Statboy: Chapter 1

Chapter 1
The hurdles that you have to jump to get happiness are quite high and risky to jump over. Whether success comes in the form of athletic pride and prominence, or if that success comes in another field, there are always going to be hurdles to jump over to get your dreams to reality. Survival of the fittest comes into reality when people from all backgrounds try to climb the success ladder. Some come up happy, while the rest crumble and fall.

In the sport of basketball, success is very hard to find. In fact, there are three levels that players and coaches all together fall into. The first one is the Legends level, which contains Michael Jordan and John Wooden. The second one is the Star level, which contains LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Durant. The third one, the one where everybody else falls into is the Defeated level, which really is the hell of all basketball dreams: the day the dream fails.

But of course, those dreams can be resurrected. The non-successful players could transform their image to become a successful coach. Look at Phil Jackson. Jackson didn’t have the greatest pro career ever, but he resurrected himself, and became probably the greatest coach of all time. Also, you can turn to broadcasting, which can lead you down many different roads. But the majority, the 97% of all basketball players (amateur or pro) reside to a different life altogether, and move on in life.

Even though it’s the players that win the championships, and the coaches that steer the ship to its righteous course, a certain field of people receives no credit for the overall success of an organization or team. The statisticians, the people (they can be any age) that poor out their math knowledge upon the surface of a scorers book, do not get recognition for helping the cause of a championship. This fact really bothers me, for I’m a statistician myself.

After playing 6 years of basketball recreationally, I was out of the game for a few months, pondering my next move. Luckily, the JV Basketball coach at the time, Mr. Downey, was my gym teacher, and approached me with a job offer to do the statistics for the JV team. I jumped at the chance for several reasons. The first was that I had the credentials that allowed me to do the job successfully. After doing the stats for the varsity baseball team the previous year, I was ready for a new challenge. But the second reason was because I had a crush on one of the managers of the team. Her name was Linny, and she was majestic as a crown jewel on a king’s crown. Even though she was a senior, and I was a freshman, I still thought I had a legitimate shot with her, so this hurdle allowed me to do that.

Those two reasons fueled my charge at doing the book, but there were growing pains I had to endure in order to be successful. My first sore was just learning the process. For instance, in my third game, Mr. Downey forgot to put a player’s name in the scorebook, forcing him to receive an unprecedented technical foul. I felt horribly for that, but since he was alright with that, I supposed it wasn’t bad. The second was developing a sense of patience. Whenever a player received his second or third foul, I screamed loudly, so Downey could hear, “HE’S GOT x-number FOULS!” It was this charisma that lauded me with appeal from the fans and team alike.

That success ultimately led to by varsity debut, on a cold day in the town of Westerly. Since Linny and her passé of managers did not make the trip, the varsity coach, Mr. Patrick Sullivan, allowed me to do the varsity book for the first time. It was a fair game; we won by 20 over the Bulldogs, but it still gave me a jump start in the right direction.

After the Westerly game, I did the varsity book three more times that season. A growing pain that I had to endure was handling the charisma that Mr. Sullivan displayed during the game. In my second game of doing varsity book, the scoreboard operator at West Warwick was having a difficult time adjusting the scoreboard buttons to display the score. Before I bore you with the details, whenever the score was wrong, Mr. Sullivan ranted about the scoreboard three or four times, eventually yelling across the gym, “TIM! MAKE THAT GUY CHANGE THE SCOREBOARD!!!” I think the guy got the message, and we won over the West Warwick Wizards by 10.

Another growing pain that I had to endure was the failure of reason #2. On the way to the game in Pilgrim, due to popular demand of the team, Mr. Sullivan made me sing Bruno Mars’s hit song “Grenade” to Linny. A few weeks earlier, I put up a YouTube video of me singing “Grenade”, and the team thought that it was for Linny. Even though I thought it was a killer rendition, Linny didn’t find it so appealing, and didn’t really talk to me again that night. This made me very angry, and I proceeded to go to the Pilgrim locker room, and rant like a madman about the failure of this love. It took my friend James a lot of guts to calm down my rage, but I think it was worth it, because I knew Linny was not worth rage.

When the team made the playoffs, I did my best to rally the fan base to drive 30 minutes to Tiverton, the only place where they don’t have a scorers table, to watch the first round playoff game. We upset the upstart Tiverton in the first round, winning 67 to 58. In the separate state tournament, Tiverton would rally all the way to the finals, ultimately losing to St. Ray’s.

In the swan song of the season, we lost to Rogers at CCRI, 60 to 55. Once again, since Linny’s passé was out, I was tabbed to do the book. Even though I met lots of people, including ProJo columnist Bill Reynolds, the mood was still somber, for we lost the big game.

My teammates and coaches thanked me for my efforts this season, hailing me as “the savior of the statistics department”, and unofficially signing me to a three-year extension. Even though I would never really talk to Linny again, I was ready to rock and roll my sophomore year; my first full year as BHS statistician.