Pure: A Short Story About Finding Purity In The Game

Basketball doesn’t always feel like it should. Sometimes it feels diluted. Sometimes it just feels off. Maybe it’s the angles. Everybody has one. Someone is always worried about numbers. Someone is always worried about legacy. Someone is always worried about ego.

In times like these, it helps to find a stronger version of hoops. And by stronger, I mean smaller.

It is a Friday night in North Alabama, and the weather is unbearably cold for this part of the country. They say snow is on the way. I am at a small, private Christian school called Decatur Heritage. It’s the kind of school that has its own crest, which is flying on a flagpole in the center of the campus. Tonight, the R.A. Hubbard Chiefs are in town for a midseason contest. Hubbard is a public school, but they are in the same 1A section as Heritage. This is not exactly the kind of game that college coaches circle on their calendar.

What appears to be the entire student body is crammed into the gym. Parents and grandparents line the bleachers, most of them wearing Heritage purple. I hear someone say that the graduating class this year is 30 – a good year, but next year might be even bigger. Heritage has a band, and they are making as much noise as seven people can. The band is comprised of two parts: a quartet of anxious teenage boys manning guitars, a bass and drums, and a horn section. The horn section is nothing more than three parents who sit in the bleachers holding their instruments ready.

The cheerleaders and students file out of the bleachers to make a spirit tunnel for the team to run through. Right on cue, the three middle-aged horns begin bleating the unmistakable theme from Rocky. The drums join in and the gym is filled with the underdog anthem. Pom poms fly and the team appears, jogging through a line of high fives from their classmates. I keep waiting for more players to run through the tunnel but there simply aren’t any more. There are only eight boys on the Heritage team. They are small and awkward looking, and I wouldn’t put money on half of them being able to touch the rim.

R.A. Hubbard begins the game with a couple of easy buckets. The Chiefs are an all-black team that go more than twelve deep. Their jerseys look worn, as the orange lettering on the black fabric is cracked and lined. They have a crotchety white coach who lurches along the sideline grumbling and shouting things in directions where there are neither players nor referees. Hubbard is not an undisciplined team, but neither are they particularly skilled. Their best offense is either getting fast breaks off their press or simply lobbing the ball up to the backboard where their superior athletes can soar up and have a tip drill at the rim.

The Heritage Eagles student section is perched on the far end of the bleachers. As one of the Hubbard players steps to the line to shoot a pair of free throws, the students gather themselves to intervene. A shaggy-haired boy jumps up on the bottom bleacher to direct the countermeasures. “HEY! HEY! HEY YOU!” the students chant loudly, which is about the politest distraction ever.

By the second quarter Heritage has figured out the press and managed to string a couple of baskets together. No. 10 for the Eagles is fearless, attacking the waves of trapping defenders with a calmness that is detached and even eerie. He has blond hair and easy features and he looks like he just wandered in off a California beach. Most of Heritage’s team appear to be guards, but No. 10 is too short to be anything other than a point. He has sticky hands, the kind of handles that make the ball dance like a yo-yo off his fingertips.

*** *** ***

At halftime I come across one of the Heritage cheerleaders in the lobby. She is cute and wholesome, with long brown hair fastened behind her head with a white bow. She has the kind of face that is so innocent you wonder if she’s ever heard a cuss word. Freckles dot her nose and cheeks. She smiles broadly when I approach her, even before I identify myself as a writer.
Her name is Laura Ann, of course. I listen to her story for a few minutes. She likes it here at Heritage, where you can know everyone in the whole school.

Laura Ann and the rest of the cheerleaders are clad in traditional uniforms with generous skirts. Under the uniform the girls wear long sleeved turtlenecks.

“So you guys have to keep everything covered up except the knees, huh?” I ask her.

A smile washes across her face, lighting up the freckles as it spreads.

“That’s fine with me,” she says sweetly.

The game accelerates to a frenetic pace throughout the second half. Hubbard is having a miserable day shooting the ball, routinely missing three or four shots in succession before the smaller Heritage players can clear the boards. This is allowing the home team to stay close, even though they are undermanned and outgunned.

In the waning seconds Heritage clings to the slimmest of chances. The Eagles foul one of Hubbard’s guards and send him to the line. The student section starts up their distraction cheer one more time, and it actually works. No. 10 corrals the miss and glides down the floor with such ease that it seems he’s floating. He crosses his man over at the three-point line and picks his spot. On the game’s seminal possession, the blond surfer boy pulls up for a trey with his team down four.

Airball.

The Heritage fans call foul. The Heritage coach calls foul. It sure looked like a foul, like a Hubbard player clipped his arm as he was letting it go. The refs swallow their whistles, and that’s that. Hubbard ball, game over.

The only person from Heritage that it doesn’t seem to bother is the shooter. In the moment that follows the missed call, when everyone is screaming and the refs are trying to hurry things along, No. 10 blinks and walks away. He shows nothing, save for the kind of mild annoyance of someone who is being bothered by a buzzing fly.

I catch up with No. 10 after the game. His name is Lee Godwin, a sophomore, all of 5-7.

We talk for a while about the game and about life as a teenager in high school. Lee has a girlfriend – they’ve been together for four months. That’s a long time in high school.

I ask him to explain basketball for someone who might not have ever played it. To the parents in the stands with the purple Decatur Heritage shirts on. What does it feel like?

“Basketball…I can’t explain it,” the kid stammers, his hands fumbling for the right word. “There’s something to it that other sports don’t have. It’s the…the…”

The game was a long one, and he played most of it. Lee is tired. His girlfriend is waiting on the bleachers.

Finally it comes.

“It’s the speed,” he says quietly. “The speed of it.”

*** *** ***

For me, the writer, it’s the purity. I think I found it again. Back in that gym, the rich kids and the kids with the frayed uniforms are huddling at center court. One of the boys is praying. Not that it matters, but I can’t tell which player it is or what colors he’s wearing. They’re standing too close together, arms on each other’s shoulders, mixed in together.

Pure.

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