What the girls on the team love is imitating the YouTube video of Bon Qui Qui taking orders at King Burger, yelling, "Don't interrupt! Rude. Suhh-curr-ity!" Or reenacting the MADtv sketch of Lorraine at the buffet, where Lorraine tries to pay with nickels from a Vegas slot machine: "Last time I checked, nickel was legal tender!"
The best part of Colette's day nearly always happens between 3:15 and 6:15, during basketball. Being with her team puts her in a good mood, despite the fact that practice is hard work. Before or after practice, she and her teammates dance to their favorite hip hop songs, singing loudly, "I can trans-, I can trans-, I can trans-form ya. I can transform ya, like a transformer!" From what I understand, they have serious conversations in the sanctum of the locker room, and they also fine tune their dance moves and their inside jokes.
When they're in the gym, there are no cell phones, no parents, no boys, no facebook, no textbooks, no grades and no worries about the future. Each player puts aside her own concerns for three hours and joins in fully. It's a concentrated immersion experience, the team. For Colette, practice seems to release her soul from the considerable social and academic pressures of junior year of high school.
The coach cultivates their dedication by valuing each player and making the team a safe place emotionally. "What happens in the team," Coach tells them, "stays in the team." She shows them she cares about them and about how they're doing, checking in with them personally and checking in with their teachers. She's fair. For my teenager and the others, she's creating a safe, alternate family--something that, developmentally, Colette needs right now.
In a rigorous academic prep school where 27% of students are students of color, the girls' basketball team this season happens to consist of 90% students and staff of color. It's a different grouping, and maybe the overlapping experience of race for the majority of the team intensifies their bond. These girls share a fierce love for one another. After riding the bus home from a game in Memphis a couple of weeks ago, Colette reported that she and six other girls crammed into two seats for the three-hour drive. "It was such a blast," she told us repeatedly. When eleventh-grade girls choose to squeeze themselves into a seat with ninth-grade girls, something out of the ordinary is happening. The players are coming together over a physically demanding game that challenges them on many levels. They join in with something larger than themselves and seem to find themselves in the process.
At the grocery store one Sunday recently, Colette stopped the cart and exclaimed, "Oh, crap!" She checked her cell phone. "Phew! I thought I forgot Coach's birthday!" Without me, she headed to the baking aisle and picked out ingredients for a cake. At home, she put aside her research paper, made the cake and spent an hour meticulously decorating it with colored frosting. Then, she drove out to buy flowers with her own money and came home to create a handmade card for the team to sign. I watched and smiled to myself. Her love doesn't need to be directed toward me or this family, I thought; I'm so glad she feels it.
Colette announced during pre-season, back in October, that she wanted to see a movie and sleep over at a friend's house because, she said, "when basketball starts, I won't have a life."
I corrected her: "When basketball starts, you'll have more of a life."
