kattingolartut

I've coached everywhere I've been.

I had a great team once.

Starting Five

Joey K

Junior K

David R

Eddie R

Douglas A

Joey (6’, 165 lbs.) was my best player.  He was undoubtedly one of the best players on the entire North Slope that year.  He was aggressive.   He was ferocious.  He was unrelenting.  But mainly he was violent and angry.  I sensed the simmering violence in most of the males in the community - they’re warriors - but Joey’s brand was roiling, more intense – quiet, viscous, final, scalding.  His committed and poetic drives to the basket were a challenge to any motherfucker that wanted to get in his way.  Step in for a charge, and run the risk of getting charged yourself.  By a snorting bull.  Maybe later – outside.  No referee.  That’s where he wanted opponents. He told me to fuck off once.  I had to make a decision.  I let it go.  In class, I could sometimes catch him “reading” with his book upside down.  I let that go too. He would nod at me warily, contemplatively sizing me up.  He might even say something cheeky like, “Good book.”   Overall though, I think we had a fairly respectful relationship.  I was a pretty youthful and idealistic first year teacher, and could play ball better than any teacher he had ever seen.  Joey was cool.  Really.  Spine-crushingly cool.  I could see it.  He had it.  Very physically talented, all the standards – speed and strength and athletic, like liquid…that could drain through any defense, a natural wonder.  All the boys in the school were both petrified and in awe of him.  It was like having a head inmate calling the shots from the inside and handling discipline.   If this community was still nomadic, Joey would be leading the hunting parties and claiming the best woman as his own.  In a static community, Joey’s physicality found an outlet on the court.  And with this savage on the floor, we could contend with anybody.

Joey was the coach’s son.  I should explain that I only served as an interim coach for a six week chunk of season while Tuukak (pronounced two cock) was cruising Hawaii on government money – an extended conference trip.  The Eskimos get a lot of money thrown at them.   I was only a month+ flash in the pan: a heroic grease fire I like to think.  But I did hold the reins during a demanding mid-winter chunk of the schedule, representing at three away tournaments in other villages – plane rides.  Yeah, TwoCock had a firm grip on his team, as well as the community.  Think TwoCock was the alpha male of the village?  He was.  Bigger, more aggressive, higher functioning, employed, more cock: he ruled unopposed.  Joey had been passed the alpha torch…cock – the torchcock. He was Threecock.  There was some rebellious legend about 2 Cock throwing his shoes off and dangling them someplace high and unreachable within the school during his own student days. In a strict shoes-only zone I guess.  TooCock had another son: JR.  He was the closest thing I had to a post player.

Junior was the beefiest player I had on the team.  (5’10’’ and 185 lbs.)  He was carved from the mold of ol’ Double Penis, cut of the same foreskin - baby penis.  Junior/Senior in full effect.  Meaning he was thickset then, but the future belly overhang was inevitable. I worked so hard to get him to play with his back to the basket, when he so desperately wanted to shoot jumpers and drive improbably to the basket like far-more-talented big bro Joey. He grabbed some big rebounds, but his talent was in put-backs, throwing in easy ones from the paint where his frame could greedily monopolize and grow roots.  I really liked Junior.  Saying he was soft-spoken is a bit redundant within the very nonverbal Inupiat community, but that’s what he was: a big soft-spoken bear of a kid – tough as hell, but sweet as an Eskimo doughnut. (To the politically correct: the Eskimos are not offended by the term Eskimo.  I always used “Inupiat” when I was there, not working up the guts till the end of my time there to ask students and other locals  if “Eskimo” offends, and they all laughed and said no.  The majority were also pro offshore drilling, claiming herds of caribou would pass right under pipelines, unfettered.  They didn’t want protester interference.  They wanted money.  And to round out my knowledge on the subject: the term “Inuit” refers to language.)  Jr. had a real sincerity.  I remembering waiting for him to turn in a vocabulary test: you remember: spelling, definition, part of speech, use in a sentence…sometimes you gots to go old school. He was blatantly stalling, all other tests in a pile on my desk, waiting for an opportunity to pull out his crib sheet. I know that vocabulary tests are incredibly tempting for students to cheat on (a real pitfall of rote learning), I myself once taped answers to the inside tongue of my Pony Spud Webb high tops.

I said, “Junior, you’re cheating.  Every time I look away.” 

He replied in the typically drawn out and elongated monotone, “Not now.  Later.”  Completely deadpan.  Not trying for irony or humor. I had to deal with the tension between the brothers often; they were not friends and they rarely communicated, but the pressure hung around the gym like an over-inflated ball ready to pop (kind of a cheap simile – sorry – my foul).  I actually had two sets of brothers on the starting five, not so remarkable a demographic when you consider this isolated island village, north of mainland Alaska, population 300, only sported seven different last names.  Ruby had a different last name.

She was Junior’s girlfriend.  A couple years younger, she delighted in destroying my 8^th grade English class.  She was so awful to me.  So pissed off.  Smart too.  She acted aloof, but it was camouflage (she knew her way around a rifle as well): she watched and listened for any chance to trip me up, then riled the other knuckleheads (Jules?  Levi?  Oh shit) into a distracting chaos, while smugly sitting back and smirking at the successful sabotage she set in motion. When I came back the second year, Junior and Ruby were parents – a baby girl added to the mix.  Two-Cock was now an aapa.  Mystery of the pissed off middle-schooler solved: she had been pregnant.  And scared.  Ruby had (at least) two cousins: David and Eddie.

