A Whole New Ballgame

By Brendan O'Shaughnessy

Posted: 12/14/2002

The first day of freshman basketball tryouts, I learned that coaching girls is different.  I was demonstrating the correct way to set a cross screen.  I positioned my legs shoulder-width apart and crossed my hands—fists clenched—over my groin to protect myself from the injury that all men fear.  I paused, confused, understanding from the girls' bewildered looks that something was wrong.  The other coach, a 15-year veteran of coaching girls, recognized my rookie mistake and bailed me out.  He raised his arms and covered his chest, and I knew that I had entered alien territory.

I had coached boys' basketball for six years before circumstances in the athletic department forced me to switch to "the other side."  I looked forward to the challenge in the same way that I had anticipated the move from teaching at an all-boys' school to a coed institution five years before.  At the very least, I figured, I would be more likely to get cookies at Christmas and a gift at the awards banquet.  Baiting a feminist friend, I told her that I was excited about the change because I could be more relaxed, less intense, and besides, I wouldn't get any technicals.  I just assumed girls didn't take their basketball as seriously as boys.  The insinuation hit its mark.  She scolded me, saying that girls were just as eager to win and play well as boys.  She also suggested I read Madeleine Blais' "In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle," a book about a girls team's basketball season.

From the book and from my teaching experience, I began the season with certain expectations about coaching girls.  I would need to be more encouraging, less critical.  Most boys need a little tearing down before they can be rebuilt on a more solid fundamentals base.  Boys want to be Allen Iverson and inherently assume they know more than their old-school coach, who watched "Hoosiers" one too many times.  Girls, whose experience of playground games and watching the all-stars is often limited, do not start with as many bad habits.  I expected they would be more coachable.  They wouldn't need their inflated athletic egos broken down, but rather built from the ground up.

Smugly thinking I was prepared, I got a rude awakening with my screen-setting gaffe that first day.  Imagine my incredulous stare when a girl trying out, in an attempt to explain why she had thrown up and had to sit out of wind sprints, told me she hadn't run since gym class—the year before.  I was also surprised—and relieved—that we did not have to cut, since only 20 girls stuck out the trials for the two teams.  With boys, two or three times as many students usually came out for the teams as could be taken.

I immediately noted differences in the early practices. Girls' attention to directions was far superior to the boys, most of whom found it physically impossible not to be distracted by any movement anywhere in the gym. Whereas the boys generally either went deadpan or shot me the evil "how dare you" death stare when I corrected their play, the girls often sincerely apologized for any mistake. My stereotypically gawky center, when told not to leave her feet on defense, said, "I know. I'm sorry. I'm terrible." Embarrassed, I tripped out a halting reassurance.  I tried to build up her confidence by calling her "the rebound machine," but she just thought I was goofy.

Strangest of all, they actually wanted to talk to me and the other coach, something teenage boys found equivalent to having their nose hairs, if they had any, individually plucked out in front of an audience of teenage girls.  The girls came running up before practice to tell us about their classes, about who said what at lunch, about who had spilled perfume on her uniform.  Uncomfortable after years of boys slinking away into corners, I usually responded, "Stretch out."

Before the first game, I realized that some of their silliness was simply due to their age, not their sex.  In the pregame huddle, the other coach said we needed to play hard or go home with a big L.  One of the girls asked if everyone would have to take the "L" home instead of the bus if we lost.  During the game, one player attempted to high-five a referee after making a shot.  But it was more than their tender age.  While I was giving a post-game speech, one player interrupted and said, "Those are the coolest sweatpants.  They zip all the way down."  When my grandfather died, the whole team signed a condolence card with individual attempts to comfort me.  Another time, returning from a late game, when the bus broke down on the highway in 15-degree weather, one player cut the tension with, "Coach, want a chocolate-chip cookie?  I made them."

I began to observe that the team split into two groups:  the hard, aggressive players and the softer, nice players.  One side had girls who would steal a ball from their teammates in order to shoot.  The other side had girls who apologized to their defenders if they scored.  Some would crash the boards and clear out space with vicious elbows, and others would avoid any chance of injury or even breaking a sweat.  The aggressive group rolled their eyes at the limp-wristed run of one girl they called "the dancer" or "Basketball Barbie."  The timid girls rolled their eyes and called our best shooter a "ball hog."

After six wins and a growing gulf between the cliques, we experienced our first loss.  Actually, we got blown out by 35 points.  We could barely get the ball down the court.  A coach learns all he needs to know about his team by how they react to a loss.  My team began to motivate each other in practice.  They started to pull for each other.  Best of all, the gap between the groups of player types began to slowly close.  In time, we were a single unit again.

And I was swept up in the intensity of their effort.  I don't know exactly when it began, but it was cemented when I was called for a technical foul in a Christmas tournament game.  Whereas boys' freshman coaches tend to be overly passionate, like myself, sporting buzz cuts and angry demeanors, girls' coaches usually were more welcoming. One informed us that her name was Poppy, offered our team bagels and Gatorade, and said, "We're all about fun here."  It was all I could do to refrain from saying, "We're all about kicking your butt."

Fast forward to the conference championship game, where we faced the same team that had blown us out by 35 earlier in the season.  Since then, this powerhouse had won every game, none by fewer than 20 points.  Not intimidated this time, our girls played them even for a quarter.  When the opponent went on a second-quarter run, I impolitely objected to an over-the-back foul and was hit with another technical.  Shocked, I realized that I had been given more technicals in a single season of coaching girls than I ever had as a boys' coach.  My feminist friend would be proud.  The team responded.  The collective jaw of the bench dropped to the hardwood when "Basketball Barbie" hit a shot, slapped the floor and yelled, "C'mon, girls, let's play some defense."  I couldn't have been more pleased if it had been my own daughter.

No, it didn't lead to a win, but we never gave up either, clawing to a nine-point loss and the bittersweet distinction of holding that team to their narrowest margin of victory all season.  Even in defeat, the girls had come a long way in their separate challenges.  Some had overcome a natural timidity by learning to play aggressively, and others had learned to trust their team.  My lesson?  New depths to the same game I've always loved.