Catch a Star

by Tamika Catchings

  And it would mark the beginning of a new role for me in my final two years at Tennessee.

  We were down to two Meeks, and it wasn’t the same.

  Chamique had always been the go-to person. She was the one we’d pass the ball to when we personally were in trouble on the court. When the other team’s defense was solid, the ball would swing around from one of us to another, each of us looking for our shot and not finding it, until finally the ball would be passed over to Chamique. As the go-to girl, she had to make her shot even if her shot wasn’t there. She knew that when the ball came to her, she had to deliver. When the pressure was on, she had to face it, stand up to it, and perform.

  Chamique’s graduation and entry into the WNBA meant the Fab 4 and others on the team had to step up. It meant I had to step up.

  Pat talked with me before the season. She told me, “Now that Chamique is gone, they’re gonna be gunning for you. You’re the All-American. You’re gonna get banged up, they’ll be double- and triple-teaming you. You have to rise above it.”

  It meant that I was the new go-to girl.

  I learned a lot about “rising above” in my last two years of college ball. I’m not sure at first I was comfortable being the go-to for the Lady Vols. I didn’t doubt the talent God had given me, but to take the responsibility for the team was another thing.

  I’ve since come to think that this is kind of like taking a leap of faith.

  I think everyone needs to be a go-to person at some point. We all need to step up, stand for something, be the go-to for someone, and take responsibility. But some people have never taken control of their own lives to be that go-to person. Many don’t take ownership of that.

  In basketball, for me, it was a leap of faith. I had to dare myself to step up and be the go-to person. It’s scary sometimes. It’s challenging. But a leap of faith is when we jump and God says, “I’ve got you.” A leap of faith is God saying, “I created you to be who you are. You can do this. Don’t shrink from this opportunity in your life.”

  At the same time, a go-to person needs to understand that while there are times she has to be the one to face the pressure, step up to the challenge, and take the shot, there are also many times she has to be a team player. Success on the court depends on knowing which is which—knowing when you are the go-to and have to take the shot or when the team is made better by you passing the ball and being a team player.

  I think success in life is the same thing. Knowing when to “take the shot.” And knowing when to be a team player. At home. With family. With friends. At church. At play. At work.

  My life was changing. And my focus too.

  As I was walking around one of our dorm halls one day, I saw a young man crutching his way into the dorm. I don’t know what it was that made me reach out to him to ask if he needed any help. But we started talking and formed an instant bond. He was in a rush but invited me to come to a “meeting” with him. I don’t normally go with strangers, but for whatever reason, I matched his stride and joined him.

  “Hi, my name is Tamika Catchings and I’m a junior here playing on the basketball team. Jeremy,” I said as I looked over at him, “is how I got here.”

  That was my first of many meetings with FCA—Fellowship of Christian Athletes. FCA conducted meetings for athletes on campus called “huddles,” where there would be Bible study, devotional time, speakers, and discussion. The best part to me was that it was all the other athletes—male and female, from all the different sports. I loved it!

  I had a new focus for my life. Jesus was at the center, and I was more open with others about my faith. I’m not saying that I was sharing my testimony with everyone—I’ve never been one to be extremely vocal about much of anything, and besides, I knew how some Christians come across to others, and I didn’t want to be too pushy like that. But I had found the most important thing in life, Jesus, and I didn’t care if others knew.

  It was an opportunity for me to learn more about God, Jesus, and the Bible. I think growing up we kind of have a child’s view of God, based on Bible stories in Sunday school, and that’s fine. But when we become adults, we need to step up to another level of knowledge and faith. That’s what was happening to me, and that’s what FCA helped me do.

  Sometimes Ace, Semeka, and Tree attended FCA with me. For Ace, growing up, she really never read the Bible. Scripture was read in the Catholic church she attended, but the people didn’t read it on their own. She was finding a depth of Bible understanding she never had before.

  The Bible talks about spiritual “milk” and “solid food,” how there’s a simple faith that is about drinking “milk,” yet how important it is to partake of the “solid food” of Scripture and grow a more adult faith.

  That’s what was happening to us.

  One development was of real interest to all of us on the team.

  Professional women’s basketball became a reality in 1997. Commissioned by the NBA (National Basketball Association) in 1996, the WNBA was born. It launched with a marketing campaign—“We Got Next.” Three stars were the faces of the new WNBA—Sheryl Swoopes, Rebecca Lobo, and Lisa Leslie.

  By the fall of 1998, the WNBA was finishing their second year, with the Houston Comets winning back-to-back championship series.

  The significance of the WNBA was not lost on us. At the time I’d accepted the letter of recruitment to play for Pat Summitt at Tennessee, there was nowhere for women to play professional basketball after college, except for international leagues and the Olympics once every four years. Now there was another path. New opportunity. Life after college. A career in basketball.

  “One day I’ll be in the NBA” was now a possibility in a way I hadn’t imagined. My goal had changed to “One day I’ll be in the WNBA.”

  The record we achieved my junior year was by many standards pretty great. We went 31–3.

