Pretty soon that will be in the past tense. I've just announced to the parents in the WhatsApp group that I am stepping down as coach after three seasons. Given that I live in dread of each one-hour Tuesday training session, starting to worry about it as soon as Friday, I know it's time. Just imagine if we had, I don't know, two training sessions a week.
(And that's one of my big complaints about how youth sports work here in Australia. In the U.S., these kids would be trained five times a week by a gym teacher or other knowledgeable strategist who is getting paid extra to take on coaching duties. It's a ton more hours on the court or field. Here, they are coached once a week by somebody's dad, and half the time they are just shooting wildly at the basket and not paying attention to what I'm saying. Like I said, it's time.)
I didn't really want to make this announcement right after the last two losses we had, because they were both killers, and I didn't want the parents to think I was overreacting to these losses. That's not the case at all, as I only reluctantly stayed on for a third season to help transition the team to its new under 16 age group. In fact, I really expected to win last night's game, since it was against the lowest ranked team, which would have allowed the announcement to come right after a victory -- meaning no chance of bitterness seeming like a factor in my decision.
Last week, we blew it. We had a seven-point lead with two minutes left, and I thought the other coach was basically conceding the game, because he had just called a timeout that allowed the clock to run down to two minutes. I later found out he thought the clock was supposed to stop during a timeout, but he was wrong. In any case, his misunderstanding of the rules led me to take out my son, who is probably the team's best player, because a) it was past his turn to come out, and b) I didn't think there was any way we lose a seven-point lead with two minutes left, not at this level. Well, we did. In addition to some bad ball handling leading to turnovers, there was a technical foul on one of my players. I finally put my son back in with about 30 seconds left and the lead hanging perilously, but it wasn't enough -- but only because a kid on the other team, who is a friend of my son's, hit a miracle three-pointer at the buzzer, which gave them a two-point win. It was at least five feet behind the three-point line and nothing but net. Hey, you have to hand it to him. It's a moment he'll remember for the rest of his life, and especially since he's my son's friend, I was happy for him.
Last night the circumstances were very different, but the end result was more heartbreaking -- and more frustrating to me personally. We were down eight with about five minutes left, but scored the next ten points to take a two-point lead. It seemed certain we were going to hold it, given how cold the other team was from the floor. But with under 30 seconds left, one of my players fouled the other team intentionally to force another in-bounds pass. You aren't allowed to foul intentionally at this level so he got called for unsportsmanlike conduct, meaning two free throws for the other team and getting the ball back. Naturally, they hit both free throws in the clutch. Then the same kid on my team did the same thing on the same player, though this time, I swear he was making a legitimate play on the ball. And stated as much to the ref when I ran on the court, loudly pleading my case when he was called for another intentional foul. It was not a proud moment as both refs were women and the other one hand to reprimand me, telling me that this sort of behavior is the sort of thing that leads a coach to be ejected from the game. I apologized to both referees after the game, but the damage was done -- the kid hit one of his two free throws and our opponent won by one point.
I'm not writing this post today to tell you about basketball and the way it can break your heart. I'm writing to tell you about the mood I was in when I came home and put on a movie directed by Jim Cummings.
Now, I'm not sure if you know this person's name, so let me tell you a little bit about Mr. Cummings. He wrote, directed and starred in a 2018 feature called Thunder Road, which was a feature-length expansion of Cummings' awkward short film in which a grieving son gives an unhinged speech at a funeral for his mother, and also sings a Bruce Springsteen song. To make matters all the more awkward, the man is a cop. In the feature version of the film, I believe he's also an alcoholic -- alcoholism is a factor in all three of the films Cumming has directed, if memory serves -- and engages in all sorts of other deranged behavior that boils down to cracking up in public. It was a cringe watch and I didn't really enjoy it.
His 2020 feature, The Wolf of Snow Hollow, was a much bigger success for me. The character played by Cummings is also a cop cracking up in this film, but the filmmaking is more confident by leaps and bounds, and I found the genre subject matter a lot more interesting. Instead of being set in New Jersey, it's set in snowy Utah, and there appears to be evidence that local citizens are getting torn apart by a werewolf. Cummings is typically confronting and eager to shove our faces in the awkwardness of his characters, particularly the one played by him, but the rest of it was a gas, meaning the cringe was a positive experience for me rather than a negative one this time. (It's interesting how cringe can go either direction depending on small details.)
The Beta Test, which he co-directed with co-star PJ McCabe in 2021, is kind of the midway point between the two films. The cringe is more difficult to consume than The Wolf of Snow Hollow but the filmmaking is a lot better than Thunder Road. I marveled at the framing of particular shots (thanks, DP Kenneth Wales), while the squirming over what is happening with these characters was almost too stressful for me.
It's hard to know exactly what the right thing is to watch in this scenario, on a Friday night when you still haven't completely lost the pumping adrenaline from a difficult defeat. What is the best way to escape? A movie you know and love? A dumb comedy you haven't seen that doesn't demand much of you? Some sort of more traditional form of escapism, like fantasy or science fiction?
No, I watched a movie where characters are sent purple envelopes in the mail inviting them to an anonymous sexual encounter in a hotel room, even though all these characters have partners, and the character played by Cummings, a toxic Hollywood agent, is actually going to be married to his in only two months.
And without spoiling too much about The Beta Test, there's also violence galore, particularly the opening scene -- when the details of my basketball game, and losing my cool at the referee, were both still fresh in my mind.
Whether The Beta Test was just too intense for me on Friday night, or whether some problematic plot holes were more to blame, I gave the movie only three stars on Letterboxd and did wonder if 2.5 was a better reflection of my feelings. Then again, when a movie looks as good as The Beta Test looks, that goes a long way with me.
As for my time as a basketball coach winding down ... while obviously I would have preferred to love the job well enough to continue doing it, the reality is that I didn't, and don't. I am not a natural born coach in terms of strategy, as I think my strengths have been more about boosting the players up and cheering them on, as well as being sportsmanlike (err, in most cases). Not only can I not teach basketball strategy very well, I specifically cannot teach it to 13-year-olds, some of whom are turning 14 soon, and all of whom show me about the same interest in paying attention to what I'm saying as they show their teachers. It's time for somebody else to do that.
But of course I will be sentimental in coaching my last three games. I got choked up in the final game of the season each of the first two seasons, tough playoff losses that were very different -- one a late loss of a lead, one a blowout loss. And I'm a sentimental old fool anyway. I'll be looking at these boys I've coached for three seasons and seeing the men they will someday become, only I won't be there to see it.
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