A BASKETBALL STORY

In the second half of the last game of his 2008 kids’ basketball season, a fourth-grader got an offensive rebound and lofted it toward the goal.

His teammates watched the ball bank softly off the backboard. His coaches tensed with anticipation.

The fourth-grader hadn’t scored all season. He had tried, and he had come very close, and he had cheered for all of his teammates and all of their successful shots. His attitude had been exemplary.

He had started the season as a basketball beginner. All of his teammates had played at least one season of organized basketball. He was nine years old and never had shown too much interest in organized sports until now.

By the end of the season, he knew how to throw a bounce pass and play good defense. He had practiced many hours in the backyard. He had made several new friends.

But he really wanted to score. Just once.

Athletics didn’t come quite as naturally to him as science. Or art. Or spelling. He wrote the words “psychological,” “rhesus,” “phlegm” and “xanthosis” on the dust of his father’s car in February because they were three of his favorite spelling words. His father left them there, wondering what people passing by his car in the parking lot must think.

The oldest of four children, the boy had a younger brother who was also playing organized basketball for the first time. The younger brother was in the same league but on a different team in a first-grade-only league. The family also included a four-year-old, red-headed brother, who came to games sometimes IF he could also make numerous trips to the concession stand. And there was a 10-month-old daughter who was very cute. She looked wide-eyed at all the goings on and liked to clap her hands frequently.

Both boys’ seasons were eight games long. Both improved dramatically, but neither of them scored in their first six games.

In their excellent, Christian-based league, called Upward Basketball (www.upward.org), every player plays at least half of every game. Early in the season, they would go entire games and barely touch the ball. They existed on the periphery of the action, distant planets orbiting around a mysterious basketball sun. Their parents decided an incentive was in order. For the final games of the season, a postgame trip to the dollar would follow if the boys would go nearer the goal and get involved in the action.

The first-grader was very fast. He could shock the other team with his defense. He liked to lay back, awaiting the opponent he was guarding, and then rush toward them like a bull rushing toward a red cape. Once, when he did this move, he so startled his opponent dribbling the ball that the poor boy lost it right between the first-grader’s legs for a turnover.

The first-grader also perfected a single move. It was a hesitation dribble in which he would bring the ball slowly upcourt with a dazed expression, as if he had completely forgotten where he was. After lulling his opponents to sleep, he would then sprint past them with a fast dribble to an open spot and shoot the ball.

The move worked repeatedly, and the “dazed look” part of the drama was always a crowd-pleaser. But the shot never fell.

Then, in the next-to-last game of the season, the first-grader suddenly made one! It was a 10-footer that rattled around the rim and went in, sending his small cheering section into an absolute frenzy.

Fortunately, the league rule was that there was no score kept in the first-grader’s games. His team was inexperienced, short and relatively passive. However, he and his teammates were quite good at counting by twos, which meant that many of them kept the game score in their heads even though there was no scoreboard. Sometimes, before games, a few of them would strike up this inexplicably cheerful chant:

“We’re gonna lose! We’re gonna lose!”

Back to the fourth-grader, hoping to score in the season’s final game. He told his mother beforehand that he thought he would indeed score a single goal in the contest, a prediction he had never made before.

Then, in the second half, he got that rebound. And shot.

And the ball went in! He shot his arms into the air in exultation and the crowd of about 40 suddenly sounded like 400.

Five minutes later, his confidence soaring, the fourth-grader took a pass from a teammate on a fast break, dribbled to the goal and scored again. It was a beautiful play, the sort he never could have made a month earlier.

So the fourth-grader finished the game with four points, and his team ended up winning the game by exactly four points. His teammates and coaches mobbed him following the game -- they were great to him. He got the “Best Offense” star from "Coach Kevin," his superb head coach, who wasn’t related to the fourth-grader but treated all of his boys like sons.

The fourth-grader’s mother had not been able to come to the game – she had to take care of the family’s youngest children. So when the fourth-grader came home, he flopped on the bed and buried his head in a pillow in apparent distress.

“I didn’t score a goal, Mom!” he said. “I didn’t score a goal!”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “It’s OK. You improved so much this season and you made so many friends….”

Then he popped up from the bed.

“Actually,” he said, grinning, “I scored two.”

That story, as you probably guessed, is about our family. The fourth-grader is our oldest son, Chapel. The fast first-grader with the hesitation dribble is our second son, Salem. I was an assistant coach for both their teams.

Late that night after Chapel’s last game, he said: “Dad, the next time I’m sad, I wish I could have a bottle of that feeling I had when I made my first goal. Then I’d just drink a little bit of it and be happy again.”

I love that. Wouldn't we all love to carry around a bottle like that?

As a parent, you just hope you get it right most of the time. But when you see your kids happy – really, truly, can’t-get-the-smile-off-their-face happy – there is absolutely no better feeling in the world.

MOTIVATION FOR THE COACH

By Scott Fowler

Published by The Charlotte Observer
(and thanks to The Observer folks for letting me reprint it)

Aug.29, 2007
All rights reserved

GREENVILLE, N.C. -- To understand the friendship between Drew Steele, Skip Holtz and Mike Steele -- three men whose relationship will make you remember that basic decency is still alive in the sports world -- it's best to start at the beginning.
It was March 2005. Holtz had been hired three months before as football coach at East Carolina, a program that had managed only three total wins in the previous two years. All he wanted to do was work.

