TBT - Lady Knights

Mother nature behaved and we were able to have class again this week. I had really been looking forward to it. It was a great class yet I came out of it very discouraged. I have been anxious and frustrated in the past, yet never discouraged. Oh well, what do you do. I can dwell on it or I can toss it aside and hope for better next week. For the moment though, the best thing I can do is find something for TBT that will make up for any incompetence I might feel and it does not get any better than this.

May I present for this week's TBT - the 1983-84 7th Grade Lady Knights (holy cow, that's 30 years!). We went on to take county and finish undefeated. It would be several years before another team would do the same. We were winter ball which meant we didn't get to make a run for state like the fall ball teams did yet I think we would have added that easily to our accomplishments.

Once a Lady Knight, always a Lady Knight

I had to fight to get that #35. The coach decided that there would not be cuts that year and there were three of us that until right before pictures, did not get uniforms. Well, we did, but they were the old ones. We sat the bench most of the time. If there were not enough chairs, we sat on the floor at the end of the chairs. By the time pictures rolled around, one girl had quit which allowed the other two of us to have matching uniforms for the photos, yet we did not get to wear them in a game until several weeks later when some of the other girls quit.

Although I practiced my heart out (and had one heck of an outside shot), I played about 5 minutes the whole season. The coach looked at me one day and said, "Big girls can't play ball" and I earned my seat at the end of the bench. I stuck it out because I loved the game and I loved being a part of the team. Through the years, I would not only perfect that shot, I would become a strong power forward (right, Wags?).

My best memory was a game against Georgetown. In the first half there were several loose balls. At halftime, coach lectured us - if that ball is on the floor, you better be going for it. By the 4th quarter we must have been stomping them as I actually got into the game. On one play the ball got loose and I took off after it as did a girl from the other team. Chasing it full court, I ended up with the ball, she ended up running up the bleachers. I ended up with the nickname "Tank" due to that one moment. Our senior year of high school, that girl would go on to win the state championship in track. I would like to think I was a part of that somehow.

The next year, instead of sitting the bench all season, I decided to be one of the managers. Now, let me clarify something - I was not the water girl. I started learning plays and practice drills. Coach Dearth taught me to tape ankles and the team became mine. I watched over the team and I took care of them.

I would go on to do the same in high school where Coach Waters saw a potential in me and turned me loose. He not only turned me loose with the basketball teams, he handed over the softball teams as well. To this day he will still say that those were not his teams, they were mine.

My first coaching stint came my senior year where I helped at the grade school doing the intramural program, the same program where I fell in love with the game 7 years before. After graduating, I would return to the high school as often as I could to help with the teams until Coach Waters left.

In 1994 I was hired at the junior high as assistant coach. I coached with the same head coach I had all those years before (this would be his last year). I looked at him one night and reminded him of what he had said to me. I had almost quit after that year because of that comment, yet I stuck it out and made a legacy that continues today.

The following year, I went on my mission and my sister became a 7th grader. She had only one request - that she could be #35 (the same request she just made with the Roller Derby team she is on). Seeing that my best friend was the assistant coach that year, it was not a difficult request. Right before I headed to Argentina, I got the best photo I could have asked for in the mail. I taped it in the front of my scriptures and off I went! My sister was a brute on the court. The coaches would ask her where she learned things to which she would reply that I taught her. They would just nod and say that makes perfect sense.

Now, with over 20 years of coaching basketball and softball under my belt, most of my kids are grown, in college, and starting families of their own. So, want to talk about things I am competent and good at? I am a good coach, teacher, and mentor. I, am Coach Blew.