Living, Breathing Basketball

From the first time I picked up a basketball in 3rd grade, I felt like I never put one down until I was 17.  

There was our 3v3 league, MATC, travel tournament team, Tri-county, Keva League, MHS basketball...it feels like the list continues.  

It feels so long ago that I actually held a basketball, let alone played.  So when I called Kula to reminisce, it seemed like a lifetime ago.  Kula (Sara) is one of my best friends to this day and we grew up playing basketball together.  Talking to her tonight made me miss the game--probably because basketball was our life.

I asked Kula what came to mind when she thought of basketball pre-high school:

-The little red jersey's.

-Tournaments were my childhood.  I think it's so funny because I don't do anything athletic anymore.  But growing up, every weekend that's what we were doing.  We had tournament after tournament. 

-Subway and eating footlong subs.

-I had a knot in my leg at a tournament at University of Northern Iowa once.  Amber and Natasha had to rub it out.  

-I got in trouble when I got my upper ear pierced and had to wear tape on it.

-I spent my weekends on basketball courts and in sweatpants. 

-My clutch shots I nailed and won the games for us.  There were three different times: a free throw to tie it then to win it, and two jump shots in the lane.  

-Deforest basketball team and the girl named Janel.  I don't even remember playing them, I just remember the reputation of playing them, like, "Oh we're playing Deforest...."

She just kept listing of the memories.  

So then I asked her about high school:

-Coach Kind and how he ruined it for me.

-My sweaty, sweaty coach freshman year.  What was his name, hmmm what was his name? Sir sweats a lot or something.

-I remember Jamie Christiansen.  Or now I call her Jaylana because she moved to Milwaukee and got ghetto.  And now she thinks she's from Atlanta, not Middleton, Wisconsin.

-Weekend tournaments in the off season: leagues two times a week plus practice.  

-I met my man crush at a tournament at UNI.  He had arms to die for.

-Coach Halbleib giving us advice on the bus to never marry a guy who doesn't have a good relationship with his mother. 

-I remember the drill we used to do where Halbleib would put a time on the clock and we had to make a certain number of lay-ups in that time.  We could only take two dribbles and passed the ball at half court.  Brutal.

-Watching movies together at night because we couldn't go out at night since we had to wake up so early to travel.  

-Walking around at tournaments looking for cute guys.

-Britt and her Gatorade--she had every flavor imaginable.

-Our Keva league. And whoever we had crushes on would come to the game.  

-I always looked so tan..I miss those days.

-We won a lot of trophies--we were pretty damn awesome, a force to be reckon with, actually.  -How hot and sweaty it was inside MATC during our league every Wednesday night.  

-Carpooling everywhere we went.

-How you could always trot down the court and make any shot--a couple feet in from the three, a couple feet out.  You'd make them all.  And then you would do something obnoxious that would bring you back to good old Megan.  

-When we coached Alyssa's 3v3 team. Ross Hammer hates us to this day because he was such a crappy ref and we called him out on it. 

-After games we would go back to my house and swim.  

-At our 3v3 league Emmy slipped, so after that we always called her "Slippy."

-When Mike Olsen came to watch and you had a crush on him.  And on Mike Vieth. 

-All the guys like Shawn and Ross would come watch.  Or we would go watch them play.  

As Kula continued on, we realized all the memories she listed were the times that surrounded the game.  There wasn't a specific memory of a huge game we won or that undefeated team we beat.  That wasn't because we weren't good, because we were.  Our sophomore year I think we went something like 23-1.  But we played for so long that our lives revolved around the game.  Our friendships were made because of our teammates.  We were together 24-7 and we had each other to share the memories with.  

Kula put it perfectly, "I always had so much fun with everyone I played with, it didn't matter who  I was with," she said.  "We could always laugh at the end of the day and have a good time with each other.  Basketball was a common interest between us.  You put everything aside and this was the one thing no matter what--we all just had it in common."

We'd played together from grade school through sophomore year in high school.  We knew each other from their game.  We knew how they played and who you could count on.  Tasha was the fast one.  Kate was the one with the moves.  Schwirtz was always the one that stood with her big butt under the basket. Dee Simon was always the one who when she got pissed, she played PISSED.  Patz was the one who could sink the three like it was nothing.  Amber was the aggressive one. Kula was the one who sweat.  We just knew how each other worked and we clicked.  

"It's hard to say if we'd be as close as we are today if we didn't have basketball," Kula said.  I grew up with this girl and got close to her because of the game.  And years later, she's still my best friend.

And our last memory of the sport we grew up loving and living, is our worst of the game.  We we prepared for tryouts Junior year and were excited to finally play on the Middleton Varsity Basketball Team--something you look forward to your whole childhood.  But on the last day of tryouts, Coach Kind pulled five of us aside and told us spots were saved for all the seniors on the team who wanted them.  He told us five we had a choice to be on the team or to quit if we wanted. 

"When Coach Kind said, 'I'll leave it up to you,' that was a wimpy-ass coaching move," Kula said. "Everyone told me I should take the spot but it just didn't feel right.  But how do you go from it being your life to not even touching a basketball?"

So the picture of the five of us sitting in Varsity Hallway of our high school is still vivid.  

"F*** no, I'm not playing," Dee Simon said.

Schwirtz stood against the locker not saying a word.

"There's no way.  I'm not playing," I said.

And Patz and Kula stood there wondering what to do.  We called our JV coach, Coach Halbleib.  She was irate--that made me feel a little better.  

To make the story short, we all quit except Schwirtz.  We all knew we deserved a spot on the team, but playing for Coach Kind wasn't how we wanted to play our game.  It was spoiled and didn't mean the same.  So we walked away from the game we grew up playing 12 months a year, 5 days a week, for eight years. 

But as Kula reminded me tonight, we have all those memories in between the games and the practices.  We have those friendships with the girls we never would have been friends with without basketball.  The actual sport was obviously important to all of us, but it wouldn't have been anything without the times in between.