The stories about each middle school player I coached

We had our basketball banquet last Saturday before the Notre Dame game, where we presented all 12 players with their framed jerseys. I'll take a pic of my son's and post it here later.

Nobody ever does this, as people are waiting to be fed while these presentations are made, but I've coached most of these kids for 8 years, and I thought they deserved their moment in the sun. As I called each player's name and my assistant coach presented them with their jersey, I told a short story about each kid. Some of them related to some heroic effort they had made in a basketball game. Some were just about the kid and his personality. I thought I'd share them here in as short a version as I can (same way I tried Saturday). The first sentence or two of each isn't anything I said, but more of an introduction to you of the kid (most of the people at the banquet knew the background of each kid without me saying this, of course).

Michael is our big kid who has some issues. There's no need to get into them, but he was just happy to be on the team. He's our 12th guy. We put him in a game against the # 1 team, and our scorekeeper (3rd coach, but we are only permitted 2 by our rules) told him we needed him to "score 4 points." He hit a layup, and a short baseline jumper in the quarter, and I immediately screamed at the assistant, "Chris, why didn't you tell him we needed 10?"

Trey is our smart little PG, and son of my main assistant coach. We were losing by 10 last year in a game when his Dad was in Florida playing in an over-40 baseball tournament against Doug Flutie. I went to him at halftime and said, "Trey, your Dad is going to kill me if we lose this game." He told me, "coach, we're not going to lose." He scored 14 points in the 2nd half after going scoreless in the first, and we won.

Nicky is our arrogant, cocky, slow, short, confident kid who wants the ball in his hands at the end of the game. We're losing by 2 against a team that had been undefeated for years and the clock is ticking down. He gets the ball at the top of the key, and banks in a 3-pointer as the buzzer sounds, and we win the game. Last game our opponent would EVER lose (they disbanded the team 2 years later when several of their players made an "all-star" team from 10 different schools) and we came in 1st place that season.

CJ is a great kid, yes sir, no sir, all the time. He shows up one day in 5th grade on crutches. We only have 5 players for this particular game (in 5th grade, we had 2 teams of 7 each, rather than 1 14-person team. I practiced both teams together, but technically they were separate). I talk to his Dad, and the kid is begging him to play. He can barely walk. His Dad says he can play; our scorekeeper is a doctor and he said he could play, so I tell him to play "offense only" and stay on one side of the court. He plays the whole game. On Monday, he's in a cast. He had a broken foot, and the kid would do anything--even as a 5th grader--to help the team.

Steve is one of the kids who played out of position because we had no height on the team, and he lacked ballhandling skills. But he was "Mr. Intensity." When Steve went into a game, "somebody" was going to be fouled, but we weren't sure who, or which team. If the team needed a spark, Steve could always be counted on for that. He also developed a pretty deadly half-hook shot he could get off quickly against taller players, and made many key baskets for us over the years.

RJ is a sickly child, asthma and breathing issues. He missed literally half the practices this year and weeks of school. RJ was disappointed in very little playing time one game and asked me about it, and I told him that he had missed 3 of the previous 4 practices, so he wasn't up to speed on what we were doing, but to keep his head up, and he would earn more. He made all 3 practices that week, and in the next game, we were playing at Holy Family High School in Ensley (local guys know; that's a tough neighborhood) in a very hostile environment, and we were struggling. Put him in the first half, and he got a couple of steals, and was fouled twice, draining 4-4 from the FT line, and was *the* key to us winning that game. We were getting outhustled and outshot before he came in and he made the difference, just one week after getting very little PT in a game. You never know.

Will is our "big" kid. Three years ago he couldn't dribble, shoot, or catch a pass. Two years ago he started catching everything and rebounding great. Last year he started dribbling well. Everybody expected some big story about his rebounding or improved scoring this year, but I relayed the Andrew Harrison story, where he went behind the back, and over the shoulder against West Virginia, and said that Will had worked so hard to develop himself as a basketball player, the first person I thought of on the team when I saw Andrew do that in the game was Will. I said he had developed into a guy who could dribble behind the back, go coast-to-coast, and do things that only (some) guards on other teams could do.

