Finally! It’s high school basketball season in Mississippi.
Just in case you did not know, I was a basketball coach’s kid, and some of my best childhood memories revolve around various high school gymnasiums throughout the state of Mississippi. Those glossy hardwood floors, the stands filled with cheering fans, and the smell of fresh popcorn are forever etched in my heart. (By the way, I stood on a milk crate to help make that popcorn early in my elementary school career.)
Amazingly, with parents who are Mississippi educators and coaches, my grandkids will have those very same childhood memories. They rarely miss a school event. They come early, stay late, and help out in a zillion small ways. (But unlike me, they are not allowed to make the popcorn.)
In fact, the uncanny reality of our shared childhoods came flooding back to me one night a few years ago. As my husband and I sat in East Union’s gym bleachers at a high school boys’ basketball game, I saw our youngest grandbaby racing around the edges of the court, heading toward us. From the opposite side of the gym, I watched and waited for her arrival.
As she ran, she instinctively stopped short at the west end of the court. She waited for the teams to come racing from the other end of the gym, make a shot, and then head back down court, before continuing her race.
I laughed out loud.
Here was this tiny veteran spectator who (like me) had spent her entire four years of existence in this school, at this gym, and at countless other gyms and ballfields across the state. And even though she was not really watching the game, she knew exactly what was coming next. So, she knew to stop and wait for the coming action, prior to cutting the corner across that gym and making her way to get some hugs.
In my mind’s eye, I remembered doing the exact same thing dozens of times at the gym in Woodland, Mississippi, where my dad started his coaching career. In that moment, I could literally hear the loud thuds of the tennis shoes of two teams of guys running straight toward me.
And I could recall coming to a screeching halt at the long edge of that Chickasaw County gym to wait for the action to turn and head back to the other half of the court. Then, just like our baby girl, I distinctly recalled taking off like lightning and making my way to the other side of filled bleachers, cutting the corner as I ran.
It was a 50-year-old memory that no one else in that gym could have appreciated, but I cherished the sight of that tiny girl we loved living out her life in the same way our family of educators has done so for four generations now – in the basketball gyms of Mississippi.
So, I shared my pearl of a memory with you today for one reason, and that is to encourage you to head out to a gym near you and enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of a Mississippi high school basketball game. Yell loudly, laugh even louder, and make sure to have a big bag of popcorn for me.
While you’re at it, look for the coaches’ and teachers’ kids. They will be the ones who know how to run the perimeter of that gym correctly and carefully. Watch for them! They’re there. And so are their parents, every time the gym doors open.
If you get a chance, tell those Mississippi educators “Thank you!” Because everything that our Mississippi educators sacrifice and do each day for our students and athletes matters!
I am absolute proof of that; so is another little girl I know.
