The Endless Summer: The Perfect Shooter
Don Tidwell, 74, fixed his eyes upward towards the center-hung scoreboard that held the fate of Tishomingo’s 2016 season. He sighed as his vision shifted towards the dwindling clock. Though once youthful and promising 32 minutes of unbiased competition, it…
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Continue ReadingDon Tidwell, 74, fixed his eyes upward towards the center-hung scoreboard that held the fate of Tishomingo’s 2016 season.
He sighed as his vision shifted towards the dwindling clock. Though once youthful and promising 32 minutes of unbiased competition, it now allotted just three minutes and thirty seconds of play in the Indians’ regional contest with Marietta, who now led by 21 points.
The seasoned head coach, who had served time leading the Indians’ track, cross country and basketball teams, had been dealt his share of season-ending playoff losses; its number amounted exactly to his number of seasons coaching, in fact. Although the process may have been somewhat hackneyed, the cessation of this season would be marked by some unfamiliar implications. It would not only send the Indians home for the year, but would come to be a humble and oblivious going-away party for the septuagenarian. Though it would not be announced officially to his team until later that night, Tidwell planned to retire from coaching.
The seconds displayed on the digital scoreboard matched his remaining seconds as a head coach at Tishomingo High School.
His ivory hair, slicked back at his balding crown, was the only signature of his age. His stroll, though casual, was still taut and upright, un-compromised by any noticeable slouch. He stood about 6-foot-3-inches, but closer to 6-foot-4 on game nights thanks to the heal of his Oxford shoes. Suspended from his neck was a Star Trek-themed tie, one of many extravagant ties in his rotation that he regularly activated on game nights, as to “not be taken too seriously,” he told his team.
Though undoubtedly disappointed by the upcoming final horn and its associations, Tidwell wasn’t melancholy. He was a strong-willed but easy-going man, raised during America’s peace time, but hardened by the Vietnam war, where he spent his post-college adult life serving the United States Marine Corps. This dynamic was evident in his mannerisms. His mood was malleable, but not inconsistent; He could be stern when necessary, but was predictably gracious and friendly towards his students. Among his values that he enforced in the locker room were that a man only received the privilege to wear baseball caps once he earned his degree and that suicide would not be a tolerable term for “down-and-backs,” as he preferred to name them. He was also adamant about his students not cursing, even in the privacy of the locker room.
“He was a strong-willed but easy-going man, raised during America’s peace time, but hardened by the Vietnam war, where he spent his post-college adult life serving the United States Marine Corps.” |
Perhaps made chipper by the prospect of his forthcoming vacation-time, he casually-paced the length of the bench to a nearby Gatorade cooler, where he downed a cup of water before returning to his post and retiring a timeout. Come elimination time, he was insistent on sending his senior class off at the same time by means of a fourth-quarter timeout, allowing for a standing ovation from spectators and faithful. He wanted the process to be special for his students, despite the circumstances. As the four soon-to-be-graduates waved to their parents, families and fellow students, Tidwell looked to the bench to select four substitutes.
His eyes wandered up-and-down the bench, before making their first stop at me.
“Bryce, would you like to go in?” inquired Tidwell, who felt it fair to seek consent before putting players in a game in case they held any inhibitors.
I nodded before before stepping into a trot to the scorer’s table. I slapped the table as a gesture to the official scorekeeper that I was checking into the game, a process I found arbitrary and redundant, but had still participated in almost every Tuesday and Friday night at some point in the fourth quarter for the previous three months. I was a late-game player; low in the rotation, but high enough to go get playing time in non-desperation situations.
Moments later, I stepped onto the floor near the low corner, where another fourth-quarter cavalier from Marietta bent down, hands stationed on his knees as if he had been paralyzed mid-sit, a couple feet away from me to guard me. Some basketball things happened, none of which I remember extensively, and I received the ball in the opposite corner with substantial spacing between myself and the nearest defender, who was preoccupied with chasing down a cutting teammate anyways. Despite cries from Tidwell on the opposite side of the floor to try my luck, I refused the shot before tossing the ball back up the key to our point guard. Though it may have seemed perplexing at the time, my teammates understood my denial of the shot.
Weeks earlier, I converted a shot from 22 feet on homecoming in a 25-point win. Some time later, it became apparent to me that I had not taken another 3-pointer, neither before that shot or after it, that season. This meant that I was a 100-percent 3-point shooter, a factoid that had spread not only to my teammates, but even throughout the school. Essentially, everybody but Tidwell knew. I agreed, with the urging of others, that I wouldn’t take another 3-pointer that season, thus finishing with a perfect shooting year.
A minute after my inquisitive shot de-selection, Tidwell called another timeout to counsel his squad, substitute a couple more underclassmen, but mostly to chastise me for refusing the shot.
“Bryce,” he called as I hung a few feet back from my teammates, who had already made their way to the court-side huddle.
“Yessir?”
“I know you want to have a perfect shooting season, but take the damn shot, son.”
He knew.
