Basketball, Not TEnnis.

When you do contract teaching here in Queensland, one has dubious honours thrust upon one. But sometimes it is other people who have to suffer the dubiousness. (dubiosity? dubiety? The dictionary says all of the above.)

At the beginning of this school year, in January, I was offered a teaching contract replacing Jason Smith who took a position as acting Head of the English department at another state school on the Coast. Jason is a multi-talented multi-faceted teacher at my school, and I got to step into his at times very comfortable shoes. One of the roles I got to take on was assistant coach for the Open Boys Basketball team for weekly sport.

I am 5'2". Just keep that in mind.

We are a Touch school. (That's Touch Football, as opposed to Football Association, Rugby, Rugby League, Australian Rules and certainly Gridiron) Jason had built up basketball while he's been at the school, but there is a dearth of coaches. His assistant, David, was therefore plugged to step into the coach role, and I would assist him. This was the plan as envisaged from the staffroom on the other side of the school. If there had been any consultation, I am unaware of it.

So for the first week, David and I shared the mishmosh of the basketball Boys A and B teams. By the third week I think we had settled, somehow into him being responsible for the Bs and me for the As. Really we were largely irrelevant to what boys were playing where. We just turned up with balls, first aid kit and ice. It became obvious that I knew, marginally, more about the playing of the game than David. I was good at keeping track of the scores on paper, and David upskilled in electronic scoring. But most of the decisions about play were made by the boys. I tried interfering, but was happy to be persuaded not to. Tom's the captain. He's 6' 8ish.

David is about 5'10". At least he could see as far as the chins of our tallest players.

In my role as paperkeeper, I started noticing a trend. The As kept winning. It is always much more satisfying to be coach of a winning than a losing team. Or even the mascot. I started motivating the boys with external rewards for playing well, as well as trying to get those who were far more qualified to ref than us teachers to ref, using carbonated refreshment inducements. During the season the As lost only one game the week we had three of the six players sick or injured.

Both the A and B teams made it to the semi-finals. The As won. The Bs lost. The next week I took the As, and the Bs stayed at school. At the final, Jason made an appearance and coached them during the game. (Is that a correct usage of the term 'coach'?) They played well. I kept score brilliantly. My team won. This had been a good season.

But no. There are three 'bunches' of school sports competitions on the Coast, four if you count the private schools. The winner of our bunch of schools plays the runner-up of the 'fat' schools competition. (Fat as in schools with 2000+ students) So my team this week had to face an extremely well-coached open boys team from a well-resourced school. One of my boys was sick on the day, so we snaffled a player from the 15s. An excellent player, but unused to the cut and thrust of the opens. He got used to it quickly though. Just as well. Our other skyscraper, Ben, was fouled off after 5 fouls during the second half.

I lost sleep before the game in trepidation and after from guilt. They lost. I wish I had been a better coach for them. They deserved one, but ah time passes in only one direction. I may not be too old to blog, but I do think I am too old to gather the necessary skills to coach basketball.