slacker

That's me! As our friend GretaJane reminded me last night, I am woefully behind on blogging and commenting. I'm going to try to make up some ground today. As a start, here's my piece from last night's Big Yellow session.

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I don't remember learning how to play basketball. I've known how to dribble, pass and shoot for as long as I can remember. Throw that hard, orange sphere at my face and my hands will catch it, instinctively dribbling, spinning and playing mindlessly with it. My mom taught us how to play--she'd played ball in college, coached and reffed for years. At the age of 15, she started to run clinics in the South Bronx for elementary and high school students. Naturally, she'd raised her children with a ball in hand.

My sister and I attended one ballet lesson when I was about 6--Erin was 4. My mom still insists it was our idea. At the end of class, the teacher walked over to my mother and suggested that we find a different activity for Tuesday afternoons. Halfway through ballet class, I'd turned to her and asked for the ball.

When I was 9, my father's best friend began coaching the Fordham University women's basketball team. That summer, he started a girls' basketball camp. My mom signed on as a coach and we spent the next 4 summers playing ball and living for a week or 2 in the Fordham dorms.

When I was 13 years old, I fell out of a chairlift while on a day long ski trip. The 30 foot fall snapped my arm in half. When the orthopedic surgeon determined that surgery to insert stell plates and screw was the only way to stabilize my arm, I didn't flinch. When he followed that with the fact that contact sports were off limits for at least 2 years, I was devastated. High school was just a few months away and he was effectively telling me that I wouldn't see playing time on a field or a court.

A few years later, on the first day of college orientation, I turned around while in line for my ID to find Mary O'Reilly standing behind me. Mary and I had played on the same team one summer at camp when we were about 10. As we waited for our turn for ID photos, we began planning our intramural basketball team for that fall. My skills were rusty at best, but it didnt' talk long for my muscles to remember the mechanics and rhythms of the game.

In 2 weeks, I'll begin coaching my own team of 7th and 8th grade girls. I've never had to coach a team all by myself and I'm already racking my brain, trying to remember drills for practice and different offensive sets for games. I've been told that the girls don't have a solid foundation of basic skills, so I've been making lists of the drills I can remember that are designed to teach the basics of passing and rebounding, the art of the free throw and the mechanics of a lay up. Thanksgiving weekend will be spent discussing strategy with my mom and coming up with offensive plays that we can call "Holy Cross," "Syracuse" and "Duke." I'm planning a Saturday afternoon or two when I can bring my girls to watch the HC women play so that they can see what a tight zone defense actually looks like.

I'm not looking to win the league title or even have a winning record (though that would be nice!). In the end, I want to create an atmosphere for the girls to have fun, hopefully learn a little and laugh a lot. And honestly, I can't wait to be back on a court with a ball in my hand helping to make that happen.