A few weeks ago, my daughter Nina told me, “Dad, you should stop making mad faces when girls on our team miss layups. You seem so frustrated.” I thought a lot about Nina’s opinion and know she probably gets the worst of it.  

To her surprise, when we began the next practice, I shared my Baby Girl’s thoughts and said, “I’m not going to change my face. We are in the middle of November. I taught you how to make a layup properly in the first week of August.   It is extremely frustrating that some of you are still consistently missing them, and I don’t feel I need to hide my emotions due to your lack of execution.  You have two choices: Get used to my frustration and learn to move past it, or do the work necessary to improve.” 

“Furthermore, I am going to yell.  Games are loud. They’re intense. Competition is stressful.  To communicate, I will yell.  For that reason, I’ll yell in practice to prepare you to perform under duress.   

Harsh?  Maybe, but I went on.

“What we’re doing here is not really about basketball. The game is a tool to develop strong young women. You are strong young women and strong young women can handle my frustration while striving to live up to the expectations I set.” 

Much of our work as educators is smoke and mirrors, really.  A head fake. Sure, kids sign up to play a game, but sport is so much bigger. Dealing with pain and exhaustion, understanding commitment, learning limits, playing a role, being a part of something bigger than oneself, experiencing failure, dealing with loss gracefully, and celebrating victory with class are the true reasons for co-curricular sports.  It’s about learning the value of hard work by slowly becoming better at a difficult and complex task. 

The Vision of the school I serve is “To positively impact the world through excellence in academics, activities, arts, leadership, and service.” Athletics is under the Activities umbrella, but I have argued since the day we created it that sports should be a pillar in itself.  In the parlance of Simon Sinek, the “what” is excellence, the “how” is the sport, but the “why” is to “positively impact the world.” This is what EAB does. 

It is not easy to achieve our Vision.  You can’t achieve personal or group excellence without hardship, stress, and the ugliness of failure.  Positively impacting the world around you is yet a higher measuring stick. There simply is no magic pill.

We use math, language, hard and social sciences, art, music, athletics, and myriad activities as tools to nurture strong young people ready to fulfill the EAB Vision and engage their futures with confidence, compassion, skill, and grace. We teach our passions, but they are nothing more than head fakes that, if done right, lead to the stuff that truly matters.    

But, and this is crucial, basketball is my head fake.  I had little direction in my early teens.  Then, one day, I saw Dominique Wilkins on the basketball court and thought, “That’s what I want to do.” I was 5’3″ and under 100 pounds. It didn’t matter. I was inspired.  From that day forward, basketball was my purpose.  It’s what I worked for, dreamt of, and how I defined myself.  It was my love.  

Though I never became a decent college player, what I learned about the game and myself through basketball is the string that has run through my life.  Every professional “break” I’ve had is somehow linked to my ability to share the love and understanding of basketball with kids.  And now, the ultimate gift the game has given me is that I get to pass on my passion to Nina and her teammates. What could possibly be better?  

This week, the girls beat a team in the semi-final of the Liga Brasilia that we had lost to by 25 in our first game.  In a back-and-forth affair that saw the opposing team tie the score late in the game, the girls persevered, made big shots down the stretch, and won by three.  It was a fantastic victory!  

Maybe they got a bit of knowledge in the interim between the ugly loss in early September and the glorious win this week.  Certainly, the experience gained playing other teams made a difference. The determining factor, however, is not what they learned but about who they are.  They are tenacious.  They are strong. They are unselfish teammates who struggle intensely for the group. They fight harder, never back down, and demonstrate time and again that they are strong young women who do indeed positively impact their worlds.  

And, though my throat still hurts from yelling, and I haven’t changed my face, the girls know how much I admire them and how grateful and honored I am to be their coach.  They represented every one of EAB’s 63 years incredibly well and are role models of whom we all can be proud.  Vision accomplished!

Now, on to the finals.

Bulls Up! Bulls United!  Bulls Forever!