Collin is my son, and I definitely choked up a little, realizing that was my last time to be an official part of his sports life. But I immediately went to his favorite story, where we were playing St. Francis Xavier, our big rival. It was 6th grade, and we each had 1-loss (to the undefeated team) and playing for 2nd place. We were down by 2 with 8 seconds remaining, with St. Francis shooting the 2nd FT (they made the first). They missed, Nicky grabbed the rebound, passed immediately to Trey who hustled upcourt. Trey was guarded closely and Collin called for the ball in the corner, where he shot a 3-pointer--and missed. But the whistle blew, as he was hit across the arm. 0.1 second remained on the shot clock. We called all the players away from the lane--neither team had a timeout remaining (thank goodness)--and St. Francis lined up 4 players there. One of them next to Collin began praying. I'm just yelling to my son, "Focus." My assistant is yelling, "tuck your elbow in." He drains the first. Drains the 2nd. Drains the 3rd, with none touching the rim, and we win by 1. Probably hit 30% from the FT line all season (was 5-5 that game). I told him after we got home that he looked calm. He said, "Dad, my legs felt like jelly and I couldn't feel my arms." At 6th grade.

Burke is another kid that played out of position; would've been nice to have had him as a big guard, but we had 10 guards already. Big enough kid for our team, he could rebound and score inside about 6 points a game, which was huge for us. We're trailing in our final game, so he pulls away from the post, receives the ball outside the 3-point line, takes the only 3-point shot of his entire career--and hits. Cuts the lead to single digits, and he finishes shooting 100% from 3-point range for his career. Anything we needed him to do, he'd do, and do well.

Jackson is our student of the game. His dad videos all the games, and gives me the DVD to review for our subsequent matchups (we play each team at least twice). He watches all the games with his Dad. He also will run through a brick wall for us, or, more accurately, be run over by a brick wall. Jackson led the league in charges received. I told them that I had to take the coaches concussion course twice, just because of Jackson. He had a big grin on his face when I said he set a Birmingham Toy Bowl (Parochial) League all-time record for charges (like I would know). His Dad told him after the banquet that meant he fell down a lot.

Matthew is a kid who, frankly, came back because it was his 8th grade year, but had not played since 2nd grade. He's small, but quick and aggressive. He has some "attention" issues that made it difficult for him on the court as well. The story I told about him was when we were playing Our Lady of Fatima and he was put in the game. We were in a matchup zone, but he took the matchup too seriously, and chased his player all over the court. We're saying, "no, no, no"--until a pass goes to the player, which he quickly intercepts. I sit back down and tell the other coaches, "maybe we should play a box and one," and we leave him on the court where he gets another steal before the quarter ends.

Nick (not Nicky) was not there, as he was on a previously planned vacation trip, so I didn't share any stories about him, but great kid, and the only kid I have ever coached who has thanked me and shook my hand after every practice. He'll do well in life.

Our school (like most) is cluttered with trophies. I told the audience that those 12 young men were responsible for a good part of the clutter, as they had managed 12 1st, 2nd and 3rd place regular season and tournament trophies in their careers, with almost all of them 1st or 2nd. We had lost a player to a professional development soccer program who was an elite athlete, a player to the all-star team of 10 different schools, a player that was pulled out of our school to go to another school where his father believed he would develop more rapidly athletically, and we lost our leading scorer this year with 5 weeks remaining in the season.

And we still finished 2nd place.

All the kids knew how to do was win. We'd lose one guy, somebody else would step up. We'd lose another, two guys would step up. We might win a game 45-41 one week and the next week win 26-23. I don't ever remember us winning a game by double digits. It probably happened, but the kids were terrific in close games. If it was close--they'd win. They had internal fortitude that just pulled it out.

I had several people later ask me how I remembered stories about each kid. Keith, WoodstockCat, and others who have coached will verify this. It's not one story you "have" to remember about each kid. It is a dozen stories about each kid you'll never forget. I tried to tell one memorable one for each that they would like, but there were 10 more that could've been told.