2. coach straw
That’s what I knew him as. Coach Straw. Sadly, I just looked up “coach straw” to confirm that’s how he spelled his name and not somethinig non-intuitive to me like Coach Straugh. It’s crazy how many pronuciations/spellings are non-intuitive to me in the English language. You’d almost think it wasn’t my first language. It’s at least probably the first time it is my first language.
Anyway, back to the plot.
It was sad, not because I had to look up “Coach Straw” but because what came up in my search was just a bunch of shitty designer beach bags made with straw material. When I think about the value of Coach Straw’s soul on this planet vs the value of a straw Coach’s material, Coach Straw’s value is immeasurably greater than the other. You could not even compare the two.
Coach Straw was my feshman year high school women’s basketball coach. There was so many specficiations in that sentence, let’s review them. [My] = he was my coach. [freshman year] = only one year out of 4 year’s of high school. [women’s basketball] = a male telling a women how to play a sport. [coach] = he was teaching us. The thing is even with all of those specifications that doesn’t even begin to hold the meaningful impact he had on my life. And I’m not talking about that summer league right before freshman year that he coached during, as well. I’m talking about the life lesson. He was only in my life for a few years but he gave me one of the greatest gifts a man could give me. He taught me that I could do anything a man could do.
He was an amazing coach at teaching girls how to play basketball, he was an even more amazing coach at teaching girls how to value themselves. And he was so angelic about his lesson, he taught us without us even knowing it. I can imagine there are still some girls today that never reflected on all he did for us and therefore, never learned the lesson. But not me, I’m fairly good at learning my lesson. Now, I don’t always not make the same mistake again but like my mother said to me once “sometimes, we have to learn the same lesson many times.”
So what did this man do that was sooooooo incrediblyyy amazinggggg ???
Thanks for asking, I’ll tell ya.
For starters, he put us in a league over the summer. He recruited as many girls as he could that would be attending Marriotts Ridge the following year, added them to his normal travel basketball team roster and put us in a league to get extra practice / build up chemistry. We had heard what an amazing coach he was for young girls already so all our parents agreed to the investment.
We arrive at the first game. Of course, a bunch of us show up at the same time (on teams you’re all supposed to arrive at the same time so it’s normal to see a bunch of teammate’s or opponent’s walking into the court at the same time, anyway...) We’re all a little nervous. We’re walking down those long corridors of a foreign high school’s halls looking everyone up and down. Sizing up the competition. Only for this particular game, we only saw men lining the hallway. It was typical for men’s leagues to play before or after us on the court. So instead of sizing up the competition, we’re making googly eyes with pre-pubescent boys. We wave to Coach Straw, he’s already at the end of the hallway peaking into the gym. He waves us on and we go inside. We start to realize that the other team “stretching to go on next” is another boys team.
So we innocently ask Coach Straw,
“know any of the girls we’re playing today?”
(when you’re coach its common to have an understanding
of the competition within each league, each team).
He responds, “oh you’re not playing girls today”
And we’re like “what do you meannnn we’re not playing girls today??”
He goes, “this is a boys league”
And we’re like “ARE YOUUUU SERIOOUSS!? you put us in a BOYSSS league!!! and didn’t tell us???”
(this is how teen girls talk, we’re very expressive)
And he’s like “you didn’t ask if it was a boys league”
And we’re just completely dumb founded, trying to remember what we DID ask about the league and how we never thought it would be a boys league. The thought literally never crossed our mind. We just assumed girls would be put into a girl’s league. We didn’t even know we were allowed to play in a boy’s league. Were we even allowed to play in a boy’s league??
And with that thought, we started to look around at the court. Our googly eyed glasses had unfogged and now we saw all the confused and dirty looks the boys, their parents and their coaches were giving us.
So we asked, “well did you at least tell the league we were a girls team!!??”
And he said, “they didn’t ask!”
And I swear to god, it was one of those few moments where what you’ve heard or witnessed is so absolutely bat shit bonkers, ridiculous that you have to just break out in laughter.
We were terrified to play the boys because we never imagined we could. And the boys were terrified to find out what would happen if girls could play boys.
And you know what? They hurt my tits elbowing us in the chest and they kicked our asses. I swear to god, every time I had to play boys in sports I thought to myself “I feel like I’m running under water compared to the speed at which boys run.” And it totally could’ve been a me problem. But god damn, they could move their legs. Dumb as shit. But they can move their legs.
We lost to the boys 10 times out of 12 but to be given an opportunity that would change the perception of what’s possible in our womanly lives... we were the real winners.
And it didn’t just stop there. It was the way he talked to us. The way he took the time to understand us. He was the only male coach I ever had (played sports my whole life) that I felt comfortable enough to look him dead in the eye, when we’re down by 10 in the 3rd quarter and say “I gotta come out coach, I gotta change my tampon.” And he would take me out. He really believed in us. He saw each of us as an individual and as a time. He considered what roles different people could play to create the best possible outcome for everyone. And he was fair. He didn’t have favorites. He just had some players that successfully worked together and some players that only had a few, unique instances of successfully working together. He was fair.
He taught us about fairness, too. It wasn’t very typical for sports teams to go on unique field trips. Normally your teaches took you for a specific class-related reason, but your coaches rarely got to take you out of the school day for a field trip. But Coach Straw worked really hard to convince the school and our parents to let him rent a bus for the day to take us from the suburbs of Maryland into Washington D.C. to meet the first ever supreme court justice Sandra Day O’Connor. He knew how important it was to not only believe in what could be possible in a women’s life but to also see a living, breathing example of what it looks like to accomplish what you believe in.
When Sandra Day O’Connor was a young girl, it was inconcievable to think that a women would EVER be a Supreme Court Justice. Inconceivable. To most. But not to everyone. Not to Sandra Day O’Connor. To Sandra Day O’Connor a woman had the potential to be one of the most powerful people in the world. And then she set out and became the most powerful women in the world when she was declared a supreme court justice. And for the first time in the long standing history of women being excluded from making governing decisions on society’s behalf, justice was served to women. Women finally had a voice in the highest form of the judiciary branch of the United States of America’s government in 1981. I got to shake the hands of the first women to ever have a voice at the position of government in charge of maintaining equality in America, when I was a teenager. That is crazy!!!! And also very IMPORTANT. That is very important information for a young woman to have. It not only made me dislocate my jaw in shock, but that mixture of anger and confusion is what fueled the fire that made me wanna kick men’s asses!! Over! And over! Again!
He wasn’t making us play boys because he thought we could beat them. He was making us play boys so that we’d get angry about losing to men. So that we’d work harder during the week so that we could compete at man’s level. And not because we had to push ourselves to be ‘better than a boy’ but because we could.
Which sparked the curiousity in us to think, “could we better than men?”
Could we practice harder and out smart the boys with our plays,
Could we train harder so that boys could stop being able to push us around,
Could we fight back,
Could we grow courage,
Could we be women in a man’s world,
Could we make the world a woman’s world with men in it?
Coach Straw taught us two things:
1. anything a man can do, a woman can do if she believes she can
2. many of the “rules” society places on us are just made up bullshit, configured to keep women from believing they can do anything a man does
Coach Straw taught us that the future was ours to change.
That the hands of a woman’s future were our own.
And in that sense, he taught me the greatest lesson possible.