Filled to Capacity
All the plexiglass goals in the gym had been swung up by their mechanical arms toward the rafters, their nets hanging sideways, still, closed for business for the day.
Clearly, the school’s twenty-first century basketball facility had been designed with forethought. The lot had ample parking, the lobby, open space with plenty of room for swelling and receding crowds. Here fans could visit or consume concessions without ever missing a second of action thanks to the bank of windows that separated it from the floor. The gymnasium itself was bright with shooter’s lighting, chairback seating on the home team side and ordinary plastic bleachers on the other, each boasting just the right amount of advantageous space from the front row to the boundary lines.
This planned-for, bond-issued specimen-- the hub of the town, the heart of the school—was built to be a place where people do hard things.
The capacity crowd arrived early. Kids in home team jerseys hustled alongside their parents, most of whom were wearing matching T-shirts in red and blue. In a section on the visitors’ side, a group who shared an obvious morning memo, packed in tight in sparkly pink. Those of us clad in neither sat mingled in-between and around, stacked shoulder- to-shoulder, knees-to-back and back-to-knees in this familiar space that weirdly felt so foreign. Strangers and friends fidgeting separately together shared anxious air while visibly yearning for something—anything--we could do. Had the band marched in playing the fight song, I think we would have stood and clapped along.
Instead, the soft sounds of a lone piano hushed us, drawing our eyes to the court we’d been doing everything within our power not to see.
A funeral was about to take place where a game is supposed to be.
As a slide show set to music played, the family filed in filling the rows and rows and rows of chairs meticulously lined up across the shiny wooden floor. The high school girls’ team followed, proudly wearing their jerseys, then the boys’ team right behind them wearing theirs. Former players, assistants and sidekicks formed the tail. The ripples of a coach’s life ran up and down and up and down the gym.
A whole lot happens in this holy hall. In a space constructed for play, boys and girls learn both how to fly and falter. Here, dreams are hatched, fears are faced, and friendships of the toughest mettle are formed.
Here, the young coach played before he wore the whistle. Here, his daughter ran to join him after school. So it’s fitting that we celebrate, here, their lives well-lived but cut untimely-short. The house of hoops can hold the heavy asked of it.
Rest in peace Will and Clara