  Unfortunately, we lost our first regular-season game that year to Louisiana Tech, which, following our NCAA tournament loss the year before, prompted the media to wonder if we’d lost our winning ways. But we survived that, and won eleven straight before falling to archrival UConn. We also lost, badly, to Georgia, before going on another run of twenty straight wins and taking the number one seed going into the NCAA tournament.

  Of course, the real problem was that the standards Pat set for us and that we had achieved in 1998 were so high that nothing short of perfection was perceived by the sports world and by the media as being significant enough.

  And the competition level was getting higher.

  Whether it was the success of the Lady Vols through the decade, the emergence of Geno Auriemma’s UConn as a national force, or the growth of the newborn WNBA, women’s basketball was growing fans, followers, and future basketball players. Now that there was a future career in the sport, the talent level had taken a leap forward.

  We were facing better competition across the board. But we also picked up some top talent ourselves.

  Pat had recruited Kara Lawson, a high school All-American guard from Springfield, Virginia. She was the top-ranked prospect that year, and she defied her father’s wishes in choosing Tennessee over Stanford. Kara would come into the team her freshman year and immediately become the floor general and one of our top scorers. She had poise and lots of talent.

  Tree had transferred out of Tennessee, going into her junior year at the University of South Carolina, where she had a great final two years. But in her absence, Michelle Snow stepped up and became our strong presence in the middle.

  Without Tree, our Fab 4 suddenly became a Fab 3, not quite the same. But Ace, Semeka, and I were starters that year, with Kara and Michelle rounding out our starting five. As a team, we were a strong shooting team averaging nearly eighty points a game.

  The NCAA tournament took us from Knoxville to Memphis and landed us in Philadelphia for the championship game against our archrival, UConn. We won every game by double digits, and we felt good about our chances in the final.

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sp; Ace hurt her ankle that morning in shoot-around, and besides the obvious loss of her leadership on the court, we hoped it wasn’t an omen of the game to come. Mique was at the game, this time watching, fresh off her first season with the WNBA Washington Mystics and being named WNBA Rookie of the Year. Perhaps that would give us the motivational edge we needed.

  UConn came out playing relentless defense. Smothering. Scrappy. Maybe they took a page out of Duke’s playbook the year before. Led by guard Sue Bird, they relentlessly pushed the ball up the court after forcing us to turn over the ball, and often scoring on their end. We had twelve turnovers in the first half, and I’d bet UConn converted most of them into points.

  I had defenders draped all over me. I fought and scraped to get free, and rarely did. It made me so frustrated. After the first sixteen minutes of play I hadn’t scored yet. Semeka was also having a bad night, with just two points.

  We went nearly eight minutes without scoring a basket. I remembered what Pat had told me at the beginning of the year. How I needed to rise above. I kept playing through, playing hard, trying to find a zone.

  And then, I had a brief flurry of success toward the end of the first half. I scored, finally, and after a stop at the other end, Kara fed me a bounce pass and I drained a three.

  Even so, we went into the locker room at halftime down by fifteen. Not that it was a deficit we couldn’t overcome, but nothing we’d done in the first half gave anyone confidence we could turn things around.

  I won’t say much about the second half. It was all UConn. They played a great game, and we just didn’t put it together. With five minutes to go in the game we were down by twenty-five. It was not only frustrating; it was embarrassing. And no matter how frantically we played in the final minutes, we would lose the championship by nineteen points.

  I was asked after the game how I felt. I suppose it’s the obvious question, but really? I felt bad. Really bad.

  Have I mentioned how much I hate to lose?

  Dealing with losing is a part of life. I say that while at the same time I admit that sometimes I am a terrible loser. The one thing I’ve learned is that it’s really important not to get too down on yourself. It’s easy to swallow a loss and let it spoil inside you. You can start to doubt yourself, question your ability, and become tentative about what you’re made to do. You have to move on.

  I think it’s best to focus instead on what you have achieved, relish those moments of excellence when you know you did your best, and embrace the underlying talent that is your joy. Sometimes that’s hard to do, especially after a tough loss. But you just have to rise above. Fighting off the negative energy following a loss is sometimes as important as the battle during the game. Remember, the important thing is not how many times you get knocked down but how many times you choose to get back up.

  That year I was honored by being selected as the Naismith College Player of the Year. It’s a prestigious honor, a selection of the top coaches, sports media, and fans across the country. The award was a reflection of how others recognized the level of play I had reached and meant that I had established myself at the top of the college game.

  It was also special to me because the winner both of the previous years was Chamique Holdsclaw.

  I had become the go-to girl.

  We entered the new millennium with high hopes for reclaiming the NCAA championship title. Semeka, Ace, and I were seniors, veterans of the Pat Summitt era. Kara Lawson was a sophomore, along with an emerging forward from Alabama named Gwen Jackson. Michelle Snow continued as our force in the middle, along with freshman center Ashley Robinson.

  We beat our first five opponents by an average of thirty-three points. Everything was clicking. All five of us starters were each scoring in double digits.

