In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais

Author:Madeleine Blais
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2017-06-19T16:53:47+00:00

Given the pressures of their lives—pressures invisible to outsiders blinded by the peak foliage of youth, the ease, the grace, the beauty of adolescence—some of the Hurricanes found going into the locker room after a day of classes and donning those sneakers the perfect refuge. It was comforting, all those routines and all that drill; even Coach Moyer’s trademark patter, which everyone practically knew by heart, had a way of blurring the edges of a bad day.

“Respect your uniforms,” he would say, with an air of fresh discovery, as if he’d never said it before. “The only time they hit the floor is when you are in them.

“When I say practice is from ten to twelve, I mean be ready to walk on the floor at ten. Don’t waltz in at ten after ten.

“It’s a game. I want to see some smiles on the floor. I don’t want to see a lot of stick people; when elbows go straight, knees go straight, your weight’s all on the back of the heels. Relax and play the game with your legs.

“One of the major elements of this is enthusiasm. Nothing great ever happened without enthusiasm. Basketball is a loose and confident sport. The team that gets loose first usually wins.

“If the other team beats you, go up to them, head up high, and congratulate them.

“If you’re one of those really nice people, find a little compartment, take that nice person, that Kathleen, and put it aside for a while. You can take it out when you’re baby-sitting or selling Girl Scout cookies.

“Basketball is an opportunity to improve your character, a laboratory for life. You’re putting people in an artificial situation and turning them loose.

“Sports is the toy store of life. Run around. Try everything on.

“I want you to love the game. Can’t play it so good anymore, but I love it.

“The most important statistic is total points. If you end up with one more point, it’s a great game. Jamila, what’s the second most important statistic?”

“Shots taken?”

“Just wanted to see if you were listening. After having you hear the same stories and the same jokes for six years, it’ll be good when you leave so I can get into the Amherst spirit and recycle.”

“You already have the Amherst spirit,” said Jen.

“Are you saying I get my jokes from the landfill?”

“No, just dump them.”

“Did I ever tell you about that great game my college team played against Moravian?”

Had he ever told them? Breathes there a human being within a hundred-mile radius of Amherst whom he hadn’t told? A thousand miles? The world over?

“We went into four overtimes, and I played every minute of all four overtimes, so I was dead. We should have killed them. Finally, our coach calls a time-out, six seconds left, and he tells Mike Miller to shoot and that way we’d win the game. Then he takes me aside and tells me to win it by tapping in the miss. I did. At the buzzer.”

Sometimes during practice Coach Moyer said they all had to make ten free throws and after that they could have a drink of water.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.