I want all of the Fresh and Sophs on the Notre Dame football team to read this!!!
I was changing after PE to go to Freshman English when Coach Long, the boys Varsity basketball coach asked me to play on the varsity that evening. “You’re the only kid in this school that can look one way and pass the other,” Long laughed. I gave him this calm look and response of OK when in reality my heart was beating out of my chest.
You see that night Mauldin High School, my alma mater, was to play Hillcrest High School our archrival. Mauldin High School was the worst 4A basketball school in the state, and Hillcrest had some of the greatest athletes ever produced in the early 80’s. This night…the night that the 14-year-old freshman would play his first varsity basketball game…this would be the BIGGEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!
The game was also important because we would play in front of actual people. Mauldin High basketball games were typically attended by about 16 or 17 parents, two secretaries taking tickets at the door, a maintenance man and if we were lucky we might also have 8 to 10 students at the games. 35 people max for home games. The Girls basketball team wouldn’t even stay to watch us play. Our girlfriends wouldn’t attend games. We played in a virtual morgue.
But when we played Hillcrest, we would have 2035 people; 2000 Hillcrest fans and 35 Mauldin people! And this was for our home game at Mauldin!
I couldn’t concentrate in class the rest of the day. I don’t even remember if I told my best friends about being asked to play for the Varsity. I do remember calling my dad and feeling his tremendous sense of pride through the telephone lines!
Coach said to be at the game by 7pm. I had my jock on at 3:30! This was the BIGGEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!
I remember being so nervous that I couldn’t sit out and watch the girl’s game. I went straight to the dressing room to change, stretch and mentally prepare my self for the biggest night of my life. We were playing Hillcrest High School, and if we could win, and if I could hit the game winning shot, and if the crowd (all 35) would rush the court and lift me on their shoulders, and if Tara Estes the senior cheerleader would just know who I was. Life would be perfect!”
I thought it odd that the rest of the team was not nervous. Here it was after halftime of the girl’s game and I was still the only player dressed and ready in the locker room. “Maybe when you are a senior you just don’t get nervous before big games,” I thought to myself. But I was about to throw up. I don’t know what would have come up since I was too scared to eat all day!
Slowly players started to drift in and change. I had found a corner stall and had changed and was stretching and doing some ball handling exercises to get warmed up and loose for the biggest night of my life! I noticed that the players turned on music. They sang, they danced, they talked about what girls were putting out and who was going to get some from who that weekend! A few guys actually were taking a deck of cards and flipping individual cards at a baseball cap. “Maybe this is how you prepare for the biggest game of your life when you are a senior. You just aren’t scared,” I thought as I sweated through my uniform and warm up suit like I was in the middle of a sauna!
Coach Long walked in for the pre-game talk. It was his usual standard Hillcrest spiel. “Let’s keep it within 40 boys. Whatever you do fellas don’t piss ‘em off. Hell they look bigger and meaner than last year!” Coach Long deadpanned.
It wasn’t exactly “the one for the gipper” talk that I expected from my first varsity basketball game.
Coach Frost the JV coach sat beside me during the talk and leaned over and asked if I was nervous.
“Naw,” I replied with a wry grin.
“Hell boy, I couldn’t drive a nail up your ass you look so tight,” He laughed.
I sat there astonished trying to figure out why he wanted to drive a nail up my ass!
Anyway….
We formed a line and rolled on to the Mauldin High School court to the rousing ovation of 35 people!!! The cheerleaders went on a soda break!
I soaked it all in. Trying not to look at Thomas Dendy and James Seawright on the Hillcrest team. Two of the biggest studs I have ever known. Both went on to be All American football players at South Carolina. Baron Boyd was also on that team and he was a friend of mine from middle school. He was 6 foot tall at age 13 and never got taller. Yet that night I still looked at him like he was the same giant 13 year old whooping our butts back in middle school!
I was the perfect player. Right handed lay ups, left handed lay ups, I stretched and I cheered on my teammates. I remember seeing the pride on my fathers face as I made the lay up and went to the rebounding line. I remember trying to push my chest out a little as I strutted by Tara Estes!