David was my three point bomber, and he arrogantly liked to shoot well beyond the three point line.  A real hot shot.  He could get “off,” but when he was streaking it was game over.  He hit four or five in a row numerous times while I was at the helm.  David was hip-hop.  Most of the village boys were heavily affected by hip-hop: attitude, drug of choice, slang, style: sagging jeans, tilted straight bills, headphones, NBA jerseys, FUBU, etc. – but David was a gangster.  Too cool to ever have a conversation with the tuniq (white man) teacher, his intelligence came through anyway in his writing and general demeanor.  David was a bit limited on the hardwood by his height (5’ 3’’) and his ego.  He didn’t often run the risk of going inside and having his shot blocked or fully committing to defense.  I always thought he would have been an amazing ice hockey player with his stature, aggressiveness, athleticism and dedication to sport - all these boys really.  I could have fielded an all-world hockey team up there.   But basketball was it.  They had a half-ass coed volleyball season and the Native Olympics (jumping events/strength exhibitions/pain endurance), but basketball was the cultural obsession. Outside recreation was seriously thwarted by permafrost, but I could have had ice.  I was always a bit embarrassed because David saw me get

“scoped,” which is the term you use for someone that positions their eye too close to the telescopic sight on a rifle when firing, and comes away with a black eye.  School hadn’t even started out yet, and I was out with my roommate (fellow educator) and a few high school kids shooting a high-powered sniper rifle into the Beaufort Sea.  My roommate was a Desert Storm veteran with a wealth of firearms, and a proclivity for saying things like, “I haven’t killed anybody in a long time.”  I got goaded into participating, with very little instruction I might add, and the recoil blasted me into nausea and left a humiliating shiner.  First day of school, 8:00 a.m., and  I’m making my introductions to bunch of crack shots and accomplished big-game hunters with a fucking black eye.  David’s brother

Eddie was in that first period class.  (5’6’’, 145 lbs.) He differed from the other boys because he didn’t give a shit about basketball; he was not a gym rat, preferring to cruise around on his snow machine. But he was able-bodied and athletic, so he played.  That’s just how it was/is.  The community demanded it.  Eddie had an amazing talent for steals and causing turnovers, and that’s all I asked of him.  Literally.  I told him not to do anything else.  He lacked fundamentals but he was quick, cunning, physical and had a belligerent aggression that was ruthless.  He was a thief.  But his real genius was in the understanding and respect he had for his role.  And that is why I am writing about this team; that’s where this experience surpasses my other coaching gigs.  It wasn’t a team.  It was a tribe.  These boys were so close, mostly related, that they didn’t even really talk to each other.  They were beyond that.  And it translated on the court to a mature confinement of roles, as if they were surviving on the tundra during a blizzard – efficiently wringing their respective aptitudes into the talent pool: leader Joey with his scoring prowess and acceptance of being the primary offensive “go-to” player, Junior with the grunt work of being the “inside” presence and intimidator, David with the long-range shooting and Eddie the turnover king and defensive specialist.  The experience of coaching these guys was a large contributor towards supporting the loony rationale of spending two years north of the Arctic Circle. 

I went up there because I was broke.  By the time I had finished getting a teaching degree/certificate, I was $30,000 in debt to the federal government and various credit card companies.  I was missing payments and getting persistently harassed by truly sadistic creditors with malicious intentions.  I could barely feed myself and my mental stability was slipping.  I went to the Portland, Oregon Professional Educator Fair and walked right past all the brightly decorated kiosks of top school district multimedia firework displays of superior quality of life and smiling groomed representatives talking teacher student ratio and cross curricular planning interactive student-centered high technological pedagogical bullshit and found the sad lonely desk of the North Slope of Alaska tucked away in a corner.  There had a photocopied A4 map of Alaska with an X marking the spot and a pay scale – the highest in the United States. A ten minute interview, followed by another ten on the phone with the current principal, and I was an employee of the North Slope Borough School District. 

Douglas (5'10'', 150 lbs.) was my 5^th man, the odd man (out), in a lot of ways.  He was polite.  He was respectful. He was academic-minded.  He was generous.  He was serious.  He was selfless and solid.  And gentle.  Moderately damaged, domestically.  He wasn’t a talented basketball player and he didn’t fulfill an established role, except in not having a defined role.  And I think that the intangibility of his contribution, beyond what I’m willing to contemplate, might have been our X factor – our edge. Doug provided me with the best moment I had in my entire two years:  he had speed, the quickest coast-to-coast wheels on the team.  He couldn’t hit a jump shot or dribble with his left hand, but if he could get to a defender’s hip, then he was already by. And he could make a lay-up.  I constantly urged him to use his gift and contribute offensively, but the killer instinct was hard to arouse - till the late rounds of the prestigious Wainwright tournament.  I knew we needed more offensive firepower, and I had huddled with him privately multiple times before the semi, and like to think I inspired him.  Or scared him with my intensity - I probably cried a bit. The tears just come.  Regardless, he committed.  He would begin his mad dash from as far out as the three point line, head down, arcing towards the basket with very little variation or creativity.  He was just so damn fast defenders couldn’t set their feet in time to obstruct him.  He scored 20+ in the semi and the final, and earned All-Tournament Team.  It was special.  Douglas invited me to be

part of his family’s whaling crew the following September, a rare honor for a tuniq I was told.  I had all kinds of adventures up there including blizzards and polar bears and dog sled teams and the Brooks Range and things you’d expect from the Arctic.  I have a lot of respect for the culture I got to witness and the people I lived with.

Qujannamiik.