Louis groggily opened his eyes, the faint strains of The Clash’s “Train in Vain” echoing in his head, remnants of an early Saturday morning dream. He looked up at the clock—9:14.
He bolted upright, the bass tumbling from his lap with a discordant growl. He realized suddenly that the music was not just in his head—the alarm was going off back in his room. He jumped up from the couch, where he had fallen asleep practicing last night, and ran to shut off the alarm.
Flopping onto the bed, Louis rubbed the sleep from his eyes and groggily wondered what in the world he was supposed to be awake for at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning. He’d spent most of the early morning hours struggling through Maddie’s music, succumbing to sleep only as the dulcet tones of yet another Billy Mays wannabe came on over the networks. It had been a long and frustrating, if uneventful, evening, his patience never quite measuring up to his progress, which seemed to Louis to be the norm. He was in no mood to be awake so early, but, remembering the basketball practice he was supposed to be at in ten minutes (ah, the joys of coaching 9- and 10-year-olds, always the first practice in the morning), he jumped out of the bed, threw on a pair of old running shorts and a high school track t-shirt, grabbed his cross-trainers from the living room, and sprinted out to his car.
By the time he managed to fold his lanky frame into the driver’s seat and get the beat-up old Civic to start, the dashboard clock read 9:26. Louis raced through the suburban streets adjacent to his apartment complex, the identical rows of brick houses making the ten-minute drive to the elementary school gym seem interminable.
He ran into the gym just a few minutes late, an accomplishment given that he’d been asleep less than twenty minutes ago. His friend Drew, who had conned him into this assistant coaching gig, already had the kids in lay-up lines.
“Hey, man, sorry I’m late. Overslept a little,” Louis said sheepishly as he jogged across the court.
“No problem, I went ahead and got started,” Drew said, as if there was any question that he could run the whole practice without Louis.
The gym was unfamiliar territory to Louis. Being six feet tall since the ninth grade, he had been told to play basketball. It had not worked out well—the long limbs that aided a graceful athlete were unwieldy on him, and he tripped over the ball more often than he managed to put it anywhere near the hoop. That experiment had ended shortly after it began, as the coach told him in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome back to practice the next day—his exploits on the court were as likely to hurt one of his more valuable teammates as they were him.
The gym he coached in now seemed no different than his high school gym. Same generic mascot growling from half-court, same worn hardwood floor that had him slipping all over the place, same high rafters with the industrial lights up above. The only difference was the small stage built into the wall at the opposite end, since, like most elementary schools, there wasn’t any need to take up extra space with an auditorium.
The smell seemed to Louis distinctly similar, too—not so much sweat and hardwood as fear and failure (his own; the kids did fine, for the most part). As he wandered over to the baseline, one of the less experienced kids tossed up an errant shot.
“Hey Lou, why don’t you show Tommy here how to shoot a lay-up?” Drew called, snapping a pass over to Louis near the basket.
“Oh. Um, okay, sure.” Louis dribbled tentatively towards the hoop, jumped off his right foot and laid it in with his right hand. Proud that he hadn’t bungled the shot, Louis tossed the ball casually back over to Drew on the wing.
“Coach, you’re supposed to go up on your left foot, aren’t you?” It was little Andy. The kid had apparently come out of the womb playing basketball, and he wanted to be sure everyone knew it. Not a practice had passed that he hadn’t managed to correct Louis on some point or another.
Drew gave Louis a sympathetic look. “Um, yeah, left foot for right hand, right foot for left hand.” Tommy had jogged to the back of the line, still uninstructed but not overly concerned about it. Louis slunk to the back of the line as well, looking significantly more chagrined by the error.
Drew put them through dribbling drills, went over their two offensive plays, instructed them on the finer points of the 2-3 zone, and ran them through some conditioning. Louis clung to his spot in the back of the line, making sure the kids were paying attention but being careful not to impart anything that could be misconstrued as basketball wisdom, lest he turn out to be quite mistaken again.
With just a few minutes to go in the practice, Drew blew his whistle to gather the kids in at midcourt.
“Alright, guys, good work, we’ve got ten minutes left, so we’ll scrimmage a bit. Lou, you mind jumping in with them? No way my knee’s gonna let me play,” he said.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Louis said, not at all sure that this was a good idea. Drew had been playing in the scrimmages up until this point, but he had tweaked an old injury playing intramurals last week. Louis grabbed a pinnie and loosened up a bit.
The first eight minutes or so went swimmingly—as the coach, Louis didn’t feel the need to take any shots away from the kids, so he was free to run around and pass the ball on when he got it, two things he could definitely do.
With time winding down in the practice, Louis found himself ahead of everyone else with the ball. Confident from his play up to that point, he took a couple dribbles, and prepared to jump off his left foot for his right-handed lay-up, just like Andy had taught him. Unfortunately, as the ball left Louis’ hand, little, barely-five-feet-tall, 9-year-old Andy came flying by, sending the ball ricocheting onto the stage behind the basket, coming to rest dead on center stage—they might as well have put the spotlight on it. He, six-foot-tall, 20-year-old Louis, had just been completely and utterly rejected. Andy crowed. Louis scratched his head in disbelief. Drew blew his whistle, trying unsuccessfully to hide the grin on his face.
“Well, that’s as good a stopping point as any, guys, bring it in,” he said. Louis watched from the sideline as the boys did their “1-2-3-WILDCATS!” cheer and filed out of the gym. Tommy gave him a high-five and a hearty “Thanks, coach!” as he walked out, and for a moment Louis felt better...until a smirking Andy sauntered past. Drew managed to stifle his laughter long enough to pat him on the back and get out an unconvincing, “Good practice, man,” before he saw Louis’ face and sobered himself up.
“Hey, it’s cool, man, I really appreciate your help. See ya Tuesday, right?” Drew asked sympathetically.
Louis managed a lopsided grin. “Yeah, where else would the kids get their confidence from, right? See ya then.”
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