I have always been a lover of sports, but I never could have dreamed that sports would shape this little world of mine in the ways that it has. Maybe I should have seen it coming. I mean, if you rewind way back to like April or May of 1998, you could find Joe and I sitting next to each other in Mr. Hines' sophomore English class. We had spoken exactly zero words to each other the whole year, but for whatever reason, when Mr. Hines wrote "euchre" on the board and asked if anyone was familiar with the word, I turned to my left and decided to start up a conversation. "Uh, it's a card game" was all I said. Without missing one single beat, Joe looked right back at me and said "or a baseball player." RIGHT THEN. Right then is when I should have seen it all coming. Our first conversation was a debate and one of us took the sports angle. And that, my friends, actually summarizes the dynamic of us pretty damn well.
Sports themselves have taken us on many journeys. And I have really loved every single one. Maybe I didn't love every one in the minute we were in it, but if you were to ask me which part of any of the journey I would change, I don't think I would honestly have an answer for you. The experiences, the freindships, the traveling. Learning how to live with the schedule, sometimes living in diferent states, sometimes living in the same house yet seeing about as much of each other as if we were still living in different states. Not only did the two of us grow up together, we grew up in a world where sports always had a hand in what that day was about to offer.
When he took the job of Freshman basketball coach back in 2004, Joe had just gotten home from his first year of minor league baseball and we were both finishing up college (a task that thanks to a few years in the minor leagues, may have taken one of us longer than the other). I would go watch him coach and walk my happy ass up the bleachers in heels way too high for a high school basketball gym because I was here to watch the game and go out with friends after. Just as basketball season would end, it would be time for him to head to spring training again and we would live the long distance baseball life for a bit. Wash, rinse, repeat for a couple of years until his baseball career ended. But there was still basketball. Oh my GOD was there still basketball.
There were a couple of years when basketball was all there was, but honestly not many. Because not too long after baseball ended, married life began and so did parenting. And to be fully transparent here, parenting during high school basketball season will ALWAYS be more difficult than the years spent with 50% of him playing professional baseball and 50% of him coaching high school basketball. But the beauty in those difficult years? Well, that is honestly where my what is starting to feel like my love letter truly starts.
There were only 2 years that were spent coaching before he moved up to varsity. And thanks to him running a basketball program, my kids grew up on the basketball court. He didn't coach anywhere near home. He didn't coach in a different state, but it felt like it. There was a lot of unique stress in some of those first years because on top of us becoming new parents, Joe still didn't have a full time job because although he NEVER took the professional baseball days for granted and always took a semester of classes during the off season, that did slow the process down a smidge and he still had a little ways to go before he would finish up that degree and be able to land a full time job at the school he was coaching basketball at. So that meant not only was he coaching varsity basketball 40+ miles away from home, he was also finishing up school, working various part time jobs, spending 12 hours a day on Sundays giving private pitching lessons all while we were in the throes of figuring out life as parents. Ben and I would drive out to Indian Creek for all of the games. We would bring him lunch or snacks or dinner to his pitching lessons on Sundays. We would spend all kinds of time with my mom because I needed another adult in my life. Ben would crawl, and eventually walk around that gym floor as if it were his own kingdom...
A few years later, school was finally finished and the part time side gigs were a thing of the past. Blake joined the crew and now there were two little boys living every moment for those long drives out to Shabonna where they could go watch the big kids play and then spend an hour or so after every single game shooting endless amounts of shots on basketball hoops much bigger than the Little Tikes ones staged in every spare inch of our house. When they were too little to fully control their chaos, I would drive them all the way out there even on days when there was only practice just so they could catch the last couple of minutes and then spend the next couple of hours crawling, running, or shooting around. I would take a few pics, soak it all in, and then get the hell out of there and enjoy the hour drive home in the only bit of silence I could find. It worked. Eventually, the boys got older and they would go with Joe to weekend practices and I would get a little time to clean the house without anyone following me to mess it up, or a few hours to write, or a few hours to just regroup. And that worked too. But little did I know, every bit of all of it was genuinely shaping each and every one of us. As individuals, and as a whole. As difficult as the logistics of parenting from the stands night after night can be, we honestly had the most fun.
My role in the bleachers and ability (or inability) to follow the actual happenings of those games changed a lot as the boys came along and then got older. From high heels and cute purses and minimal time spent connecting too much with anyone in the bleachers, to gym shoes and diaper bags filled with snacks and pajamas to change into before the long drive home and the very skillful scouting of my own seats in those bleachers to shield the boys from the occasional seasons where the shit talking parents were more than I cared to expose those boys to. From watching intently, to watching with a wiggly kid on my lap. From being stressed simply over whether or not the team was going to win, to being stressed about how the boys were going to emotionally handle the game if we lost. From learning who to dodge in the stands because the younger the coach the louder the critic (or so it seemed), to forming some of the most impactful and beautiful friendships in those very stands...A LOT was learned by all of us in those gyms. Flash cards, coloring books, learning our numbers on the back of jerseys, learning our colors based on what school we were playing. Learning about sportsmanship, that referees are people too, that sometimes things just don't go your way. Understanding heartbreak, watching how it looks to win and lose with grace, learning how to tie shoes, finding out that we all are a little bit superstitious. Even as the boys got older and their own sports started taking up more and more of our time, we still showed up, and we still grew there, and it still was a part of who we were because it never would have crossed our minds for it not to be. It might have gotten even more chaotic, but those bleachers were still home and home was exactly where we wanted to be.