I also remember a couple of seniors who would try to hit their lay ups by shooting the ball behind their back. One even tried to drop kick the ball in. As one guy walked back to get in line he would stick his hand out so you could slap him “5”, when I reached for him he hit me in the nuts!
“Maybe this is how you keep your composure as a senior when you are ready to play the biggest game of your life,” I groaned as I tried to recapture my breath.
I remember looking at the game clock and with two minutes to go before tip off, Lee Harris, our captain and really the only true basketball player on this team, called us together and said for all of us to follow him to the locker room. We filed off the courts like little ducklings following their mother and I was the last waddling duck in the rear.
Coach Long stood up and mouthed, “What the Hell are you guys doing?” I just shrugged my shoulders and followed like the good freshman I was. I wondered if we did this every game! “Lee Harris is going to give us the gipper speech and we will run back out to the court and kick the crap out of Hillcrest High School.”
But as we got to the corner of the gym, a senior (who shall remain nameless) decided it was time to initiate the freshman. So he pantsed me!
They pantsed me. That means they took my warm up pants and gym shorts and pulled them to the floor. Now I am a YMCA director’s son. I have been in locker rooms all my life. No tighty whiteys for me. No boxers on this boy! I was wearing a jock under my shorts. So there I was in the corner of the gym, in front of 2035 family friends and neighbors, in my entire beautiful white-butted splendor.
At Maudlin High the gym doors opened and you walked straight across the hall into the locker room. I remember falling into the double doors. Trying to pull my pants up and fighting the tears back from my red face and puffed up eyes. There were the culprits with their huge smiles waiting for me.
Out of nowhere came this fist and it hit one of the jerks right in the nose. Blood splattered everywhere. And for the next 45 seconds, there were 24 arms and legs and twelve bodies piled on top of each other in the middle of the locker room fighting, kicking, cussing, and biting! Of course I was still at the side of the fight because I had my pants up to about my thighs at that point. Tears streaming down my face. I think I even had that stuttering sound you make when you are crying and trying to catch your breath.
Coach Long came busting through the doors, “What the Hell is going on in here.”
Lee Harris popped up from the melee and yelled, “Get out of here coach we are having a team meeting!” And Coach Long turned 180 and walked out.
As I reflect on that moment I would estimate we are at 1 minute prior to the tip off of the biggest game of our life.
Players fell off the pile and staggered to their dressing stalls. They tried to pull themselves together as Lee Harris stood in the middle of the locker room. “This game means more to me than anything else in this world. Don’t leave this locker room unless you feel the same way!”
Lee flipped me a towel to dry my eyes and then he spun me around and we walked back out on the floor, the first two out the door. One by one the team came back out. What we must have looked like. Uniforms stretched, blood on some of us. My tear filled eyes! Coach Long’s confused look! I just have to laugh about it all now.
Now it would be nice to say that we went out and we beat Hillcrest High. We didn’t win but we did play the game of our lives and lost by about 6 points. We even had the lead late in the game.
The end of the story though comes several months later at graduation. Lee Harris was a friend of my older brother Chris’ and on graduation night he came over to the house before they went out to party. At some point I was with Lee Harris with no one around.
“Lee, I never thanked you for taking up for me at the Hillcrest game,” I stammered with my head probably pointed straight into the ground. “I hope when I am a senior that I have the guts to throw the punch and make the speech.”
Lee Harris looked over to me and without even a smirk he replied, “You don’t have to be the senior to do that Cam, you just have to care.”
I have taken that lesson with me every day of my life. The embarrassment of having my pants pulled down is really insignificant compared to the powerful words of Lee Harris. In fact, many teammates probably don’t even remember why we were fighting, they just remember the punch and the speech.
It is an amazing fuel; knowing that you can impact and influence people with your personal burning passion. You don’t have to be the hometown boy, or from the richest family or one of the old established patriarchs of the town. If you want to make a difference in the lives of the people around you, you have to care. And you have care so much that you know when to throw the punch and make the speech.
