to find himself in his own way. Moving so many times in so many years hadn’t helped. Still, he seemed to keep his head on straight, finding a balance and some inner quiet. I believe basketball may have been his sanctuary too.

  By the time I started sixth grade, Mom and Dad had divorced.

  Dad moved down the street—not far, but emotionally it felt to us like he was back in Italy. It felt odd for Dad to be in another house. It wasn’t right.

  I had all these emotions and preteen hormones going on, and the one place I knew I could deal with it all was on the court, facing the hoop, running the lines. Basketball was the one thing that would never let me down. It was the thing I loved that loved me back.

  Of course my parents loved me. Of course I loved them and Tauja and Kenyon. But our relationships got tricky for us during these years. Sometimes we had to work out whose side we were on in this issue or that. With basketball, rules were the rules. I knew them and there were no questions. I could play the game and know everything would always be okay.

  There’s playing basketball and there’s the game of basketball. I began to love the game of basketball even more during this time. Some people say they “love” a particular sport, but really they’re just saying they have fun playing it. And most people can say that.

  No, you really fall in love with a game when you begin to appreciate what it does for you inside.

  I’d go to the gym or the court earlier, stay later, spend time when no one else was around. It was a zone I could enter to be at peace. I realized peace came especially when I was the first one on the court. I treasured being the first one at the gym, walking into the silence. That may sound funny coming from someone who struggled to hear, but there is a silence when you’re alone on the court unlike any other. You don’t have to worry about anyone screaming or yelling, the murmur of others on the sidelines, or music or crowds abuzz.

  Alone on the court, there’s no background noise as there is in life. There are just basketball sounds. The rhythm of the ball on the court or against the backboard, the whoosh through the hoop, that squeak of your tennis shoes on the waxed wood. I love the sound of tennies squeaking as they work the court. The music of the game.

  In basketball, I kept growing and becoming better. The game wouldn’t keep me in a box, make me always be what I had been in the past. I could change and try new things without repercussion. I could play just myself, or for my team when it was all about us doing and being our best. Even when we played a them, the lines were so clear. It wasn’t confusing as it was within my own family. I didn’t have to think about anyone being hurt. I just played the game and the rules were the rules and I did what I did and that was it.

  By seventh grade, my love for the game was unequivocal. I knew basketball was what I wanted to work at. Forever. I’m so glad I had found that clarity because life got even more confusing with family.

  Tauja, more at odds with Mom than ever, moved in with Dad.

  That was a jolt. We’d shared the same space, language, everything. We’d been inseparable. I was her sidekick. She was the one who spoke for me; the instigator who drew us into trouble, yes, but she also gave me a certain confidence and courage. And she was that bridge between Dad and me. She could speak her mind, and if you didn’t like what she said, so be it. She was that one. I thought about things more, brooded over them.

  So when Tauja went to live with Dad, even though she was just down the street, it made me really sad.

  I knew she would still be my protective sister, even if she wasn’t under the same roof with me. And she was. Whenever my feelings would get hurt by something Dad said or hard times we’d go through, him being so hard on me, Tauj would stick up for me. So we were still “together,” Tauj and I, but it was a different together. Dad’s distance we’d gotten used to. I would never get used to being apart from Tauja.

  My inner circle, or little family, was what I still clung to, even when we were in this position of having to take sides and decide where to live. Dad living down the street, and Tauj no longer in the bedroom next to mine—I wasn’t okay with any of it. It wasn’t right.

  Tauja and I coped with it as best we could. We saw each other every day at school and talked together before and after. And at one point we wound up playing on the same team.

  My life began to change. I had my goal—“One day I’ll be in the NBA”—pinned to my bathroom mirror, and I began to work toward it. School was always important to me, and even with my hearing struggles I kept up a B+ average. And in basketball I was now striving not just to play the game but to work at the game.

