In jr high we had a coach

Who was a wonderful rascal.

She was boyish and loud,

But quietly instilled in us

The conspiracy of contradiction that exists in this world.

The Cherokee in me would say that she

Was a sacred clown.

The team would be in the locker room,

Inevitably bickering as 13 year-old American girls are wont to do,

And we would be donning our team apparel,

Some worn out hand me downs the high school basketball team had shucked.

It didn’t even seem that they’d been washed.

But as we spatted and jeered at one another,

And some of us would hide in the bathroom stalls to avoid the bodily comparisons and shame,

Our coach would come bustling in

From wherever she had been 

Turning in our names and numbers and eligibility,

And she would tell us all to “HUSH”

And “get ourselves together,” 

And she would chide us if we said off color words,

Even something as mild as “CRAP.”

She would insist we replace that word with something else, like “GREEN BEANS.”

Then she would remind us all that we were on the same team!

And urge us again to “get it together!” 

And then she’d have us join hands

In a big circle 

In the center of the locker room,

And weaving our way around the benches,

And standing wherever we could to maintain our hands together with our fellow sister basketball girl,

We would bow our heads and recite The Lord’s Prayer together:

“Our Father

Who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name 

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven 

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who’ve trespassed against us 

And lead us not into temptation 

But deliver us from evil

For thine is the kingdom 

The power and the Glory

Amen”

And then without behest from Coach,

There was silence in the locker room 

For just a minute,

A holy pause,

Until someone would finally speak

Because they could not find their shoes

Or something serious like that,

Or someone dropped something

Or someone began to dribble a basketball 

On the concrete floor.

And then we went out to play our game.

And many times I thought that we should win every time ,

Because we had prayed to our father in heaven

And he surely had ordained it,

But rather mostly we would lose.

But I laugh today, now,

That in those losses were major victories, 

And how much more we learned in basketball 

And from our coach, 

The Sacred Clown,

And from her simple insistence that we not say bad words,

And that we pray together before each game,

Than all the other subjects combined 

In the classes and lectures we endured at our school.

-jenn