I Miss You : When Sports Take A Break

I’ve been gone on spring break all week with a broken phone and a laptop with low battery. In the midst of this world’s current craziness, I was in absolute heaven. With no coronavirus updates pinging my phone, I was living in a utopia of denial while tanning my oblivious-self by the pool in the Eden of Montego Bay. The one time I finally caught up on the news was the morning I heard March Madness was cancelled. I grabbed my computer, whose battery percentage glared at me with a bright red 5%, and typed in ESPN. I needed more information.

The Masters postponed, The Players cancelled, all conference tournaments over...I got that feeling that chokes you in sad movies. I’m not being dramatic when I say that. There were tears about to happen. I then clicked and watched a video talking about the incomplete stories of senior-year athletes because of the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament. The tears happened.

A phrase in that video hit me like a ton of bricks : This will be the year without one shining moment. 

I know what he meant: the Shining Moment video released at the conclusion of the championship game is absolute gold. (Why, yes, of course I attached the 2009 one. It’s the best, don’t fight me on that.) It makes us cry and laugh and reminisce. Those 3 minutes bring the madness of March all together in an artistic story that we know the end of but want to rewatch over and over and over again. 

Yet, isn’t it even more important now to find the shining moments? They aren’t going to be on the court, no, but look around you. There are tons of glistening moments; millions of moments that show us that underdogs can win it all and that comeback seasons are the most exciting; stories of Cinderellas who danced their way to the top and won our hearts. So no, there isn't going to be one shining moment. But I can bet ya, even in this season of fear, you’ll be able to find a whole lot more.

Our family friends have a son who loves basketball with his whole heart. He wears jerseys to our “framily” dinners, has a worn out mini-hoop hanging on his closet door, proudly displays a Grant Williams shrine in his room, and sorts basketball cards in his spare time. When his mom had to tell him the NCAA tournament had been cancelled and the NBA season was postponed, he dropped to the floor. 

To amend this little broken heart, his dad has decided to set up a basketball game each day for them to watch. He’s made a list. All the greatest games that have occurred; the games any basketball-obsessed kid needs to know by heart. He will sit with his son (probably donning whichever jersey matches his sneakers best that day) and proudly witness his son watch the plays that sparkled in that year’s “One Shining Moment” montage. He will watch as his son discovers that the names chanted during NBA games now were once players who absolutely dominated the college game.They will sit together and watch the buzzer beaters and the alley-oops; the blocks and charges; the Cinderella stories that shocked a nation. And he’ll watch his once-sad-son’s face absolutely shine. 

No, there won’t be the Shining Moment highlight montage this year. But is it possible that we could all craft our own? 

Perhaps finding the little shining moments will get us through this big dark void. 

Moments like walking in your home and finding out your mother has stocked up on dozens of games and puzzles. Moments like forming an at home ‘wine and design’ with your best friends (in a group of under 10 with plenty of hand soap, of course). Moments like hearing your dad on the piano in the other room testing out some Jackson Browne classics for the first time in a while. We are surrounded by shining moments, whether it’s seeing how happy your dog is that you’re home or finding a new world within a passed down novel. 

Shining moments aren’t just dunks and buzzer beaters; it’s watching the greats with your dad and competing in bake-offs with your sister. Shining moments are singing loudly in the face of fear from personal balconies and finding unity in the center of this immense separation. Shining moments are belly laughs and inside jokes and memories that bring joy bigger than any crisis. 

I wish with all my heart that we could watch new basketball stories form themselves this March, but I know that if we pause and pay attention to the highlight reel happening around us, we will each have more shining moments than any 3 minute video could ever fully capture. 

There are stories to be told about Spring 2020: there are the ones that are flooding our news channels, filling our minds with fear as we sit in our locked homes. 

However, more than any other time in my life, I feel thankful for the other stories. The ones that bring safety and pride. The ones that are full of family and friends. The ones that I am positive a little jersey-donning, Grant Williams-loving, mini-hoop-dunking kid will tell his own children one day when he, himself, is a father : that his dad brought solace in this time of fear and insanity. His dad gave him sports.