  Every day I’d get up, get dressed, watch some basketball on TV (there was always a game on some channel), and then go to school, only to look for breaks when I could go to the court, practice, and play with friends. Most were older, bigger guys I’d meet on the court. They’d wait for me every day. We’d egg each other on—I wanted to show them I could be just as good and even better than they were. We’d play hard. And I would hustle, scrambling for every loose ball. At times bikes were lined up on one side of the court, and when the ball would bounce into that row of bikes, I wouldn’t hesitate to dive after it.

  I was competitive in my schoolwork too. I always did my homework right after school. And basketball became another kind of homework. If I wasn’t at an official team practice or playing other sports—volleyball and softball during their seasons—I was outside shooting hoops. That was my routine. Every day.

  Even during the summer, I was up at seven or seven thirty in the morning and rushed through breakfast so I could get to the court. I loved it when Kenyon and Tauja were there. We could play together, the Catchingses, like old times. But even without them, I turned to the court.

  The game got me through.

  When Tauja became a freshman, she made the varsity basketball team at Stevenson High School.

  As an eighth-grader, I’d go over to the high school to watch her practice. I’d sit in the stands, holding a basketball, and literally itch to get out there and play. I’d rub my arm and then bounce the ball and think of the times Tauj and I went against one another in the driveway at home; how different it would be to pass the ball to her, or to grab it from a toss from her and work together to win. And because I knew I was an even match with Tauja in the driveway, I could imagine myself fitting in on a varsity basketball team, playing successfully against juniors and seniors.

  That wouldn’t happen yet, but it was something I looked forward to in another year.

  Watching her on that Stevenson court, I saw what an incredible player Tauja was—naturally gifted, graceful, elegant. She could run fast and fluid, like she was sailing. She was incredible at defense. Where I worked harder to be faster, score, make the shots from far away or up close, and do what it took to rebound, Tauj was a great defensive player, especially when she played a full-court press, disrupting the opposing player’s dribble and often forcing a turnover.

  I learned a lot from watching her. And I learned quickly. When we had played before, we were just playing one-on-one, with the emphasis on scoring. Now I was driven and intentional about how to step up my game defensively. I paid attention to how people played, how the team worked together, how I was performing around other players. And I learned that playing tougher defense and forcing turnovers was as noteworthy and valuable as sinking a basket.

  Any excitement I felt about basketball—the player I was becoming and the potential that lay ahead—was tempered by tough times at home. And while Tau
ja and I were close even after she got into high school and was playing on the varsity team, we also had some rough patches.

  But I had to let all that go. There was going to be sadness, distance, and frustration. There would be some jealousy, some resentment. It was going to be that way at times. It wasn’t going to be the same as before. But that was okay. There was always basketball.

  The game would always get me through.

  In 1993, now a freshman, I made the varsity basketball team at Stevenson High School. We weren’t just Tauja and Tamika anymore. We became “the Catchings Sisters.” Together, the two of us got good, really good. Kids, teachers, and coaches all started noticing us. We started to wear that identity together, and we became popular for what we did on the court.

  Tauja and I—“the Catchings Sisters”—were playing together on the same team, on the court in IHSAA games that really meant something.

  I had grown, and at six feet I was now an inch taller than Tauja. The Stevenson coach, Frank Mattucci, played Tauja at forward and me at center, but our play was an up-tempo offense where Tauja and I often raced up both sides of the court, feeding the ball to whomever was left most open. Our chemistry—as girls who had played so much together in the driveway as well as sisters who were so close as to almost read each other’s minds—became evident right away on the court. In November, the two of us scored forty points in a game against York High School.

  One of the things we became known for—and that became a hallmark of the Stevenson teams to come—was our trapping defense. As an opposing player would bring the ball up the court, Tauja would come up to her in the backcourt, spread her long arms out, and force the player toward the sideline. Meanwhile, I would slide over quickly, taking advantage of the fact that Tauja was in the other player’s line of vision. As the opposing player tried to dribble out of the trap, she’d turn into me on her blind side. We became remarkably effective at forcing turnovers.