Basketball with My Students

Today, I played an exciting, little pickup game during homeroom between students and faculty. It was fun, despite the fact that it looked something like old people trying out for American Gladiators. Slaughter is not a strong enough word for what we went through.

I was running up and down the court gasping for breath eventually forgetting about the ball and simply trying to tackle the students that were shooting the best.

To add to our humiliation, the teachers somehow talked themselves into wearing shorts in order to be better prepared for the game. When they started to decide on this in yesterday’s meeting, I immediately objected saying it might not look good for all of the teachers to be wearing shorts to school like that. But what I was really thinking was that my legs haven’t actually seen sun for several months. They’ve been like two polar bears that I’ve been letting hibernate for the winter. I didn’t know how they would react to being ripped out of their caves and paraded around in front of four hundred slightly-insane teenagers.

But I did make one shot. It was from the three-point line and I had no one around me. I think most of the students assumed that the white guy with the frightened, confused look on his face didn’t really need to be defended all that closely. So I’m glad to prove them wrong even though I was probably more shocked than any one in the gym that the ball went in.