In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle

by Madeleine Blais

  That’s what happened. We got proud. We got pissed. We got a little scared of losing time. I learned self-confidence is not only acceptable, it is indispensable.

  Be nice when it’s time to be nice and when others are nice to you. But niceness has no place on the court because the other team wants you to lose. The court is where you can be all those things we’re not supposed to be: aggressive, cocky, strong. It’s okay; it’s alright.

  There’s this feeling that you get. Once you get it, you can get it back again and again, just thinking about the game. It’s when you can’t distinguish between the emotions that are driving you, but you know that they’re all there and they all want the same thing. It makes you grit your teeth, bite down on your back teeth so that your jaw is tight. Unsure if you’re about to cry or about to attack, your nose flares and every muscle in your body tightens up. It happens when you take every last feeling of indignation and resentment, love and confidence, onto the court. When the court is your outlet for this feeling, you can’t lose. For every time I felt I’d been manipulated or that I hadn’t stood up for myself, hadn’t proven that I deserve credit and respect, I pushed that much harder with my legs and wanted that much more. The cause of that feeling was different for each of us on the team, but we all had it and we quietly respected where it came from in everyone else. I don’t need to know what or who has pushed Kristin around in her life or why it made her push twice as hard against Kim Frost. She just needs to know that I understand and that I can relate. Each time she grabs a rebound, I see the look. I see how she grits her teeth, how her upper lip curls just a little bit. The only sound that could possibly come from such a face would be a low growl. She has inside her what I have inside me. The fact that we all recognized tonight that each one of us is fighting against something different allowed us to fight for one common goal with all our hearts.

  We weren’t conceited, we were proud. And in between those two seasons, we wanted to be the best and we wanted everyone to know it. That’s not selfish or cocky; that’s the mentality of an athlete, and that’s what I found!

  And so, twelve months later, Kathleen Poe faced the opponent who had caused her to curl into herself on the floor, and this time, head high, she walked off the court.

  The score: 63–41.

  From the Daily Hampshire Gazette, March 8, 1993:

  FANS ARE THE BIG WINNERS

  by Marty Dobrow, staff writer

  SPRINGFIELD—Basketball mania was alive and well Saturday as thousands of fans poured into the Springfield Civic Center to watch arch rivals Northampton and Amherst vie for the girls regional tournament title.

  Many also came to watch the female athletes who have elevated girls basketball to a popularity unknown in recent years in Hampshire county.

  However, the Western Massachusetts Division I final was hardly the “battle of Titans” as many had hoped. The easy Amherst win, 63–41, was its third straight over Northampton this year.

  But despite the lopsided victory, many people said they were glad they came to see why Amherst Regional High School point guard Jamila Wideman has garnered national publicity. As master of the court, Wideman wasn’t a disappointment.

  An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 people watched the girls game, including entire families from each community, contingents of proud relatives of the players, and entourages from each school.

  By far the noisiest crowd was on the Amherst side, which had the advantage of cheerleaders whipping up the fans. The Hurricanes also gave them something to cheer about—big leads.

  And to underscore the serious attention given to the Hurricanes was a program like those typically found at professional games.

  The program—printed on neon pink paper—contained a complete scorecard as well as individual statistics for each Amherst player.

  The program was distributed courtesy of Richard M. Howland, an Amherst lawyer and big booster for the team.

  Howland said he follows girls basketball partly because he has two daughters.

  Jackie Quirk of Northampton said of the rivalry, “I think it’s fabulous. It’s about time girls got to compete with honor and respect.”

  Quirk organized a group from Northampton that included two fathers, three 8-year-old girls and a 7-year-old boy.

  “I thought it would be good to bring the girls,” noted Michael Southerland, who was part of Quirk’s group.

  He said the female athletes were good role models for young children, including boys.

  Douglas Cropper, an assistant boys basketball coach in South Hadley, came because he “heard it’s a great matchup.” He believes girls basketball can be just as exciting as boys.

  Daniel Banks, a basketball fan from Amherst with no ties to the school or players, said the girls “have done a lot for basketball in Amherst.”

  Amherst Regional High football coach Thomas Cullen hobbled to the Civic Center on crutches after undergoing knee surgery Tuesday.

  “I can’t miss this game,” he said, adding, “I think girls athletics have come a long way. It’s great.”

  Barbara Boudway, the mother of senior Northampton player Heather Boudway, said that sports brings people together.

  “It’s a whole community thing. The community here is supporting the girls and it’s a real positive thing.’’ Boudway said.

  With a little sigh she noted, “I only wish the score was a little closer.”

  Bob Pariseau and Tracy Osbahr had issued a win-or-lose invitation to come to their house after the game for a party.

  The bus back to Amherst buttered the highway home, a contrast to the sullen choppy journey of a year ago.

  On this night the men slapped each other on the back, raised their drinks, and tried, with only some success, to avoid preening.

