Reflections on a Successful Season
The Middle School Girls Basketball season concluded in mid-February with 11 eighth grade girls lifting a conference championship trophy in the air. The girls finished with a 15-2 record and a dominant run through the conference tournament. But trophies alone do not define success.
As the head coach, I defined success at the beginning of the season. Internally, I wanted to be a “ż” coach, or one who incorporated Classical Christian pedagogy into our basketball team.
On the surface, one could see the trappings of this goal: each player received a commonplace journal with writing prompts, and our plays had Latin names. Primus was our first read pick and roll offense, Sinistra was a play to overload the right side and leave the small forward open on the left, etc. However, ż pedagogy runs deeper than the ornaments of Latin vocabulary. The express purpose for the season was to cultivate virtue and deepen our affection for Christ. To accomplish this, I defined success with three goals:
1. Pray the most
Before our first practice, I told the team that we may not be the team that scores the most or win the most, but we will be the team that prays the most. Each girl received a stack of cards with everyone’s name and were assigned to pray for the team at least 1 hour a week.
Many who coach teenagers with significant athletic skill spend much of their energy convincing their star players that team effort is better than individual effort. When you pray for someone else, at the very least, you are not thinking of yourself. So, assigning prayer gave the team the opportunity to practice interacting with the team outside of selfish ambition. With each prayer, the girls became less self-possessed on the court. Prayer, in addition, contains the added perk of echoing into eternity.
Selfishness took on an unexpected form during the season. During one game, we did not capitalize on a handful of fast breaks because of unnecessary passes. I told the team that playing selflessly does not look like constantly passing the ball. In fact, if you have a good shot, and pass the ball to someone else, that is self-centeredness rearing its head. If you are too scared to be the one to shoot (and possibly miss) and would rather your teammate take the risk it is selfish. The team learned that selflessness requires courage.
2. Win a conference championship
All the girls on the team were 8th graders, and I spent the two seasons prior coaching them on the B-team (our more developmental team). Based on the level of skill I had observed from this team I deduced that a conference championship was within reach.
Throughout the season, I was reminded that the point of coaching was not winning. And when we did win, I took precaution prevent my heart from becoming proud. However, settling for anything less than honest pursuit of a conference championship was itself a form of pride. A master composer who is satisfied writing four chord songs displays a certain amount of pride. No one can bury a talent without a misplaced confidence in themselves and a distorted view of their master. I knew my team was talented enough to compete for the championship, and lowering our expectations to a lesser goal is pride thinly vailed in humility.
3. Stumble to a Throne
This was the theme for our season, and the qualifier to our second goal. Had we won the championship without challenge or cost, it would be worthless. Our goal was to win something that required great cost.
“Stumble to a throne” is a line from the poem Jesus of the Scars by Edward Shilito.
The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.
Christ has won the ultimate victory over sin and death, but it was an incredibly costly victory. Our desire was not to mimic the strong gods who rode to their thrones. Rather, we wanted to feel what it was like to stumble to a throne like our Savior.
At one point during the season, we were undefeated in the conference and clinched the one-seed in the tournament. We had one last conference game to play, a team with only two wins. They came out swinging and took us off guard. I was not prepared to face adversity and spent more time arguing with the referees than leading the girls to overcome. We lost by one point.
Suddenly, the team became fallible, capable of losing. We were filled with doubt. Worse still, the tournament schedule was released and for our next game we played the same team that upset us less than a week before.
Stumbling to a throne took on a new meaning, as we had to overcome our first tournament game against the only team to beat us. However, the largest opponents were our own doubts. The girls had to learn to overcome their own disappointments, anxieties, and fears to perform against a talented team.
In the end, they rose to the challenge, and eleven sore and exhausted basketball players hugged each other through tears celebrating the season where they successfully stumbled to a throne.
