“Aim higher,” the tennis guru said as my forehand laced with topspin slammed into the tape on the top of the net. “Really?” I thought (and I think I said out loud.) “You get paid to tell people THAT?”

My granddaughter was sitting in the middle of the living room floor at my in-laws’ home on the day after her first Christmas. Austyn was the nine-month-old wonder that had taken precedence over the sparkly packages underneath the tree. Her Aunt CC was sitting on the floor tossing her a little green ball that Austyn, who was poised between her mother’s legs, would “catch,” together with her mom. Every time it happened the room erupted.

Ten in a row. The eight-year-old aspiring baller was working toward a goal. Ten lay-ups without missing on the right side, then once we got that in the books, ten more in a row on the left. Every time she got to eight, the ball lipped off the rim. 

MIDDLE SCHOOL IS MESSY. Awkwardness is the norm, cool isn’t even a possibility, and from those halls of dysfunction, high  school looks like a dreamy place you see on TV. Ninth grade is the  footbridge connecting the two. I had no more taken a step on that  creaky wooden connector when my anything-but-cool freshman  English teacher handed me a key to a door I didn’t know existed. 

Somewhere around two minutes into the second quarter, I saw it in her eyes. She had slipped inside the curtain to the place they don’t sell tickets to. It didn’t matter that there weren’t many people in the arena. It didn’t matter who the opponent was. She had entered a place where names, numbers, time, and score felt immaterial--because she held them all in the palm of her hand.

Practice makes perfect. At least that’s what my fifth-grade basketball coach used to say. 

When you repeat a process, you get better at it. The reps help you figure out what works and what doesn’t, what’s helpful and what’s not. And you get smoother, faster-- more efficient and more skilled-- at whatever it is you are practicing. From dribbling a basketball to changing a tire to speaking in front of people, the more you do it, the better you get. 

The best basketball teams almost always are so because they have at least one guy with eyes in the back of his head.  One guy who sees not just what is happening but any number of things that could be happening next.  One guy who makes everybody else look like a million dollars because of where he puts the ball. 

My friend just asked me that. He’s been one and he has several. I think long before I answer him because the answer isn’t at all what anybody wants to hear. It’s hard to define and even harder to measure, but this is what I think…

When I first met Geno Auriemma, he was wearing a sport coat with the lapels turned up like ear muffs and Italian loafers with no socks. It was snowing sideways in Norman, Oklahoma -- a typically atypical weather day in the middle of October, which made a gym full of high school athletes as giddy as the reigning national championship coach was confused.