Reconnecting

I have no idea what got into me today; I awoke at 7 AM. I am retired, I don't have to get up until, say, the break of noon or so. But today is a special day, so I wanted to get an early start.
What is special about today, you say? (If I work a little harder, maybe I could be a poet, or at least a rapper... put the last question to a beat, add in some scratchy sounds....) Well, today we re getting a visit from an old friend. Not just any old friend, a mentor...George Young.

George and I coached together "back in the day" at Paxton/PBL High School. We were girls basketball coaches back when girls were just beginning to play the game in public for their parents and others to watch. I credit George for much of my success as a basketball coach, because I had never played the game, nor did I really watch it. But when he asked, and I told him my basketball IQ was lower than the body weight of a gnat, he merely said, "You'll learn. It'll be fun." And it was, for 30 years; 25 of which he and I were together.

He gave me some of my best memories both on and off the court. We had some good teams, we had some bad teams, but we always had a lot of laughs. Like the time early in my career when I had back spasms at practice and he and the team moved me over to the side and played around me until the end of practice, then loaded me up in the car and took me home. Or the time we were snowed in at Peotone, IL during a Christmas tourney and he and I slept on the couch in the teacher's lounge and the girls slept on the wrestling mats, then they ended up playing basketball at two in the morning...we lost the next day, but we had fun doing it! I'll never forget driving down First Street in Champaign, and the team breaking into their version of Kenny Rogers, "The Gambler" as topped the hill and the Assembly Hall came into view when we were headed to the state championships. We lost that one, too, to the eventual champs, but we had them on the ropes the entire game and could not finish them off.

He taught me a lot about team chemistry. We had film nights each Sunday night at his house. He and his wife Linda (What a saint she was!) had the entire team over, and cooked dinner for us, we watched film, then some movie. Usually, however, the evening became nothing but a laughfest at each other.

Off the court, we had some good laughs, too. George was never one to say no to a party, so we had quite few. Trips to coaches clinics were a blast, including the times when one coach surfed on top of a car, and another threw up along side of the road. These trips were always filled with philosophical discussions about coaching and about basketball.

When George retired in the early 90s, we lost touch, eventhough we only lived about four miles apart. That happens. He went on and did other things, I became deeper involved in coaching trying to fill his shoes.

Now, today, we are going to play golf in Arizona. A first for me... playing golf in January. But then again, it will be warm here, and I am sure the stories will be flowing.

Some things never change.

Doughnut