I tried out for the high school volleyball team not expecting to make it, but Coach Fisher saw something in me that I did not. I was the first freshman to start with the varsity team that fall of 1999, and from there the rest is history.
My self confidence became stronger. I learned to never give up on what you want to achieve, fifteen minutes early means you are on time, and most of all be a team player.
Last week, as I contemplated which teacher I would choose as the subject for this submission, my muse abandoned me. Writer’s block is a very infrequent visitor, and often these episodes later turn out to have been for the best in some way.
Yesterday, I learned of the death of Coach Bill Conley. He was a legend at The Lovett School in Atlanta, Georgia. He was also my nemesis.
For years this man stood between me and my desire to remain an intractable sloth. He made me do push-ups, chin-ups, and sit-ups until I was sure I would suffer some horrible and widely publicized death in my school’s large and well-equipped gymnasium. His invisible whip spurred me onward as I completed my annual one-mile run—four torturous laps—around the outdoor track. But the most heinous crime he ever committed was to give me a “C” in 10th grade P.E. because, are you ready for this?, I could not serve a volleyball. At barely 90 pounds, my scrawny arm simply could not make that #*$! ball go more than about ten feet.
As a elementary-school kid I attended a public school where, due a lack of funding (or perhaps a lack of curricular will), non-academic classes like art or PE were not so much a systematic education in the riches of life to be found outside textbooks as they were a sporadic ritual meant to keep these subjects from fading entirely into oblivion. I was a fearful and reticent child, unwilling to participate in any physical activity more strenuous than Hide and Seek, but, though I routinely hid myself in right field to avoid all the action, no one seemed willing to fail me at kickball.
In seventh grade I started at Green Fields, where PE meant uniforms and weightlifting equipment and organized sports whose rules I’d never learned in a pickup game or club league, as other kids had. I was expected to make an effort, expected to demonstrate a good attitude, expected to succeed. It was a nightmare.
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Francis Nine, Ponca City Senior High School
Jay Criche, Lake Forest High School
Sally Cullen, Marshall Junior High
Nadine Cole, Academy of Ballet Arts
Mrs. Starr, Streams Elementary School
Mr. Dauplaise, Washington Junior High
Mr. Anderson, Vol State Community College
Joseph Castka, Martin Van Buren High School
Mr. Randy Rusk, Snider High School
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