I wasn't completely surprised based on a few things Joe and his best friend, Pike, had told me about how tryouts went, which court they were on, etc. I had an uneasy feeling about it, too, that had settled in earlier in the week. Still, I was hoping for good news but, unfortunately, it didn't work out for Joe like I wanted it to.
Jude and I agreed we needed to tell Joe before school because his friends who had tried out likely would be talking about who made it and who didn't. As he walked back in and sat down, I told him about the e-mail and how sorry we were. Joe's face fell and he sat for a minute in stunned silence, procession the news. I could tell her was trying valiantly to keep his emotions in check at a moment when he was, well, devastated.
I hated - absolutely hated - to give him the news, then send him off to school to deal with it on his own, but we didn't have a choice. It would have been worse, I think, for him to hear the news from someone else or to spend the entire day thinking he had made one of the Stars' teams only to find out when he got home that he had been cut. There was no easy way to handle it.
The hard part is Joe's basketball game does not translate well to a compressed tryout, when coaches are looking for players who have size, quickness, and score the basketball. Joe's game is predicated on passing, running the offense, making the right play, playing sound defense, and leading. The fundamentals.
Last season is a perfect example. Playing for Jared Street's 6th grade team, Joe wasn't the most athletic or the best shooter. Still, a weekend or so into the tournament season, Joe was starting and playing the most minutes for a coach that knows basketball (Coach Street is the head coach at Page High School). At one point, Coach Street, laughing, told me after a game that the only reason he ever took Joe out of a game was when he was tired, because he did everything right. That's not the kind of thing that shows up in a tryout.
The same thing happened with Joe's seventh grade basketball team this winter, too. By the second or third game, he started, ran the offense, passed the ball well, and held everything together. Did the small things. A glue guy, to be sure.
And that's where Lance Akridge let Joe down, I think. Over lunch last season, he was incredulous that Joe hadn't made a Stars' team the previous season, so much so that he admitted they had missed the boat on Joe at tryouts. Last season, however, he had seen what Joe could do and, obviously, had talked to Coach Street.
"We just missed it with Joe," Lance told me at lunch last year.
My obvious question, of course, is how do you miss it with Joe a year later, after he had a successful season with Coach Street, Lance? How do you make the same mistake again?
The answer is Lance didn't even take a look at Joe during tryouts, which he conceded in an e-mail to me after the fact.
I would feel better about the outcome if Lance had watched Joe, even for a couple of minutes, and given me his assessment of where Joe is as a basketball player. That didn't happen, though. I'm disappointed in Lance for that reason.
Look, I recognize this is the ultimate first world problem. The rational part of my brain understands that. Still, as a father, it's so hard to see your son disappointed. When Joe hurts, I hurt for him.
On top of that, I feel responsible for teaching him how to play basketball the right way. Unselfishly. Fundamentally sound. Find the open man. Play defense. Box someone out, even if it means your teammate gets the rebound.
I spent most of Friday, at work, in a daze. For once, I wasn't well equipped to listen to my clients tell me about their problems when I knew my 14-year old son was school trying to deal with the disappointment of something that, for him, is the biggest deal imaginable. His friends made the Stars and he got cut.
Over the weekend, I talked to him about the importance of keeping things in perspective. I told him I understood how he felt, because I had been cut from the basketball team in seventh grade and the baseball team in eighth grade. I wanted to take his hurt and pain and make it mine, even though I know that experiencing adversity like this, now, will make him stronger down the road. I told him that, too.
Frankly, I am still hurting for him and trying my best to process my disappointment for Joe. I know he is hurting, too.
Sometimes it's hard to be a parent.
