I wanted to write something that showed how playing basketball was such an important part of my life in school, but the memories that came to mind weren’t really anything that would have been considered newsworthy or the highlights of our seasons. Instead, what popped into my mind came from countless hours of practice or things that happened in games that nobody noticed except the players. I find that I’ve hung on to those things just as long as our win and loss tally. I have so many memories of basketball, and Steve is in most of them. Playing basketball was one of my happiest memories of junior high and high school.

I remember all sorts of random things that start maybe as early as 4th grade. One of my earliest memories of playing basketball was learning how to steal a ball at a summer camp that Steve put on and feeling like my world ended when a girl stole it from me! When Steve held the after-school sessions for 4 – 6th graders, and I was finally old enough to go, it was so exciting. I remember learning about layups and trying to figure out how to shoot with only one hand. Finally came Junior High where I remember doing a shell drill where Steve told us to dribble right or left and try to break through the defense. I dribbled left and managed to get between Steve and Amanda who must have been helping out that day. I remember the two of them looking at each other and then me, and me thinking, “I love this game!” I remember being asked to be a stat for the high school team and loving it. It was like being in the grownup basketball family. One game when I was a stat, Steve sat on one of those old water bottles with the purple lids, and the spout closed on his pants. He ripped a hole in his pants as he tried to pull it off, and I can remember the girls all giggling! One of my favorite junior high memories, though, happened when we played Lakeview. Their coach was intense and even seemed a little crazy. He yelled nonstop. That particular game we were playing at home, and we had this older lady as a ref who I never saw after that. She didn’t seem like she knew what she was doing at all. I remember she kept trying to act out the fouls she called when she reported them to the scorer’s table. She called a foul for a “hip check” and slapped her leg, really throwing it out to the side to demonstrate! Anyway, she was mostly terrible and made a whole bunch of bad calls, which had both coaches worked up. It’s foggy now, but it seems like Steve got a technical, and then the Lakeview coach got all riled up over something else and was hollering, so Steve said to the poor lady, “Why doesn’t he get a technical? I just got one for doing the same thing.” She turned around and gave old Lakeview a technical, and he got so mad, he started yelling, “Are you kidding me? You’re just going to give me a technical because Scott suggested it? Well, why don’t you just give me another one?” She looked at him, and T’d him up again. He got thrown out of the game, and after that Mr. Scott was a lot quieter. That’s the only time I ever saw a coach get kicked out of a game in school. Looking back it wasn’t learning how to steal a ball or shoot a layup; Instead, the amazing part about those early memories is that the same coach was in every moment. Steve spent so much time in the gym with players year-round – summer camps, afterschool programs, the junior high season followed by the high school season and then summer open gyms. That is a crazy amount of time!

It’s difficult to narrow down high school memories to just a few. I always thought it was so cool that my freshmen year, I got to be on the sisters’ team. In the starting line-up most of the time, there were two Scotts and two Williams sisters plus our neighbor Katie who I’m pretty sure my sister would have preferred having as a sister over me! My sophomore year Adrianne planned a sleepover at their house, and all I can remember is Cooney Kaiser trying to be stealthy about unzipping her sleeping bag ONE tooth of a plastic zipper at a time and waking up the whole team. I don’t know many coaches who would tolerate a whole team of girls “sleeping” in the basement, but it happened in Saegertown! I

remember having the worst cramps I had ever had in my life one day at practice. It got so bad I was playing like crap, and Steve called me over to ask me what my problem was. I was pretty shy in those days, and I didn’t know what to say, but I was absolutely miserable, so I think I mumbled something about cramps. He just looked at me and told me to sit down and take a rest. I was really glad he had daughters that day. One of those years we started having ankle problems as a team, so Steve ordered these ankle braces probably because he got tired of taping the entire teams’ ankles. They were so tight in a game against Ft LeBeouf everybody’s feet started going numb. He had to take us out of the game one at a time, so we could take them off and stomp some life back into our feet. We went back to taping after that. My senior year kind of took the memories to a whole new level. We were so lucky to have the girls and the coaches we did. Everything just kind of came together, and it was so fun to play and win. Little things stand out to me when I think about Coach Scott like looking over as I dribbled the ball down the floor every time to get the play we were supposed to run. It seems like he hollered that year as much as any, but I always knew he yelled because we had potential and could do better. At the end of the year during playoffs, I can remember running at the end of practice. After we were finished, he’d ask if anybody wanted to run extra. “Just step up to the line if you want to,” he’d say. We’d all straighten back up from gasping for air and line up. Nobody wanted to run extra; we just did it because he asked. In all those years I know at least one clipboard broke, but there could have been more.

That year was special, but it wasn’t just success that made basketball so memorable. It had a lot to do with Steve and the effort he put into our team beginning in 4th grade. Little things like bringing donuts to practice on Christmas Eve made practice seem like a celebration. The team shoes seniors got to pick out and the warm up suits and bags he ordered for us made us feel like a strong, cool unit and not just a bunch of kids who happened to like basketball. The post move demonstrations that Coach had to do because we were all short and didn’t have a clue how to do were even memorable. He seemed so large I’m pretty sure we all just kind of wanted to move out of the way as he came smashing around in the lane, and then watching the 5’7 skinny girls imitating those same moves was comical. Even the fact that his wife, Mary Jean, came to all the games and sat right behind the bench demonstrated the energy that Steve and his whole family put into our team.

I saved so many mementos from basketball because I couldn’t throw them away at the end of my senior year. I had an old Gatorade juice box, my team shoes from our senior year, Hershey bars and kisses that were thrown on the court at the final four game, our state silver medal, Beany Bears that had our blue and gold colors on them, cards, laminated newspaper articles that people gave me, and plaques from all sorts of summer camps on shelves in my old room at home for the longest time. In college or after, I’m not sure, mom went in my old room and found that mice had started eating my chocolate, so that was the end of sentimental saving. The shelves are taken down now, and I finally threw out most of it, but I’m pretty sure I left the shoes in my old closet. It’s not that I’ll ever wear them again, but I like thinking about how a piece of who I was all those years ago, is still there. When I look at them, I start thinking about all those old happy memories and smile. As I grow older, I realize just how much effort and energy it takes to invest in other peoples’ lives, and coach impacted hundreds of kids like me with his. I just want to say thank you to Mr. Scott and his entire family for helping me make those memories and being a part of them. I can never say it enough.

Janet Williams