Handling heat...

Every small town has one: a long term county nemesis basketball or football team that always seems to be better, faster and even smarter on the court or field, always physical and strategic, always somehow winning, year after year. I don't know the secret of how these "magic" teams pull it off over generations. Advanced athletic genes born into families who stay put? Far-sighted coaches who inspire extra effort from limited pools of players? Rote sports drills from the time the children are barely children? Subtle recruitment efforts from nearby larger communities, promising the benefits of simple country life if the family of a promising young athlete makes the move to the country?

Who knows? I just know that my town has battled another on the hard court for years now, mostly coming out losers.

Am-Po was a consolidated school before there were consolidated schools. In the north part of our rural county, Amber is barely a wide spot along an obscure county road and, five miles away, its consolidated sister, Pocasset, is even smaller. Am-Po sends its grade schoolers to one town and the rest of the students to another. They basically play only one sport, basketball, from the time the children are in pre-K until they graduate from high school.

I don't know where Am-Po's students come from. The school is close enough to the metropolitan area to receive a spill-off from OKC. Maybe that's it. At any rate, the small, basketball only, place has developed quite the winning tradition over the last few generations.

As a senior in high school in 1979, my own team bashed hard against Am-Po. I ended up in the ER after a deliberate and practiced take-out performed by a guard who I remember as gigantic, who left me with a nasty concussion that benched me for a month. My team won against our nemesis occasionally, just not often enough to create a legacy.

That's mostly how it's been over the years. Our high school girls team washed out the county tournament early this year, once again vanquished by Am-Po, who went on to easily take home the banner of county champions, YET AGAIN.

Like other towns serious about roundball, Am-Po sent their budding elementary players to the county YMCA this year for practice and a little competition. They have so many players, they split the school colors, green and white, into light green and dark green, to make two teams. Our team, a nine-girl scruff squad made up of three sixth graders and the rest gauche and small fifth graders, is all we have. We wear orange and black because Annie's great-great grandfather chose those colors for our football team in 1923.

Competition at the Y is different this year. No longer a motley congregate of children who just show up to play with the team they are assigned to, the groups this are town teams, girls who have played together, who know one another and who are wearing their school colors. They are led by coaches with embroidered school names on their shirts. Except for me. Although I graduated from high school in my own wide spot in the road, my blood runs crimson and creme. I have only one orange shirt and that has a football logo on the front.

The game on Saturday began promptly at 9:00 am and was a contest between numbered teams. We are number two and they are number five; no names. One minute on the warm up court, though, colors displayed, and my girls knew that orange was pitted against green. We knew it would happen.

In my recent talk with the high school girls basketball coach, we idly speculated about what it would take for our team to establish a pattern of serious competition, if not dominance, over Am-Po. We didn't come to a conclusion. Maybe after this Saturday, we have the glimmer of an answer.

Ann took the tip and we found out within minutes that they put their oversized black shorts on the same way we do. Despite this, last week's Double double-double was nowhere in reach as Orange encountered what I believe must be the long hidden secret of Green's dominance. Never have I seen such unbrindled aggression from girls not even pubescent. Outside Lord of the Flies, the majority of children do not pursue aggression without being schooled in it.

Green was unable to engage Orange in coherent basketball and decided to fight. And what a childhood battle it was. The referees were at fault when they let the game become a virtual melee. But I could play that way, and so can my girls.

The game was a non-scorer that went back and forth on the court with bated breath, one shoving lunge after another ending up in turnover after turnover but no baskets. Ann and Janie both had three fouls at the half. I could not ask them not to fight back. I cast a quick question toward Stella. Should I take them out? A parent in the crowd answered for Stella: No. Leave them in and win this mess. And so I did.

Body-slammed, my fifth grade point asked to ride the bench for a minute to get her senses back after peeling herself off the court. Her substitute, Holly of the blond braids, took a hit and fell to the floor near the free throw line, writhing dramatically from an elbow to the lip. Advising Ann and Janie to play clean, I did not chastise tiny Lexie as she reached in and almost tackled. She won a turnover and smiled.

My big girls do not cry. But when Julie, a cancer survivor and awaiting a pacemaker to manage the tachycardia caused by radiation, took a deliberate finger to the eye under her thick glasses, I began to get angry. Julie took the bench, tears of pain streaking her cheeks. And then it happened to Janie. Another finger in the eye and Janie cried on the free throw line. Lectured by the ref, I motioned her to a seat, took an accounting and then immediately put her back in the game. Even hurt, shoot a free throw. Janie will face many such situations in the future. She is only 12 but she has to learn to play hurt.

Ann found the zone that I first saw in her eyes when she was eight and swatted 18 home runs in her first season of machine pitch softball. She was clinical, never gave in and came away with only a black eye and a tender nose. She also took enough fouls under the basket to sink at least three calm free throws, shots that should be the bonus when the game deteriorates to the point that ours did.

I insisted that all my girls just take it and play clean. The Am-Po coach was screaming about the clock, my kids were legitimately hurt and I felt confused and somewhat out of my element. I am not a basketball coach. I am an English major who likes stories and works for the State of Oklahoma. But deep down inside, I am a player.

In a brutal game, we beat Am-Po, 14-7. I reminded my girls of that as they lined up to shake hands after the game. Their coach refused to shake mine.

We handled aggression and heat. And we shall continue to do it. In the stands after the game, I told the girls that what was tolerated in Chickasha, Oklahoma, during an elementary pickup game would never pass muster in the state championships in 2012.

And you know what? Me, Janie, Ann, Kierstein, Holly, Ashley, Lexie, Julie, Dashanna, Cherokee and Stella...we believe it.