  One of those early games was against Illinois. But my sister Tauja had graduated that spring after a strong college career with the Illini, and was drafted by the WNBA Phoenix Mercury. (That one game back in 1998 when Tennessee and Illinois faced off would be the only time Tauja and I competed head-to-head on a college court.)

  There was talk about who would be the top picks in the WNBA draft the next year. Some top players were mentioned in the discussions—Jackie Stiles, Katie Douglas, Australia’s Lauren Jackson, and Kelly Miller, among others, including me. In fact, some talked about me going number one. I really didn’t think about it much, but I was confident enough that I could be one of the top picks in the draft that next April.

  But my focus was on playing games now, and winning for Tennessee. Which we did. In fact, we’d win our first eleven games of the year—before coming to a screeching halt in none other than Storrs, Connecticut, at the hands of our archnemesis, UConn.

  After the loss to Connecticut, we’d win our next four games before facing Mississippi State on January 15.

  We were playing at home on a cloudy, dreary day in Knoxville. We started the game slowly, and were actually behind the entire first half. Six assists in the first half was the sorry stat stating the obvious—we weren’t passing the ball enough, not working together as a team.

  But we came out the second half on fire. Went on something like a 9–0 run and finally tied it some four minutes in.

  With a little under seven minutes left in the game, we were up by eight. A lead, but not our normal blowout. It was that kind of game, like playing in molasses. Eight points was about as big a lead as we’d had all night. But we knew it wasn’t safe.

  On defense I was able to slide into position under the basket just in time to take a charge from the Bulldogs’ guard LaToya Thomas. We got two out of that, extending our lead to ten. But Mississippi State’s Cynthia Hall scored a big three-pointer to cut it to just seven.

  We needed to answer.

  As the ball came out of the net, it was quickly inbounded to me, and I raced up the floor, dribbling on the right side. I had position, the only thing between me and the basket was LaToya, and then I would have a clear path to the basket. I remember going at her with an in and out right past half-court and getting by her. As I got to the basket I came in and jump-stopped.

  I planted my feet. And then, going up, I felt something in my knee.

  My strength rushed out of my leg. I lost upward momentum, and the ball never had a chance. I came down in a heap, writhing in pain. Later, spectators and announcers would speculate that I hurt myself as I hit the floor. Not so. I was hurt on the way up. I felt the pain.

  After some minutes, the pain had subsided. Had I thought about it, I’d have realized it only subsided because I wasn’t moving my knee. Keeping it in one place, it felt relatively okay. I begged everyone to tape me up and let me keep playing. But no one would listen. They knew better. What it looked like, what they feared, and what turned out to be true was that I had torn my ACL.

  I was carted off the court. It was a season-ending injury, not to mention having serious implications regarding my future status in the WNBA.

  It was an experience that would change my perspective and my life, although it certainly wouldn’t be the last time I’d have my shot blocked by God.

  Part 4

  Voices

  They’re everywhere . . .

  The voices, the murmurs they continue on

  I don’t quite understand, but they’re there. I hear them.

  In my head, from my fam . . . Go left. Go right. Shoot. Drive.

  Be the shooter. Don’t pass up shots.

  Defend. Shoot. Go, go, go . . .

  12

  Fever

  You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

  Matthew 5:3, Message

  We take so much for granted in life, assuming that we will be able to do this and that, and that tomorrow we will be able to do more of what we did today, and that we’ll be able to continue our life on the course it’s on.

  I felt so many things in the aftermath of my injury. Anger, confusion, worry. Why did it have to happen now? I had
hoped to finish out my last year at Tennessee in a flourish, maybe lead the team to another national championship. And I had dreamed of being picked up by a top team in the WNBA draft. Now those hopes and dreams lay in pieces underneath the basket alongside my shattered ACL.

  The Tennessee Lady Vols would have to finish the season without me. And no WNBA team would want to draft a player with a shattered ACL.

  Tearing my ACL was devastating in so many ways.

  It’s a common injury in sports, especially in basketball, especially among women, as it turns out—an injury to the part of the knee that stabilizes it. I might have assumed it would happen sometime in my basketball career, but I never imagined it would happen like that or at that time. ACLs require a long recovery time and tons of rehab. I could handle the recovery work, but what about my future career in basketball?

  A verse in the Bible says something like, “You don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.”1 In the aftermath of my injury, I was in that Knoxville fog, frustrated and disappointed. And I think maybe I caught a glimpse of how fleeting and fragile life actually is.

  That became God time for me. I had to turn to God for understanding about what had happened. I sought him, prayed, and did the only other thing I could do: wait. Times like these give the phrase “Wait upon the Lord” new meaning.

  I don’t know that God causes things like my injury, but I sure know he uses them. When I wasn’t completely consumed with basketball, suddenly my heart turned to him once again. And I felt called to give him my life, completely.

  And it was then that I felt a change. My anger and confusion fell away. I literally felt, suddenly, that I was washed in peace.

  The Lady Vols played well without me. I had been their leading scorer, and it wasn’t easy to replace my average fifteen points per game. But the team stepped up. We won the remainder of our games in the regular season, faltering only in the SEC tournament game against Vandy, a loss of just three points.