The floor buzzed with excitement as Normal Community High School students and other fans swarmed the basketball floor. The guard of the girls' basketball team had just swished a jumper from the right elbow as time expired to give them a thrilling 1-point playoff win. As I surged down from the stands and into the throng just enjoying the moment, I heard a voice calling out as if a limo driver trying to identify his fare at the world's most crowded airport.
"Coach McDonald!" It caught my attention oddly, being that I'm mostly anonymous at NCHS and was here as a fan rather than as a coach. Even when we poured onto the floor in victory after boys' playoff wins this past year, I never heard my name called. But this was seeking me out somehow. Plus, it was familiar. In fact, it was Lee Hall, local T.V. sports news anchor on location trying to get a quote from anyone. Evidently my name was somehow in a program as a hoops coach and no one else was responding to his search.
I gestured to him and he hustled over with his cameraman, with an introductory shake of the hand. I expected him to fire out a question about what we'd just witnessed. Instead, he seemed to be trying to get to know me within the dancing frenzy around us.
"So do you tend to help with the girls or the boys?" he asked with surprisingly genuine, unhurried curiosity.
"Mostly with the boys," I replied. "But I enjoy coming out to support the girls when I can."
"Why do you do this?" he followed.
I woke up with adrenaline pumping through me, the kind of rush that dismisses any chance of sleep in the near future. The new sun was sailing rays through the window in 5:30 salutation.
The question lingered. Why do I do this?
My thoughts snapped back to sitting on the sideline of the semifinal playoff game at Carver Arena last March. As the refs prepared to toss the ball and launch the game, I thought how glad Dad would have been to be sitting in my place, even as one riding coattails of other great coaches on the bench. I wished that Lee Hall were still standing by.
"Well, my Dad coached basketball for twenty years," I'd have said, "and it's an honor to carry on the family tradition."
Dad was also one to work 12 hours a day. Sleeping in a bit, more night owl than early bird like his son, and then as driven as any of the old Irish-American settlers who laid drainage tile and railroad to help build the heartland in centuries past.
Today's a new opportunity to get out into the day and chalk up a win through force of determination. And so it is that I'll approach it with Dad's devotion, even uncharacteristically early, in dedication.
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