What “Use Your Body” Means to Me

FAMILY SUNDAY – To all those dads out there who starred as their daughter’s first coaches in an age when girls were finally allowed to play sports – thank you. To all those dads out there who led the way, like my dad and Mr. Ahern, and all the dads in town who picked up the kids on the way to practice and drove them home in an era where parents did not care or want to go to practice – thank you for keeping it just about us.

To all the dads who got into their cars and drove 20 hours straight to places like Tennessee for Nationals, like Dad did way back when AAU was something new and exciting and the place for talented girls and their dads to go and hang, and believe that anything was possible. Thank you for hanging with the new generation who wanted more. You are the generation of dads who figured out that if your daughter loved sports, you’d have so much to talk about, a chance to bond, a chance to feel young again.

I remember when I hit a bank from the corner in sixth grade to win a game. It was a regular CYO game. Dad picked me up and put me on his shoulders and carried me around the gym like we’d won the title. I remember that long drive to Tennessee. I sense that Dad was nodding off and trying to tough it out. So with Marcell and Nickie (asleep?) in the back, I stayed up and talked to Dad to keep him awake. Dad would do it years later, after reaching my dream (our dream) of playing college basketball, when my team, the Northwestern Wildcats, was up against the University of Tennessee Lady Vols powerhouse that we used to watch on TV together back when so few women’s games were televised.

I remember how Dad dragged us all up to his Over 30-league games where we heard, watched and studied old sweaty guys who were battling and sweating like pigs while we did our homework in the bleachers. I remember being in second or third grade and looking around at them after a game while chucking the ball at the rim and saying, “I want to do this like they do it.” I remember beating Dad in the driveway for the first time in my life. I’d gotten tired of him backing me in and slamming me around, and maybe I caught him on an off day. But I out-hustled and out-scrapped him and somehow I got the W. It felt like a huge relief. He was always, always on us about position first – getting the perfect step or to the sweet spot under the hoop, leaning in and wanting the contact. He gave us this mentality that if you didn’t want the contact, if you didn’t want to control it, it would control you. Over and over, he told us to use our bodies – his sons, his daughters – and that comment for females to use their bodies in ways that the world had not allowed them to in the past – to fight and lean in, and be tough, and to want something and to fight for it even if I was playing against boys or my dad or older kids or against better players – that permission and encouragement changed my life forever.

I remember the day that I stopped listening to my intense and passionate dad, too. It was end of Grade 8 or even Grade 9. I was guarding this huge player – 6’4” senior while I was a freshman or around that age – and all of 125-130 lbs. My opponent in the post had to be a solid 180 lbs and she was all butt, boobs and hips. I was throwing myself all over her and she was killing me. Dad was screaming in the stands as he sat next to Mr. Barnes way up in the corner, as if he could not be seen or heard: “Use your body!”

Over and over and over.

After I got backed in and run over one more time, I turned to him totally defeated and humiliated, and screamed back, “I HAVE NO BODY!”

Then I never heard him again. The reason why? He taught me everything he knew as a high school/JV college player who played mostly zone and never had great coaching. He didn’t know hoops like I grew to learn it, but he gave me enough grit and moxie and passion to know that even when you’re getting your butt kicked and thrown around like a rag doll, you still use every bit of what your mother and father gave you.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads who taught their daughters to fight the good fight, to use their brains, guts, body and soul on the playing field and in life.