Imagine you are at basketball practice, and you are playing half court lightning. What grade would you be in 1st or 2nd? Try 8th grade, Jefferson basketball where I had the best basketball coach known to man. Nathan was his name. His job? A lunch lady at Jefferson who enforced the strictest of rules. Yet he was thrown into the fire last minute as the 8th grade basketball coach and it was the most memorable basketball season of my life.

At tryouts we did the basic stuff: dribbling, free throws, and defense. After the tryouts were over Coach S made his cuts. I had made the team, then he proceeded to tell me privately that he saw me as the third best player on the team, behind Brandon. Are you kidding me Brandon! I was upset to say the least. 

So as the season went on we did some funky drills at practice. One of my personal favorites was where everyone on the team stood in the paint while one person shot, and then everyone tried to grab the rebound. It was chaos. Another favorite activity was when everybody on the team stood in a line down the whole court and one person had to try and dribble past the entire team while they played defense. Johnny broke his foot.

Thanks to all these insane, pointless drills we gained absolutely no skill over the course of the year. The great thing was, it didn’t matter at all. We were so good we didn’t need a coach or even to practice more than once a week. The one play we ran was a pick-and-roll called “Tebow” where Mike set a pick for me and rolled to the hoop. That was all we had and all we needed.  Unfortunately we lost one game the whole season, to Northeast. Mike didn’t play and I had to play the post. I’m 5’8. Our one play was nonexistent.

One of my favorite memories of that season was when we ate Mr. McGee’s donuts before our game against Central. We would meet in his room before the game, and on this particular day, he had some delicious glazed donuts sitting on the back counter. I noticed the box and went and ate one. Once I did that all hell broke loose. Within three minutes all 18 donuts were gone. McGee came in and lost his mind. He asked us all individually who ate them. Every single person said they had no idea. This just added gas to the flames. So Coach S didn’t wait to punish us after the game or at practice the next day. No, he made us go run the stairs for thirty minutes while Central was warming up.  We had no time to warm after, and our legs were dead. The best part was, we ran right in front of them because the stairs were in the gym. It’s ok, though, we won the game.

That was the most interesting, and memorable basketball season I have ever had. With the best lunch lady basketball coach a team could ever ask for. It still feels like yesterday that we were all in the gym doing those crazy drills having a blast messing around. The best basketball season ever.