I watch a lot of hoops. Especially at high school and college tourney time. And as someone whose entire family has lived, loved, breathed, ate and slept hoops since a young age, there’s a moment in tournament games that I always find emotional. It’s the moment, often in the last minute or two, when the players on the short-end of the result REALIZE it.
You can see it flood over their faces. This is IT. Our season (and sometimes, career) is OVER. The suppressed tears, the valiant fight to hold it all in, to keep COMPETING until the final buzzer. But, like a wave, it eventually hits – and they know. This amazing chapter of life has come to a close.
For my girls, they played AMAZING against a really tough school and opponent, and because of HOW TIGHT the game was, that moment didn’t hit until the final few seconds. But man, did it hit, and it hit in powerful waves.
If you’ve ever played or coached, you know the moment. And you FEEL the gravity of the pain. If you’ve ever truly LOVED your team and teammates, and many of you have, you are probably misty eyed right now – even if it’s been decades. My heart BROKE as I saw my girls, (repeat MY girls, because we are fam for life) have their hearts broken in a tear-filled post game handshake line.
We spent a little too long in the post game locker room. Parents probably wondered where the heck we were. We spent the first few minutes crying and consoling. Then we talked. We found smiles. We talked about our favorite moments this season. We went around the room and shared our favorite compliments for each teammate. We laughed a bit. We hugged a lot. We were a family.
There wasn’t a single dry eye (me included – maybe worst of all, if we are being honest) when we huddled up one last time as a team, every Warrior ALL IN, hands-on-hands, and broke the huddle.
I told them the truth. The tears are two fold – one, they are gratitude for the unreal honor of getting to have them call me ‘coach’ for three months. I hope they know they have a ‘coach’ in their corner far beyond sports for far far beyond the confines of a mere “season” of basketball. And the second, the tears aren’t because we “lost” It’s because I just would have loved to have one more day together as a team, and aren’t quite ready to say “farewell”. We all felt the same.
My wife captured a photo of that aching tear-streaked “final huddle” It’s perhaps the most moving photograph I have in my vast hoops collection from seasons and seasons of coaching. But that photo isn’t for this forum, so I’ll keep it private. It belongs to the girls, and to our family. It’s a moment, despite the tinges of sadness, that will always bring me joy. It’s tears EARNED through fearlessness, the daring to COMPETE; they were earned through hard work, guts and love. They are tears that will forge future greatness FAR beyond the mere basketball court.
I told them simply – I love ya. You’ll have a fan in the stands and in your LIFE far far far into the future.
Wherever life takes you, ALL IN, ALL OUT!
** Shared from our FB feed