But in a weak moment shortly after he arrived, he said "yes" to playing in a charity golf tournament to benefit Special Olympics. "So the day came," Holtz said. "It was rainy. Nasty. I was like, `I do not want to do this.' I went out there with the worst attitude."

Paired with Holtz for nine holes that would eventually make Greenville a better place: Mike Steele and his son, Drew.
Mike Steele could have had reasons for not wanting to go out to that tournament himself. Some people wondered why he stuck around Greenville, period.

Steele was once a hot young coach himself. He was hired in 1987 to coach ECU's basketball team.
He lasted four years before getting fired under difficult circumstances and watching his own coaching career spiral down the drain.

Instead of moving, Steele and his wife stayed in Greenville and became community fixtures. Steele began a new career in insurance. And he and his wife Sandy raised two sons: Derek, who just began dental school at North Carolina, and Drew.

Drew is 22 and has Down syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra chromosome. His health is fine, but he has special needs because of his lack of cognitive ability.

Holtz will tell you now that Drew is more recognized in Greenville than the football coach at ECU, but he didn't know that in 2005. He just knew he suddenly started having a wonderful time at the golf course because of Drew.

"Drew would putt the ball and literally hit it off the green," Holtz said. "And then he would pretend to ride a horse and smack high fives with everyone like he'd just won the Masters."
Holtz started thinking about his own life: a loving wife, three healthy children, a dream job and a close family that includes his famous father, former coach Lou Holtz. He began getting disgusted with himself for the pity party he had had earlier in the day.

"Drew has so many reasons to complain, and he never does," Holtz said. "He doesn't focus on what he doesn't have. Here I am, with so many things to be grateful for, and Drew Steele is the one teaching me all about positive attitude."
At a dinner after the tournament, Holtz spoke and suddenly decided to ask Drew to address the ECU football team before a game.

The crowd hushed. In front of several hundred people, Drew considered the offer.

"Skip," he said, "I work at Chick-Fil-A. I'm going to have to check my schedule."

"Drew," Holtz laughed, "have your people get with my people. Maybe we can get this thing done."

`The best Gatorade pourer'

They've done far more than that one speaking engagement.The Drew Steele-Skip Holtz Golf Classic has become an annual event each June in Greenville. It has raised close to $500,000 to start renovating an old gym in Greenville and eventually turn it into The Drew Steele Center.

The center will sparkle with computers, classrooms and sports equipment while serving able-bodied and special-needs children.

The tournament has also raised enough money to ensure all the public parks in the Greenville area are wheelchair-accessible.
Drew still works at Chick-Fil-A three days a week, but Holtz got him a part-time job in the East Carolina equipment room, too.
"I fold the towels, sweep the floor and everything," he said proudly.

Holtz also keeps Drew on the sideline at every game, home and away. Drew travels with the team and will be there Saturday when East Carolina opens its 2007 season at Virginia Tech.

"Drew's job on game day is to pour the Gatorade cups," Holtz said, "and he's the best Gatorade pourer in the entire country."
Whenever the Pirates win, Drew gives Holtz his own personal Gatorade shower -- usually just one cup's worth.

Drew likes to say Holtz is "my best friend and my boss." Drew has Holtz in the No. 1 position on his speed-dial. The two meet for a few minutes every weekday to discuss what Drew has done that day and what Holtz ate the previous night for supper (this is invariably Drew's first question of the coach).

Drew might also critique the latest movie he's seen. He has a rating scale with only two grades -- "10" for any movie with a lot of action and "zero" for any movie with a lot of kissing.

Those few minutes are one of the highlights of Holtz's day.

Said Holtz: "Every time Drew walks through that door, it's like we haven't seen each other in five years and we were in each other's wedding."

`Time heals all wounds'

Mike Steele, Drew's father and the former ECU basketball coach, is the other piece of this puzzle. Now a successful insurance man and an ECU booster, Steele drives Drew around and travels with his son on the road. Without him, there would be no opportunity for Holtz and Drew to bond.

Holtz, 43, has become close friends with the elder Steele, too. Steele, 53, knows a lot of folks in town after spending 20 years in Greenville, and the two can tell lots of coaching stories.
They know each other well enough to tease constantly.

"Like I told Mike," Holtz said, laughing, "he wasn't fired here because he was a bad person. He was just a bad coach. So when he's got advice, it's like, `Hey, look. You had your shot at this. It didn't work out for you. Don't ruin mine, all right?' "

Steele grew up in Illinois, went to college at Purdue, became an assistant coach at Butler and was head coach at Division III DePauw University in Indiana by age 26. After six successful years there, he took the job at East Carolina, hoping to turn around the Pirates program and eventually leap to a larger school.

Instead, he failed.

In four years at ECU, Steele's teams went 48-68. During his fourth season, in late 1990, he was arrested near his home for driving while impaired, an action the university's chancellor at the time called "reprehensible."

"I made a mistake," Steele said. "And when you have a losing season, that's not a good time to have anything off the court happen."

Steele was fired in early 1991. ECU still owed him for one more season, and he took that time to decide whether he wanted to stay in coaching or stay in Greenville.

He picked Greenville, where the shadow of the school that terminated his career looms very large. Does he feel bitterness?

"Time heals all wounds," he said softly.

So now ECU is one of the most important things in his son's life. A batboy in high school for two state championship teams at Greenville Rose, Drew needed something else when he graduated. East Carolina -- and Holtz -- have provided it.

Drew now has a prediction for Holtz's third team at ECU.

"We'll go 12-0," he said.

Drew says that every year.

After all, he believes in miracles.