  Milling about in the small combination dining and living room, munching on cheese and celery, sipping wine or soda, the women were equally touched by the events of the evening, of the season really, almost beyond words, telegraphing by the look in their eyes how proud they were to be related to these girls by blood or by circumstance, and when they did talk, among each other, it was with an intimacy that took itself for granted. No one bothered to lecture anyone about the touch-and-go trepidation that afflicts all mothers and stepmothers of daughters, that knots their hearts and sabotages sleep, the posse of doubts and fears. Grant me, the girl at the Bat Mitzvah had said, the confidence to raise my voice that I might be heard. On this night in Springfield at the Civic Center the team had raised a collective voice, on behalf of their fathers and stepfathers and uncles and brothers, but especially on behalf of the women in their lives. Buried amid the dip and the Doritos, the high fives and the hugs, was a silent recognition that at long last that annoying interrogatory so beloved of the pundits, “What do women want?” had found an answer here in the heat of this room.

  A lot of things.

  And this is part of it.

  11

  An Untouchable Breed

  Perhaps this is true of every place in the country, but it seems particularly true of Massachusetts that the construction of big buildings is fraught with problems. Ideally, there should be a predictable and pleasing rhythm to these ventures, first the excitement, then the excavation, and then the slow coloring in of floors and roofs and walls and at last the triumphant unveiling. But the Bay State may well be the world capital of construction glitches. The designers of the world’s tallest library at U Mass discovered there is a good reason why at twenty-eight stories high they have the world’s record.

  Books are heavy.

  So heavy that for a while the area outside the building was cordoned off so that bricks popping out of the exterior walls of the twenty-eight-story building would not bean anybody.

  Not that U Mass is alone in its construction woes. In the early seventies the John Hancock Tower in Boston used to have a problem with splintering windows, f
or which the polite term “defenestration” was sometimes used.

  Around the same time, a sports and entertainment center called the Centrum was proposed with the usual flurry of euphoria for the city of Worcester, about forty miles west of Boston. CIVIC CENTER WOULD ‘ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE’ was a typical headline of the time.

  A decade later, just as the facility neared completion, the opening was delayed, and then delayed again. The pipes in the drainage system kept bursting and the usual culprits of “substandard construction and numerous imperfections in the steel fabrication” were held responsible.

  At last, on September 2, 1982, its premier act was Frank Sinatra; since then the Centrum had featured Aerosmith, Barry Manilow, Tina Turner, Pavarotti, Billy Joel, Kenny Rogers, Genesis, Hulk Hogan, and Madonna, in a presentation that a city father witnessed and later pronounced offensive, “the details of which cannot be enunciated in a family newspaper.”

  And now the Amherst Hurricanes.

  They were filled with fear and awe, but when someone suggested they might be intimidated by the prospect of following Madonna, however belatedly, it was Rita who set the record straight.

  “Madonna is not my hero. She wanted attention, she wanted money, she wanted glory, she wanted the microphone, and she did it just by taking off her clothes. I treat my body three hundred degrees different. I lift weights not so I’ll look strong to other people, but so I’ll be strong. I take care of my body. I make sure I sleep. I sleep a lot more than my friends. I eat well . . . too much sugar, but other than that I’m fine. If I get an injury like a pull, I listen to it. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I ask enough of my body without asking it to deal with random substances. Once she got hold of the microphone, she just took off more clothes. She never did anything except be sexy. I resent the message that if you are sexy, you are powerful. That’s what I think Madonna stands for. As an athlete, it kills me.”

  Coach Moyer kept calling the Centrum “Disney World North.”

  The nervousness was pervasive.

  Okay, so they beat Hamp in the Western Mass Regional Finals, they weren’t really champions—not yet. Did they have what it takes, these sweet-looking girls reared in maple syrup country? Playing before a few thousand fans in what is almost your own backyard is nothing compared with a stadium that seats 13,800, where real pros play.

  Rocking Feiker is one thing, but the Centrum?

  “Hey, Charlie, how you doing, old buddy?”

  It was Betsy Moyer on the phone with Captain Charlie Scherpa. The two knew each other from hot summer days on the fields where their daughters had both been members of the Lassie League softball teams.

  “No complaints here. How can I help you, Betsy?”

  “You know how Ron’s kids are going to Worcester for the state finals?”

  “Is there anyone in town who doesn’t?”

  “I’d like a little help with an idea I have . . .”

  The police officer did not hesitate. This is a small town. This wasn’t really even a favor, more along the lines of a professional courtesy.

  “No problem, Betsy. You tell Ron to consider it done. By the way, congratulations. I hear that younger girl of yours is breaking records on the swim team.”

  Jen and Jamila had a new ritual greeting for each other in the corridors of the high school. From the wan acknowledgments of a year ago in which, as Jen had once said, “we barely said hi-hi to each other,” they now gave each long looks and smiled broadly.

  Schoolmates who observed the silent exchange stood to the side.

  They parted so that each girl could plunge forward toward the other, with her characteristic stride: Jen’s no-nonsense and efficient, Jamila’s on the balls of her feet (a local writer once said she moved in a slight sway, like oil in a can).

  When they got close enough, they stopped for a second and agreed, in voices loud enough to carry down the long corridors, low enough to vibrate with conviction:

  “We’re not losing.”

  The championship game was scheduled for Saturday, March 13.

