A point guard runs the show. In Basketball Land she is the floor general…the play caller…the leader of the charge. She is the apex of the defense, the instigator of the offense, and the talker in the huddles that happen at the free-throw line. Her responsibilities start before the ball is tossed and continue long after the final buzzer sounds. Like leaders on every landscape, business hours do not apply to her.

My love for the game of basketball grew alongside of and intricately intertwined with my fascination with the point guard position. At 5’4”, it was where I physically fit. But it was also where I wanted most to play.

When I was in third grade, I wanted to be just like Starla Cosper. She was the leading scorer and best player on the Healdton High School girls’ basketball team, and I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be when I grew up. Her mother was a beautician who worked at the hair salon in town and like clockwork my Granny went to visit her every week to get her hair done. In the summers when I was out of school and my mom was at work, I tagged along.

During the Covid lockdown of 2020, I got a dog. Well, technically, I didn’t. But our family did. We got a dog. Or more specifically, our adult daughter who had returned home as a pandemic boarder did. She got a dog-- who lived in our home. Rosco –who sort of belongs to all of us—was Chandler’s dream long, long deferred.

We had a sleepover, recently, my three-year-old granddaughter and me. On these fantastic every-once-in-a-whiles, we pile into the bed in my daughter’s old room, watch a few episodes of CoComelon and then tell stories over and over in the dark. When morning comes, my little wonder always exclaims, “It’s wake-up time!” which signals our pilgrimage down the hall to start the day. We roll out from under the covers, land our feet on the hardwood floor and like a couple of wobbly new-born colts, begin to make our way.

Yesterday was my son and daughter-in-law's seventh anniversary. Several years ago, on the days leading up to their wedding, I found my mind exploding with things I wanted my son to know. Or maybe it was just full of things I felt like I needed to say. Most likely, it was a head-on collision of the two. But had I opened my mouth to share it, nonsensical drivel wrapped in tears would have landed in his lap. So I wrote him a letter instead.

This is it.

It’s spring. In Oklahoma that means storms. Wind, rain, lightening, hail, hooks that turn into tornadoes on a dime. Every day is an adventure. We move about doing what we normally do but with one eye on the radar, perpetually “weather aware.” Sometimes super cells manifest, sometimes they don’t. But when they do, they turn things upside down. Tree limbs, garbage cans, pool chair cushions, roofs -- any and every item not battened down, as well as plenty that are-- end up someplace where they’re not supposed to be. And often, the conveniences of our modern world (that we think we can’t live without) go with them. Electric lines come down, the power goes and people go out with it. Out of homes and buildings, onto mutual turf, where we do what we don’t normally do.

We talk.

I have a recipe drawer in my kitchen though I don’t open it very often. In it are six or eight cookbooks-- several small-town plastic-spined put-togethers (fundraiser projects from the “county extension” way back in the day), one hardback from the Pioneer Woman, another titled “Desserts” that I think I received as a wedding gift, and one professionally published paperback from the Women’s Auxiliary at Oklahoma Christian College that I wrote the forward for. The greater contents of the drawer are handwritten loose-leaf recipes separated into categorical bundles secured by sturdy metal clips.

These are the things handed down.

Below is a slightly revised, updated version of a previously published piece about perhaps the most iconic of all professional sporting events— The Magical Masters…

I wonder if when they built it, they knew what it would become. Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts were iron-willed men on a crusade to create a thing they could see and taste but on earth were unable to find.  So maybe.  Maybe they had an idea. But it would be impossible to have known then what an icon it would become. When the two men first laid eyes on the abandoned 400-acre Fruitland’s Nursery running parallel to the Savannah River, Jones said it seemed as though “the land had been lying here for years waiting for somebody to lay a golf course on it.” So they grabbed it, and with the help of Alister MacKenzie, that’s exactly what they did. They built Augusta National’s sweeping fairways between the trees, and layered dogwoods and azaleas in the straw underneath the pines. They used the bends and hills as guideposts; they built water and sand to act as foils.  And for the last 90 Aprils, it’s been hard to tell what the “and 1” is at the Master’s— the landscape or the golf.

“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?”

In celebration of the close of Women’s History Month, this week’s blog post is an excerpt from my bestselling book, Rooted to Rise. We must keep passing the baton…

ONE SPRING DAY, when I was driving my fifteen-year-old daughter, Chandler, to school and we were calendar meshing for the week ahead, she saw “Title IX Celebration” on my phone and asked what in the world it meant. I jumped on the teachable moment and explained it. “It’s the anniversary of the law passed in 1972 that says you get to play basketball like your brother. It’s the law that says girls can go to college and study to be anything they want, just like boys can,” I added.

My assistant coach’s first “courtesy car” was a four-door Chevy Malibu in a purple-ish shade of blue. In the early days of Division 1 coaching, a car loaned to the athletic department by a local dealer (aka University supporter) was part of a coach’s package. Recruiting required lots and lots of driving, so a car on loan -- periodically rotated so as not to pile up miles -- made sense. It was an added value for a coaching worker bee whose salary didn’t compute, while simultaneously being a write-off for a donor who wanted tickets to football games. Typically, these vehicles were swapped out every 4-6 months before wear and tear could accumulate— or whenever a dealer had a buyer in the market for a slightly, mostly-loved “new car.”

In the middle of life, dichotomy reigns. “This stage is awful and it’s awesome,” a friend so aptly stated, as he weaved his way through an ordinary day that was suddenly anything but. “The highs are high and the lows are low,” he matter-of-factly lamented. In almost everything he touched he could feel both sides of the coin.

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.

It’s March and the sports world is about to go mad. Conference basketball tournaments, the opening acts for the much-ballyhooed big dance, are calling from just around the bend. In a now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t flash, the ball will be tipped, the champion will be crowned, and the confetti will fall from the rafters. Then in the next frantic breath-- sometimes only minutes after the last buzzer sounds—the selection committee will release the 2024 Men’s and Women’s NCAA tournament brackets. Immediately following that, almost everyone—both those included and those who get left out—will find a way to somehow think that they’ve been wronged. The first four out will state their case for why they should have made the cut while the top four seeds will clamor about how unfairly stacked their designated region is. Those in between will mostly claim that their team should be sitting on a different line or facing a different opponent or packing for another geographic locale. Satisfaction, like my Walgreens readers, will be tough to find.

I found the house that became my home on a walk. The ranch-style brick looked like an orphaned hacienda beyond the band of blackjack oaks that separated it from the street. Through the mysterious curtain of branches and leaves, a siren song wafted. The friend I was walking with said the house was empty. Nobody had lived there for quite some time.

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. 

Toby Keith loved Clint Eastwood. I can only guess that a line of snarly-tough authenticity connected the men like 10 lb. test. No two bigger Big Dog Daddies ever lived. The legendary country singer once asked the Academy Award-winning actor, who was at the time working on another movie at the age of 88, “What keeps you going?” Eastwood answered, “I don’t sit around. I get up and go outside. I move. I do things.” And then he added, “You can’t let the old man in.”

In a pivotal scene of FX’s smash-hit series “The Bear,” Richie-- a 40-something, recently humbled, trepidatious intern at one of Chicago’s top restaurants-- happens upon the establishment’s owner/chef serenely peeling mushrooms in a quiet, empty kitchen before the start of the day. As a follow up to his childlike “whatcha doin’?” she asks him if he’d “like a go.”

I miss my dad on my birthday. Every January 19th I have a pang. It would sound way better if I said I miss my dad on his birthday, in February. I do. But not in the way I miss him on the day that marks each trip of mine around the sun.