Longshot (10 page)

I don't like wearing hearing aids in practice, but I do, so I can hear and communicate with my team. Aside from the fact that the echoes of a gym mess with the microphone in your hearing aids, you also have the issue of sweat damaging the machinery itself or frying the battery.

When you wear hearing aids while exercising, sweat will crawl into your ear canal, tickling your ear as it winds its way against the plastic tube of the hearing aid. You cannot simply reach up and scratch your ear canal. Instead, you have to take out the hearing aid with your sweaty hands and try to not mess up the battery with said sweaty hands, and then scratch your ear and put the hearing aid back in.

When the sweat gets in behind your hearing aids, it tickles but also creates a sort of pressure chamber, like when you're in a plane or underwater, and you have to adjust your jaws to pop the pressure. This whole process triggers your yawn reflexes and makes you want to yawn like you'll never be able to yawn again. But I always try to refrain from doing so as a coach may mistake me for being disinterested, take it personally, and make the rest of practice miserable.

 

During my freshman year at West, the lawsuit with Uncle Saul and the AUB came to a head, and it made it to court in the fall of 1996. It was heartbreaking to see Uncle Saul and Grammy sitting on the other side of the aisle from us. Several of Dad's brothers testified against Dad, telling stories and saying how much was owed to them, and how Dad had cheated them out of money and never paid them back. Luckily, Dad was a meticulous record keeper and kept track of all of his finances, even through all the poverty. When we grabbed the photo albums as we quickly packed up and fled that summer to Grandma Rip's, Dad grabbed his records. In court, Jeff got up and showed the brothers who testified against Dad the receipts of the claimed missing payments. Embarrassedly, one by one they blinked and said, “I must have forgotten.”

Uncle Saul was the hardest. There he was, my uncle Saul, whom I loved and adored, the one I had passed many Sundays with playing softball in the park. It was painful to see him up there, as Jeff then turned the tables and produced files showing that Saul still owed my father a great deal of money, not only for the home Dad had built and Saul currently lived in, but for other services and appliances as well. A refrigerator had
become a sticky topic, as silly as that may seem. But when emotions are high and irrationality rules the day, silverware can seem paramount.

Jeff grilled Uncle Saul. Humiliated him. When he was done, and the brothers' attorney had begun to perspire from his continual refrain of “I object,” the judge called for a recess. I had not been able to watch the rest of Uncle Saul's testimony. I began to sob so hard that I had to pull my shirt up to my mouth and bite it, hiding my head beneath the bench. Had it not been so traumatic, I might have enjoyed seeing Jeff grill Uncle Saul, making him the scapegoat, the one that all the AUB would blame when they lost the lawsuit—which they ultimately did.

But it was one of my most scarring memories. When the judge left for his chambers, Uncle Saul was escorted from the stand. He was shaking, barely able to walk. His face was red with anger and rage, and his eyes were dripping tears. “Liars! Your Dad is a liar! I did so much for all of you!” Uncle Saul screamed at us as the bailiff ushered him out.

We heard Uncle Saul sobbing in the bathroom down the hall: “I hate this! I didn't want to do this! Why! Why!” He had been a pawn. His sense of duty to the memory of his father had led him to destroy his relationship with us and his brother. He was angry. He was angry at the AUB, but he was more angry at Dad for not just being a “good boy” and complying—even though Saul, in his heart of hearts, knew the AUB was wrong.

After three weeks, the trial came to a close. Jeff had done a superb job. However, the judge threw in his bid for the presidency of Switzerland as he read out the verdict, which was completely neutral, saying the house was ours to sell and we were free to move on, thus effectively making the place on 1300 East our new home. But our countersuit to cover legal fees and expenses wasn't granted. Both sides lost. Uncle Saul and Dad lost the most.

Even Jeff Swinton lost, in that it was a long time before he made any money on our case. He had to borrow heavily to stay afloat himself through the whole trial. He truly invested in us, and he earned every penny he made on that case.

But the important thing was that we were free to move on. Once the AUB had achieved what they wanted, they left us alone. It was pretty much “out of sight, out of mind.” We never showed our faces at Group events again. We simply began a new life.

I transferred to East High School,
which Court attended. A week before school started, I arrived at 7 a.m. in the East High weight room. The basketball players were doing their squats and hang-cleans, lifts I had never seen before, and they were all in attendance together, laughing and mocking and taunting in good fun. I soon learned that Coach Kerry Rupp ran a tight, organized ship of dedication and attendance.

This was all new to me, as West High had nothing of the sort. There was no organized off-season team routine. During the summer you simply went home, enjoyed vacation, and then came back to school, and then you maybe played some pickup for preseason training. But at East there were weight sessions and skill development—things I desperately needed.

On that first day, after sheepishly lifting weights, I looked about at all the seniors and juniors who were united with purpose following their loss in the state-championship game the season before. The assistant coach, Coach Cowan, took me up to the gym to get a quick assessment of my skill level. It didn't take him long to realize that I sucked. He knew I wasn't ready to contribute to varsity.

