Denouement....

According to Wikipedia, in literature, a dénouement (IPA: /dɛɪnumɛ̃/) consists of a series of events that follow a dramatic or narrative's climax, thus serving as the conclusion of the story. Conflicts are resolved, creating normality for the characters and a sense of catharsis, or release of tension and anxiety, for the reader. Etymologically, the French word dénouement is derived from the Old French word denoer, "to untie," and nodus, Latin for "knot." Simply put, a dénouement is the unraveling, or untying, of the complexities of a plot.

Just after Christmas 2006 through the present, I played basketball at least four hours a week with girls aged ten through 12. We had some belly-flopping failures and some glorious successes. When we came into the season-ending tourney this past weekend we were, if nothing else, a cohesive team, hunting game.

Saturday was a wonderful day. Spring in Oklahoma, warm and the wind was calmer than usual. We knew that even though the day might be a long one, this was our last time together as the group that started as unmatched fifth and sixth graders but had become a unit. One of the other mothers and I conspired to get Janie's mom to the gym despite all the reasons she cobbled up to be unable to go. Because the other mom was transporting Janie's mother, the three sixth graders rode with me, Kierstein and Janie mundanely noting the wonder of the long string of helium balloons that soared above a local car dealership.

Ann, ever the serious one, stared out the car window as she ticked red basketballs on a string of what appeared to me to be basketball prayer beads that a friend brought her from Norman. I thought to comment on her distance but decided it would do no good. I remembered a picture of her when she was eight, taken during the regional home run competition. Maybe I had a little to do with it, but the kid found her way even back then into that perfectly focused state that jocks call "the zone." My blue-eyed child is now 5'5" tall at 12. Tough feminine muscles have formed in her long arms and even longer legs. Her face becomes sculpted into planes. She wants to be a "great athlete" and perhaps I see one there. If not, at least she makes fairly good grades in math.

A little nervous, we ate sparingly from the dollar menu at McDonald's (yeck) and even though the parents of the other girls were present, I took charge, refusing to allow milk shakes an hour before game time.

We arrived at the gym the scheduled half hour before the whistle. The tournament was very poorly planned by the YMCA for long one afternoon only. To win out, a team would have to play as many as four full basketball games from noon to 8:00 pm. Although I didn't speak of it to the team, I really had no interest in going that far. Just like junior high, high school and college, a "little league" basketball game consists of two 20 minute halves, or 40 minutes of basketball. Forty minutes of sprinting full tilt up and down the hard court in full focus. No one does that twice in a day, much less less four times. The very idea is ludicrous.

Tournament play frees the coach to play like life: only the best players take the court. You play to win; devil take the hindmost. You feed your bench in the game with no thought of the entry fees the players paid at the beginning of the season. By tournament time, everyone has used up their season money and it's pitch 'til you lose. In tourney, you play full court. No more half-court defense.

We lost our first few season games but then took off and hit a streak. We came into the tournament on four solid wins. We intended to win again, if only that first game. The remainder was our denouement.

I didn't tell the girls that we faced yet another round against our long term nemesis, Am-Po, in the first round of the tourney. As I've mentioned before, the teams are numbered and so we didn't t know until we took the court which team we drew. I had done my research, though.

Am-Po's bench was thin and their crowd spare when we took the court. Maybe I was the only one in the whole gym who realized that Am-Po was poorly represented because their high school team had played for the state championship in the big house in OKC the night before (they lost :). Having had my own high school failures against Am-Po, I will admit that it occurred to me on Saturday to add insult to injury. LOL.

The first half told nothing. Down 4-7 at the buzzer, I felt calm. We had plays yet to make; strategy yet to call upon. In elementary basketball, most kids have not yet been exposed to the full court press. My team practiced that particular mode of defense for a week before the tourney. The press requires a tremendous amount of physical exertion. But I knew my team could do it, I called it and went for broke.

We began the half with a swarming, deadly press that resulted in turnover after turnover after turnover. We shook Am-Po to the soles of their expensive sneakers. Girl-to-girl on their end of the court, Janie snatched the ball away and then Ann took her turn. The little girls had their say as well, becoming playmakers and heroes. Am-Po may have taken out our high school team in 2007 to go on to the state tourney. But in a small, Catholic gym in Chickasha, OK, on a Saturday afternoon in the early Spring, the little girls methodically took Am-Po apart. We won the game, 20-10, reminding ourselves with hearty cheers that this was the SECOND Am-Po team we whipped this year. Nothing they could bring could daunt us.

Perhaps the team we faced in the next round, Verden, will be the team to beat as the years go by. After an hour's wait sitting in the sunshine drinking Sonic Cherry LimeAides compliments of my Daddy, we took the court hard against Verden but were tired. Hell, I hadn't run a step but was exhausted. Janie had three fouls by the half and was bleeding from a nick to the arm. Ann was flagging and Julie had fallen hard to the court in a way that made me gasp with the certainty that her arm was broken. Thankfully, it wasn't. Holly of the blonde braids smashed like hitting a brick wall into one of the only solid screens set by a Verden player.

