Show up for a 7 AM Saturday practice, after a Friday night game, like these guys, or shut the hell up. (Shelli Trumbull photo)
Everything you need to know about basketball, and life, is in the movie “Hoosiers.”
Everything.
The finest sports movie ever made, it ends with a miracle shot, a state title and redemption.
But, at its heart, it is never really about the title. It is always about the path to get there, a path that is hard, that is rocky, that sometimes punches you in the pit of your stomach repeatedly until you don’t want to take any more shots.
It is about getting up every day and going back to the gym, even when you are not having fun, even when you feel betrayed by your town, because it makes you a better person. A stronger person.
The haters will always be out there. The former “stars,” long past their primes, willing to slag you for not living up to their standards.
Let their words bounce off you, and remember the words of coach Norman Dale instead.
“If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, I don’t care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game, in my book we’re gonna be winners.”
Regardless of what the record books says, the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball team, varsity and JV, is comprised of winners. There are good athletes, even great athletes on the team.
Guys who won a state title in little league baseball. Guys who are going to play football in college on scholarship.
Through food poisoning, through broken feet, bloody mouths and swollen eyes, through the indifference of a town that can’t, or won’t, see past the losses, these guys lay it on the line, whether at a 7 AM practice or on game night.
Unlike most of you reading this, I have been there for six of their seven games, missing only their trip to University Prep.
I have not seen a player on any team go as hard, on every play, regardless of the score, as Wolf guard Drew Chan does.
The first player “out of the tunnel” as he leads his team on the floor each night, he ricochets off the hard wood at an alarming rate, giving his mom and sister the vapors while showing the 10-year-old kid at the top of the bleachers an example to model himself on.
Say the names.
Drew Chan. Gavin O’Keefe. Nick Streubel. Aaron Curtin. Caleb Valko. Carson Risner. Josh Wilsey. Morgan Payne. Aaron Trumbull. Ben Etzell. Schuyler Montgomery. Wiley Hesselgrave. Ryan Griggs. Anthony Bergeron. Isaac Vargas. Joel Walstad. Josiah Campbell. Oscar Liquidano. Jared Helmstadter. Dalton Martin.
We can talk about the guys who DIDN’T play basketball, but why? They DIDN’T play.
In the words of Norman Dale: “I would hope you would support who we are. Not, who we are not. These individuals have made a choice to work, a choice to sacrifice, to put themselves on the line for the next four months, to represent you, this high school. That kind of commitment and effort deserves and demands your respect. This is your team.”
Saturday afternoon at 3:30 PM they host Orcas Island. After Christmas break the Wolves hit the road for eight of their final 11 regular season games.
If you are ever gonna get off your couch and support the young men who have the guts to put the red and black on every day and carry Coupeville’s name onto the court, there is no better time.
Because, if, instead, you plan to spend your time ragging on them, I have one more quote for you, and it doesn’t come from “Hoosiers.” It comes from the late, great Chris Farley in his classic, “Tommy Boy,” and it goes a little something like this:
“You better pray to the god of skinny punks that this wind doesn’t pick up, ’cause I’ll come over there, and jam an oar up your ass!”
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