I was handed to Coach Gardner, the sophomore basketball coach. Once the season started, I had to wake up at five every morning to go to sophomore practice, which started at five thirty. Never once did anyone in my family have to wake me; it was that important to me. I wanted to be good at something. I wanted to make my own mark in my family of high achievers. I slept with the clock radio on my pillow, turning up the volume to max, letting it erupt full blast when the alarm went off every morning at five. I made sure there was no chance I might not hear the alarm and sleep through practice.

My family took turns getting up when I was ready and driving me to the gym. They were all in line to help me chase my dream, which at that
time was simply just to be a good basketball player, nothing more. In spite of what my parents always told me, I had no inkling that I could be good enough to be anything I wanted to be.

I went to those five-thirty practices, just like all of my other teammates, for the pure enjoyment of the game—all of us paying our dues just to wear a uniform, none of us knowing or dreaming we might someday be good enough to even play varsity.

Our coaches were often late for those practices, as we sat in the freezing hallway, wearing our winter coats over our practice uniforms, tying our shoes in silence, with the howling snow and wind tugging at the school doors. Coach Kernodle usually showed up first. He opened up the door to the gym with a grunt for a hello, his standard coffee and box of doughnuts in hand. Kernodle looked nothing like a coach. He was in his late forties, with an orange handlebar mustache and a beer belly that hung over his waist like a laundry bag of linen sheets.

While we performed his warm-up routine, running and sliding in the cold, dimly lit gym, half naked in our flimsy jerseys, our knees absorbing the cold shock that reverberated up our legs and into our spines from the frozen wooden floor beneath our feet, Coach Kernodle would be sitting over on the table letting his dangling feet singsong back and forth. His mouth full of powdered doughnuts and coffee, he would call out in a muffled voice, “Pick it up, ladies….”

By the time we were done with Kernodle's obligatory warm-up drill, which he used to keep us occupied in the same way a bad parent uses a TV as a babysitter, Coach Gardner would arrive. Coach Gardner was a tank. Each of his arms was thicker than my chest, and I dare say each arm weighed more than my six-foot-eight, one-hundred-eighty-pound frame.

Coach Gardner's practices were fun, and he spent a lot of time with me those mornings, teaching me how to shoot hook shots and drop-step layups, as I had no sort of offensive post game whatsoever. He also taught me defensive principles in the post, which to my surprise and dislike consisted of more than just blocking shots. When I told Coach Gardner that I should not have to do any defensive sliding drills and would just block shots, he laughed, slapped me on the back, and said, “So much you still have to learn, big guy.”

It was nice to be part of a team. In the fall before the season began, I had done well enough under Coach Gardner's tutelage, combined with the short amount of time I had with Coach Rupp, that I had actually
turned into a somewhat decent basketball player, at least decent enough to be considered an offensive option in the playbook.

Halfway through the season, I was called up to join the junior varsity squad and practice with Coach Rupp. I still remained on the sophomore team and had to wake up and attend practice in the morning, and also had to attend practice after school, keeping me at East High from five in the morning until five in the afternoon. Two-a-days every day. Those were incredibly long days, and not surprisingly, my grades began to drop. You can imagine the displeasure that showed in my father's face when my report card came in the mail and showed a 2.7 GPA. I know that many parents would be elated to have their child bring home a 2.7, but in my family, we had high expectations, and all of my siblings before me had set a standard of academic excellence. Being the only child in the family to participate in official athletics past junior high, I was something of a new challenge for my parents.

It ended up being a good season, which gave me enough validation and sense of accomplishment to keep me going. The varsity team made it to the state-championship game for the second straight year that season and lost again. But Rupp lost a strong core of seniors, leaving many positions open on the team for next season. Coach Gardner called me to his room and told me I had a chance to start varsity next season, but that it was all up to me. I had to hold up my end; Rupp wasn't going to go out of his way to motivate me. When the spring came, I was going to be that guy who took advantage of an opportunity and who accepted full accountability for himself. I was baptized into the blue-collar world of Kerry Rupp.

When my time did come, the spring after sophomore season, I joined Rupp at six thirty every morning for skill-development sessions—a practice we continued faithfully for two years.

 

You either loved or hated Kerry Rupp. There was no in between. He was never insulting to parents, but he didn't fraternize with them. He was respectful, but he had been around long enough to see the ugliness of the sports world and all the greed, subterfuge, and backbiting that came with school sports and parental school boards. He was impressed by nothing but hard work and integrity.

“Everyone thinks their kid should be a star,” Rupp told us on the first day of his summer basketball camp. “Make sure your parents, if they
call, know that I will talk about anything except for what goes on on the basketball court and playing time.”

I grew to love the early-morning training sessions when it was just me and Coach Rupp with a ball in a cold gym, buzzing lights dimly illuminating the hardwood floor. Rupp met me at six thirty every morning before school. He had no reason to do it but that he loved the game and saw something in me.