  No one thought to worry about the weather. It was the kind of winter that had surely exhausted its quota of rotten days.

  Friday, the day before the game was to be played, was sunny, cool and clear. A pep rally was held in the gym at the high school. George Graiff, the janitor who prepped the gym before each game, sweeping, pulling down the bleachers, dry-mopping the floor, who had worked at one time for Jen’s father and who had attended the school when Kim’s mother was enrolled, gave each girl on the varsity and junior varsity as well as their coaches and trainers a red and white carnation (he deliberately chose the school colors) in appreciation for the way they had treated him. “There will always be,” as he put it, “some apples in the barrel, but these kids were nice. They said ‘hi’ and ‘thanks.’ The guy upstairs gave them arms and legs, and they don’t mind using them to lift a tray.”

  Friday smiled.

  But the newscasters told a different story:

  The UMass Minutemen have scored their second Atlantic 10 win in the title championship against Temple, 69–61. . . . Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s most powerful drug leader, may be willing to surrender to authorities and return to prison. . . . In Waco, Texas, David Koresh of the Branch Davidians said they would give up next week, but God spoke to him, so he changed his mind. Negotiators are still optimistic that the standoff can be resolved peacefully. The government has brought in tanks that are not armed. These will be used only defensively. . . . In other news, major Northeaster coming through the area on Saturday . . . very windy . . . snow mixed with sleet and rain at times. Chances of precipitation: one hundred percent. This is a storm of historic proportions.

  Pippin Ross at WFCR, a National Public Radio affiliate, went so far as to call it “the mother of all storms,” although an Amherst listener later filed a complaint about the “blatant sexism” of that expression.

  The lines for gasoline and at the liquor and the video stores would have been even worse if the college students weren’t away on spring break. As it was, Video to Go was open that Saturday for only six hours and came close to doing its best volume ever; for some reason it never occurs to patrons what it would be like if the power did go off and you tried to watch a video by candlelight.

  SCHOOL PLAYERS PUTTING EXCITEMENT ON HOLD

  By B. J. Schecter

  Special to the Globe

  . . . Because of the anticipated storm, the three boys’ and three girls’ state basketball championship games scheduled at the Centrum today have been postponed until tomorrow at the same times. . . .

  The Amherst girls didn’t find out about the change until two minutes before their pep rally. “We were all set to go, and then we heard about this,” said Coach Ron Moyer. “It’s tough for the kids and for the school. We don’t know when we are playing. If the storm is as bad as they say it is, we may not play until next week.”

  On Saturday the snow came down, and because of the winds it also went sideways and up. The snow was general throughout New England. Horizons and boundaries, lines and edges vanished.

  Rita finally had a little extra time to devote to her journal:

  I am writing in the middle of the biggest storm of decades—we have about 2 feet of snow, hurricane force winds in some parts of New England and flooding from the tides. The power is expected to go out any time. Today after watching Hoosiers, we went out skiing (in the luminous dark of a night white with snow) it was so wonderful. First it was athletically exhilarating. I could feel my quads pushing and sweat dripping down my back, my face being stung with gusts of icy snow/sleet—so fun. And I was thinking about basketball and Hoop Phi, and how thankful I am to be playing with them and how psyched I am to go to camp this summer and how much I love the game and it is my dream to play in college.

  I kept imagining myself a Norwegian princess in the time of fai
ry tales, stories of saving people on skis and fighting bears and fishing in a blizzard kept flickering through my head like firelight from a huge hearth at a ski lodge in the Alps. When we got home of course this idea was broken by the cars in the driveway and the electrical wires above.

  Then my dad and I shoveled ten feet of the driveway and played basketball for half an hour. There was a huge bank by that time bordering the driveway so I ran and jumped in it like it was a wave in the ocean. So fun.

  The game was rescheduled for Sunday night at six.

  And then it was postponed, again: The roads were a disaster and even working overtime, the plows couldn’t clear them.

  There is a way in which an athlete prepares for a contest that has nothing to do with the obvious skill-building and calisthenics. It is quiet and invisible, an elaborate and subtle psychosomatic preparation, all those signals from the brain that orchestrate the sleep rhythms and the eating rhythms and the mind rhythms that speed up healing of tissue and slow down the response to pain, that prep a player in a way that no mere drill ever could. To build in this way toward a game once and then to have to back off because of a postponement is frustrating; to have it happen twice is excruciating to a whole different degree.

  On Monday, Coach Moyer was able to arrange for a practice at the Cage. He relished the idea that he could take a small town and make it even smaller, that he knew someone who knew someone who would open the door so his kids could practice in a big-time gym.

  They practiced solemnly.

  Their eyes were veiled.

  It was hard to tell if the Hurricanes were in their game or out of it, if the bland imperviousness of their expressions was a good sign or not.

  Coach Moyer warned them that Haverhill was a team that knew all the tricks and that Amherst might need to employ some of its special strategies, the “Shoelace” or the “Murphy.”

  “There’s no Chuck and Chase on Haverhill,” he said, employing the term he had used since the start of the season to describe teams who let fate run them.