There are so many stories and moments from so many seasons over the years that I could dive into, but specifics aren't really what is fueling this one. The other night, Joe and his 2019-2020 basketball team were inducted into the Indian Creek Hall of Fame. We saw the faces of friends who became family, our own family came to share the moment with us, we hugged, we laughed and we reminisced all about that particular season. I soaked it all in and enjoyed celebratory drinks with family and coaches who will forever be family and rode the memory lane train with everyone all evening. But after we got home and everyone else had fallen asleep, I couldn’t help but dive all the way back. And that is honestly where this whole post even started. Sometimes life gives you a chance to slow down and grab the reminders of all that has been, and sometimes you need to do yourself a favor and lean all the way in.
Joe only coached one more season at Indian Creek after that '19-'20 season. And, although we spent what felt like many lifetimes in that school, it truly feels like at least 900 more have passed in just the 5 years since we left. The changes in the years between then and now have been huge. Some beautiful. Some horrible. All humbling. We welcomed Iz into the world just 2 weeks before the start of his first season at his new school. My mom died just about a month before that season ended. Ben's baseball team had also parted and gone separate ways, which might not seem like a big deal, but as I've touched upon just a little bit here, sports family really does become true family (if you are lucky enough), and that particular team was exactly that to me and the timing of not being able to walk up to the baseball field to see the same faces that I had seen for the past 7 or 8 years and having to walk into a gym and not see at least some of the same faces that I had seen for the last 17 years was a punch in the gut that I could have never seen coming as I was trying to navigate life with a new baby for the first time in 10 years and life without my mom for the rest of time.
So from those new bleachers, I sat a little differently because I was a lot different. Everyone was incredibly welcoming, the environment was different and fun, and the opportunities were truly exciting. But I was new here. And suddenly, while I was walking through life trying to figure out this new version of who I was it felt like everyone I knew was just going about their lives as they were before. So the bleachers felt different for a bit. But we sat there. And we grew together. And eventually, I started to find myself again right there in the bleachers. I had family, I had my boys, I had another wiggly little baby to wrangle, and I had really friendly faces saying hello and wanting to get to know our crew. (In hindsight, I could probably write a novel about that journey all on its own, honestly. How do you get to know people and allow people to know you when you absolutely, without a singular doubt, have completely lost yourself in the wake of like a LOT of trauma? "Hi, I'm new here. I am likely suffering from some mix of postpartum depression and residual trauma, but any chance you wanna be friends?") My GOD, looking back I kind of want to just go back in time and give that version of bleacher me a hug. She was a mess, poor thing. And maybe it was the anxiety from all that was happening and how quickly it was all changing, or maybe it was because I had sat in those bleachers long enough to see the new challenges coming, but I spent a lot of those first couple of years a little on edge because I was nervous for both Joe and the boys and myself as we crept closer and closer to Ben entering Joe's school and Blake not too far off of his heels. The opportunity was incredible, and we did give each of the boys their own choice as to whether they wanted to go or not, but the idea of sitting in the bleachers as the coach's wife and as a player's mom when I really wasn't even sure which way was up was kind of overwhelming. Thank God for faith, family, and honestly, therapists. Whew.
We just wrapped up Ben's first varsity season and Joe's 20th. Separating the roles we all needed to be for each other at all different times during the season was new, but we did it. I think. Thanks to the amazing community we have been lucky enough to be a part of here, the bleachers still felt like home. Blake will be a Freshman next year and Ben will be a Senior. Next year both of those boys who grew up in the bleachers with me will be in that program with Joe. And if I am being completely honest, even though I am fully aware of how fast time goes, and even though I got a small taste of what the end feels like as a parent and not as the coach's wife when I watched Ben's season come to a heartbreaking close this year and stood there realizing that the next season ending game I would watch, would be his last...I don't know if I would have slowed down to reflect on the road that lead us here quite as deeply as I did had Joe's old team not been given the recognition they earned on the other night. To be able to walk into the place where our basketball journey began, to be able to pull so many vivid memories from my own vault of every version of myself, of Joe, and mostly of those boys and sit with those in the place that so many of them happened, to have even had the opportunity, thanks to sports, to have the number of vivid memories that I do...I'm not really sure there are even words for it.
The more I sat there that night thinking about all of it, the cooler it really all became. Sometimes the bleachers we are sitting in are hypothetical, sometimes literal, sometimes it is the view of our kids, sometimes the view of our friends, sometimes the view of family. Sometimes the bleachers feel overwhelming and maybe even a little bit lonely. There were many nights that I spent cursing (quite literally) those very bleachers, that sport, that gym...dinners missed, a home life feeling completely imbalanced, lack of conversation that revolved around anything else. But those moments really only stick around if you let them. And while I am sure I held on to them a little longer than I should at least once or twice, those weren't the ones that lasted. The loudest memories have been the journey as a whole. The tough stuff intertwined with all of the good. It turns out that the moments that felt like basketball was taking things away from me actually ended up making me appreciate all it gave me even more.
Dear Basketball, Thank you for letting me borrow your bleachers. You have my boys for now, but you will *always* have my heart.
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