Team Effort

I've always known that my wife is competitive, but just how competitive didn’t come into full focus until the crucible of U-12 basketball took over her life. Since early January, when Ashley and another mom named Jaimee Pangburn answered a frantic plea for coaching assistance from the new assistant director at our local Parks & Rec, she has spent most weekday evenings and Saturday mornings at the middle school gym, cajoling and inspiring a gaggle of sugared-up, over-excited, smack-talking, Gatorade-chugging ten-year-old boys into something resembling a basketball team. The team, which is the only one in the league coached by mothers instead of fathers, goes by the rather unimaginative handle “West Feliciana Tigers” (I had hoped for “Cougars” myself); and, after nine Saturdays of clashes against opposing teams the West Fel Heat, Celtics, and Honeybadgers, it has yet to lose a game. Now, with one left to play and the prospect of an undefeated season dangling within reach, the swagger and trash talk coming from our team’s coaches is only matched by my wife’s anxiety about how she’s going to cope once the season is over. Because she’s going to miss both the kids and the competition terribly.

Ashley hasn’t played basketball since her high school years, but back then she and her sister were apparently infamous for the combination of speed, height, aggression, and intimidating blondeness they brought to bear on the Southwest Mississippi basketball league in which they dominated. The other night, we ran into Liza Kelso at a launch party for Creative Bloc, the dramatic, collaborative workplace initiative just opened in downtown Baton Rouge. These days Liza is executive director and guiding light of the Baton Rouge Film Commission. But back when Madonna was a thing Liza was a Natchez teenager playing high school ball at Trinity—a team that played Ashley’s on a regular basis. The moment the two laid eyes on one another, Liza’s first remark was about how terrifying my wife had been to guard. Perhaps, after twenty years of marriage to this singularly determined woman, I should not have been surprised to hear this. But I have to say that after ten weeks of watching Ashley and Jaimee coach, I have developed a whole new level of respect for what they’ve done—not only for the skills they’ve taught to the kids on their team, but also for the sense of community and belonging they’ve built among a group of children who otherwise, despite attending the same school, might never have discovered how much they have in common.

As a kid I wasn’t much for team sports. Despite not being the most coordinated child, I was fairly active, so I can’t really blame a lack of physical ability for my timidity where team sports were concerned. The issue was more a kind of athletic stage fright—a persistent anxiety that I was going to fall over or run into a goalpost or do something else stupid that would let the team down. So instead of football or soccer or basketball, I swam, played tennis, and occupied myself with solo sorts of sports that sidestepped the awkward question of team involvement. This is something I regret in hindsight, because so many of the tenets of community, teamwork, shared goals, and responsibility are more easily and enjoyably learned on a court or field than they are anywhere else in life. But Ashley has been a team player from day one. She and her sister lived and breathed basketball, track, and cheerleading all the way through high school, and I don’t think she ever realized quite how much she missed being part of a team until she walked into a middle school gym three months ago with a whistle slung around her neck.

Mercifully, our son Charles takes after his mom in this regard. He is never happier than when he has a ball in one hand and teammates on either side. With the end of his first winning basketball season upon him, Charles is ready to trade his high tops for cleats, to begin warming up for the spring soccer league that gets underway next week. Spring soccer is a new program launched by a dynamic new West Feliciana Parks & Rec administration that is dramatically expanding the range of activities available through our local sports park. In addition to team-sport opportunities, the park is also developing a master plan to expand its facilities and offer more wellness programs—from yoga to martial arts, to kayaking 101—that are as much about nurturing community and social connectivity as they are about getting fit. As for Ashley, she’s threatening to fill the void left by U-12 basketball by helping organize an adult dodgeball tournament—complete with co-ed teams, costume themes, prizes, and beer—as a fundraiser for the West Feliciana Education Foundation. Now that’s a team sport I can get behind, no matter how many times I fall over. Where do I sign up?