Hoops

Saturday was a highlight day for me. Every year the Rochester College Men’s Basketball program hosts an alumni game for those of us who…well…played basketball…hence alumni. It way obvious that many of us are a step slower, a few pounds heavier, with increasing receding hair lines.

Getting to see Coach Pleasant is a highlight. If you don’t know, he has the most wins of any active coach (I believe he’s currently at 620 plus) in Michigan men’s collegiate basketball. Click here to read more about him.

As a young man, eighteen years of age and green to the top, he took me under his wing (along with Coach George Evjen) and made a man out of me. Spending my college years under his leadership, wisdom and mentoring was perhaps the single greatest reason for entering ministry and for wanting to teach at the college level.

Little known fact: I was an all-state basketball player coming out of a large Greater Detroit public high school. I wasn’t convinced, at least as not as much as my father was, that going to Rochester to play basketball was the best decision. Ten years later, I can say that God’s hand was in this decision.

I owe Coach more than I’ll ever be able to repay.

Wednesday of this week, I had lunch with Coach Pleasant. We traded funny stories, like the time on our annual Florida trip I convinced everyone to get wet at the bottom of large water ride, only to ditch the scene at the last moment. While everyone on our team jumped around soaking wet, I calmly re-entered the scene pretending I’d shared in their suffering. The only problem: One of our coaches taped the entire thing.

Coach must have replayed that clip ten times in the hotel room that night.

Or the time a referee said to me at the onset of the second game of a back to back: “Must have been a tough game last night against Northern State.” We’d just played Northern State (where legendary and former Lipscomb University coach Don Meyer now coaches) the night before. Our second game, which began only twelve hours after the first had ended, was against one of the top NCAA D2 schools in the nation (they were ranked #5 at the time).

“What do you mean,” I asked?
“Well, looks like you got your tooth knocked out.”
“Oh…no, that’s just how my teeth look. I have a crooked tooth.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, son,” replied the ref.

Coach Pleasant heard the entire conversation and laughed all the way through the first give minutes of the game. Incidentally it was about the only thing we had to smile about the entire trip. Let’s just say that Thanksgiving in South Dakota is not all it’s cracked up to be.

There are dozens of stories I’m thinking of right now…I’ll save them for another time. For these pivotal years, these young men and coaches were my community. We were a church. We were a brotherhood. We were dysfunctional (not all of us made the best decisions). We were family. We were each other’s best friends and greatest critics.