We lost, big time. But no one on my team cried. No one plays two ballgames like that in one day and on some level, the girls knew that. We were happy and went home feeling like winners. I coached winners. The experience will live in my heart forever.

Sometime over the next week or so, I will present season awards. I wouldn't bother with them if they weren't deserved and I shall tell the team that. Oh, I had to stretch a little to say something good about EVERY SINGLE PLAYER, but not about most of them.

Only my best friend and co-coach knows the girls on our team. We live in a small town in rural Oklahoma, far away from everything most people would think of as civilized. I'm not really sure how most of us got here or why some of us are still here. But let me tell you a little about these kids...

There were nine of them. Three sixth graders and the rest young fifth graders. Each and every one of them will get a glowing assessment when I present awards, if only because children deserve to be told they are good. Life will take care of teaching them otherwise.

I am very clever with words and spent a long time deciding how to say what I wanted to say on the certificates I will present. Only two kids will get individual awards, the others will receive honors in groups. My kid will receive a group award but I will let her statistics, as well as Janie's, tell the tale of the season.

Lexie will receive one of the individual awards. Maybe I have a soft spot for short girls with glasses. But this kid went from shrinking violet during her first days on the court to a defensive "giant' who sometimes racked up three fouls while reaching, reaching, reaching sneakily for the ball. Her hands shook before games, she was so involved. She never missed a practice and was so serious about roundball, she had me telling her to lighten up. Lexie took my advice to heart: Shoot the ball. I do not care if you score, hit the backboard or even hit the rim. Shoot the ball. Someday, it will go in. If it doesn't the big girls under the basket can consider it a looping pass. Lexie did. She missed the whole shebang a lot of times but...just that once, at maybe 4'7"...she's the only girl on the team to hit a three-point shot. Lexie wins the award for Most Improved Player. And I mean it.

Let me tell you about Julie. She is as tall as Ann, red-headed, with braces and glasses. Julie is awkward, slow and has trouble handling the ball. She had cancer when she was barely five and is apparently alive today only because of chemotherapy, which damaged her heart. Julie was supposed to have a pacemaker placed during the week of the tournament but put it off so she could play.

Because I know Julie will never read this, I will admit that I never intended to start her during the tournament. Oh, she had been coming along and we had even found that her sweet spot is at wing rather than a substitute post. I started her because the girl I planned to put on the floor was late and only ran up to the bench a minute after the first tourney game had started.

I guess Fate intervened. Throughout the season, Julie had been our cheerleader. She never waivered, was extremely coachable and worked her ass off. She played when called upon and her brother taught her defensive position, which she demonstrated very well. She always hustled and gave practice everything she had. She understands the game.

Starting in the tourney, Julie caught fire. Some kids do that and you never know when it will happen. Maybe her performance was once in a lifetime or maybe it was the beginning of a great run. I don't know. I just know the kid unlimbered her awkward frame, ran like the wind, suffered a couple of serious knocks, got a really red face and NEVER GAVE UP. Julie gets the TEAM BUILDER AWARD. It may be that she will coach my grandchildren. She has that in her and I would like to see it. I hope she is proud of how I will recognize her. I am.

And as for Ann and Janie? No kudos because none are required. I did not name Most Valuable Player because, like I said above, when you are 12 and on the court, you ARE a Most Valuable Player. That's just the way I feel about it. Basketball is a hard game that takes years to learn well. It takes guts to get out out the hard court when you are young, unsure, not very good and a neophyte. But that is the only way you learn and learning is hard.

But not so much for Ann and Janie. I will probably only say this here but they have basketball instincts. They seem to have been born court savvy. There is some possibility that both are destined for great things. After all, Ann says she wants to be a "great athlete." LOL

Their stats are best cited together: In our 2007 YMCA season, Christmas 2006 through March 2007, Janie scored 63 season points, including seven free throws. Do you know how hard it is to hit a free throw when you are 12? Ann scored 60 season points, including 10 free throws. Both were outstanding on the defensive side as well. Janie pulled down 67 rebounds and Ann 65. I couldn't believe they were so close. The final stat, gratis the era of Courtney Paris of Oklahoma and Candace Parker of Tennessee, is the double-double, which I've written about before. That means you scored double-figure points in one game as well as pulling down double-figure boards. Janie had one such double-double with 16 points and 18 rebounds. Ann had two double-double games. The player who came closest to competing with Ann and Janie had only 20 season points and a few boards.

Oklahoma's high school basketball state championships are played in the State Fair Arena, known to every roundballer on the prairie as the Big House. Our town hasn't been to the Big House very many times and I know personally every player who has gone. The little girls and I talk around that idea, not willing to jinx ourselves with over-confidence. There are a lot of games to be played between then and now and many more denouements to experience.

But I've done my part. From this point on, when you ask one of my girls what is the hardest shot in the game to hit, they will scream...the running layup. And I believe that whenever they are about to attempt one, they will think of my advice, if only for a moment.

I have done my part. Only the Goddess knows what the future holds.