“Some basketball things happened, none of which I remember extensively. . .” |
We returned to the court set to finish the final minute-and-a-half of play for the season. At this point, all five players on the floor for us were bench guys who had received playing time only sparingly all season. Nobody expected anything notable to take place on the basketball court in that 90 seconds.
We turned the ball over on that first possession before Marietta took its time scoring on the opposite end of the floor. About forty-five seconds remained before the our 2016 season was terminated without further contention. I paced back down the floor before again stationing myself in the corner near the boundaries. The ball was passed away from me before it was redistributed back to our point guard, who pounded the ball against the floor thrice as he moved laterally in my direction before, to my surprise, passing me the ball. In my predictable fashion, I felt panic jolt from my stomach into my throat as I caught the pass and took a typically un-advantageous dribble further into the corner, picking the ball up and discontinuing my legal movement just inches away from either boundary with a defender less than two feet from me.
I don’t know what bewitched me to do it – it was probably some combination of the panic and excitement. As my momentum carried me out-of-bounds, I leapt from the floor, collecting the ball near my chest and raised my arms into a shooting motion before launching it towards the goal at my apex, an act that probably surprised the nearby defender as he did nothing to contest the shot. I landed, one foot out-of-bounds, before the ball began its descent towards the orange hoop. My teammates regularly heckled my shooting motion for its high release point and accute trajectory.
While I could resign to the cliche that the ball seemingly spent an eternity in the air, it wouldn’t be truthful. I didn’t have much sentiment towards the shot, other than that I knew, along with everybody else in the gym, that there was no way it was going in.
Until it did.
Swish.
The subsequent cheers from our bench, including the seniors who were about to undress themselves from a Tishomingo basketball uniform for the last time, along with the zeal of our spectators made it feel as though we weren’t losing a playoff game by 20 points. Moments later, the final horn went off and I stepped away from the floor into the traditional post-game handshake line. The mood was uncharacteristic of a playoff elimination thanks to the shot, which is the best-imaginable indicator of how good my high school basketball team was.
As we made our way back to the locker room, Tidwell paced briskly toward me from the end of the handshake line. I expected to be chastised for taking the shot rather than dribbling the ball out, allowing the clock to drain itself and surrendering to defeat. However, his perky demeanor hadn’t changed after my unwarranted stroke of luck. As he neared me, a grin curled about his fact, his left arm extended to wrap itself around me. He met me with a half hug.
“Congratulations,” said Tidwell, “you’re my first – and last – 100 percent shooter.”
The Endless Summer A weekly column by Bryce McKinnis |
Bear with me; I’m about to bury the lead about as deep as you can bury it.
You’re probably wondering why I chose to tell you this story. To be honest, my lone motive in doing so was that I thought it was a cool story. The better anecdote of the recount, however, is probably this:
I was not a very good basketball player.
But that’s okay, because you don’t have to be an outstanding athlete to write about sports. You just have to be a good storyteller. In fact, most sportswriters I know didn’t play sports after high school.
If you don’t anything about me, allow me to briefly introduce myself: My name is Bryce McKinnis, and I am a writer for Prep Hoops dot com. I’m also a 20-year-old journalism student at the University of Central Oklahoma, about twenty minutes north of downtown Oklahoma City, where I anchor twice weekly our student newscast. I also freelance for a few newspapers across the state, a practice I have been participating in since my senior year of high school. I’ll spare you the details of the sharp curves and stubborn roadblocks my career has taken as to refrain from sitting at my desktop all night just to bore you.
I created this column as a means to chronicle my experiences in a community that I consider to be pretty interesting. Reporting high school recruiting is similar to the storytelling that takes place in any other writing; if you work hard, position yourself with your readers’ sentiments, become transparent with your subjects, prepare yourself to break the news and seek and distribute the truth, you’re probably going to be pretty good at journalism. Where writing about recruiting is different, however, is that you have to become more of an insider with your subjects, but balance with it the same level of professionalism.
You also travel more. A lot more.
In the past month-and-a-half alone, I’ve spent over 20 hours in the air, journeyed across six states for a total of over 7,300 miles and woken up in each of the four contiguous American timezones. It can be overwhelming. Of course, I’m thankful for the opportunity to experience it at a young age. But it can also be a little intimidating at 20 years old to displace yourself from home so frequently.
Most importantly, I’ve watched a lot of really good basketball in the past year. I’ve stood court-side to watch top-ten players in the country who have already achieved more notoriety than I’ll likely ever scratch the surface of. I’ve stood within feet,, watching the same game as some of the most famous basketball figures in the world (Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Izzo, John Calipari, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, to name a few).
And I don’t mean this to boast my accomplishments or status, but rather to present my dynamic. In fact, the reason I chose to start this column altogether was to express my transparency in this process. This job presents its challenges, especially at my age, and I thought that somebody should document the life of a recruiting reporter. I have a story to tell, and the reason I chose this job in the first place was to tell stories. I have no clue what I’m doing north of 60 percent of the time.
So, welcome to The Endless Summer. This column is meant to serve as a chronicle of travel, recruiting and storytelling for the summer of 2019.