When he gave the team days off, I'd still ask Coach Rupp if we could work out the next morning by ourselves. I knew it would be hard and painful, as he pushed me to the limit and many times past, to the point where I'd vomit right onto the hardwood. But I loved it. I loved the pain and discomfort. I loved the sense of accomplishment I felt once it was all over. I loved to sit by myself there in the bleachers of the empty gym and be lost in stalled thought, my mind and body too tired to think. It was my high. A natural high.

Those mornings were the purest form of basketball I ever knew. Just me, Rupp, and a ball. No money, no boosters, no politics. It was the pure love and innocence of the game, when it was still a game for me. We both worked and sweated, our shoes squeaking and echoing out the gym and down the empty hallways. I'd pay to have those moments again, those moments of hard work and sacrifice when I knew not what to expect as far as what my future held, with no sense of entitlement, no reward or motive in sight other than just the pure love of the game. I had no idea if I was ever going to be good enough to play college ball. We were challengers of the unknown.

I wasn't playing for the future on those mornings with Rupp; I was playing for the moment, for the present. I wanted to be good at something; I wanted to excel at something. Coach Rupp was right there with me, through thick and thin. Rupp knew I was going to play college ball, but he held only the possibility of it before me, like a carrot on a stick. He withheld any certainty he felt about my future—to keep me hungry, to never let me get complacent. But he would come to know me well enough to know that I'm my own harshest critic, my own harshest coach, and that he therefore had no reason to worry I'd become self-satisfied.

There were a few times in games that Rupp would get in my face and yell at me, but I never took it hard, and he never made it personal. “Look at me when I'm talking to you!” he once yelled at me on the bench in the middle of a game. A parent of a teammate leaned over to
my parents, who were watching the interaction, and asked if they were OK with it. Mom and Dad simply nodded. They knew that Rupp had only the best intentions for me. They also knew that when I didn't want to listen to someone, I stubbornly looked away, my hearing loss helping me block out what they were saying. Rupp was smart enough to know that this was a coping mechanism of mine, and he would never let me use it with him.

A lot of parents had issues with Rupp, and I can understand why. He was very stern and ran a tight ship, with a college-style program at a high school level. Most teenagers just want to show up and play and have fun. With Rupp, it was more than just a glorified extracurricular activity. It was a commitment. How many kids want to wake up at 6 a.m. during the summer to go run sprints? Coach Rupp's tryouts were the entire off-season, not just the standard obligatory opening-week tryouts in November. His practices were intense and serious. We never goofed off.

For some kids this was too much, but for me, I loved it. I loved the sense of purpose and the camaraderie. I loved having partners in pursuit of a goal. I loved the feeling that I belonged to something, that we were a fraternity of men, all sacrificing time and fun, committing to each other, in pursuit of that goal.

Rupp and I didn't have many heart-to-hearts. Like me, Rupp wasn't very talkative or gregarious. “I'm paid to be your coach, not your friend,” he'd say. “There are two thousand other kids in this school for that job.” But we had a deep respect for each other.

Kerry Rupp was the greatest coach I ever had. The man knew me and taught me everything I know. Everything I learned under the great-minded Rick Majerus, who is a master of the game, I had already learned at least some facet of under Coach Rupp, who could've taught me even more had I been older and my mind able to comprehend. But most of the things that Rupp couldn't teach me were things I could learn only through experience.

Rupp never embarrassed you if you made a mistake—an unusual trait in a coach, as I would find out. If I made a mistake, he took me out or pulled me aside, and then simply asked, “Do you know what you did wrong?”

If the answer was yes, he would say, “OK, learn from it.” If no, he would explain it. The only time Rupp would yell at me was when I wasn't playing the hardest I could. And with all the hours we spent
alone, one-on-one, Rupp knew what my hardest was. Rupp demanded a lot of his players, but above all he simply demanded that you play hard. If you didn't, you would come out. He let you play through your mistakes—if they were honest mistakes, of course, mistakes of omission.

As long as I was playing hard, Rupp let me have a long leash, to learn from my experiences. I did well with that style of coaching. I'm so incredibly analytical and critical of myself to this very day. When you're worried about making a mistake, you'll make a mistake. Trust me, I know. Basketball is a game of flow, and if you're playing in fear, your body and mind cannot get into the rhythm.

Since our days at East, Coach Rupp has, like me, gone on his own journey and is well traveled. Like me, too, he has sacrificed dearly, with little reward other than his own personal sense of accomplishment. It's scary just how parallel our lives have been since those days of innocence at East High School. He taught me so much, and yet we both have had similar experiences of heartache and disappointment within our profession, though from different vantage points. But as Rupp taught me every morning to never give up, challenging me to chase down every missed shot and put it back in, we both, since then, have never given up.

In the capricious world of basketball, we challenged the unknown, but we did so with passion, and the journey has been the reward.