Knoxville Remembered Series: Sports or The Curse of the Flying Ball

Copyright 2008-All rights Reserved

When I was growing up, there was one pool in Knoxville where Black people could learn to swim—on the west side at Edward Cothren Pool. In summer, Mama sent me to learn. Janice was usually there too. And Calvin, who eventually became her husband. Easy swimmers, I called those two. They stroked the water like they lived in it. I wasn’t an easy swimmer, but I loved being in the water, and so swimming became something special to me—something I could do well and loved.

One of the reasons I took to the sport of swimming, I think, was I considered it something all my own. Let me explain. Both my parents made their living as gym teachers and when I was growing up, people just expected me to be good at sports. Why? Because they assumed that the whole family would be good at sports. Like it was in the blood, so to speak. It wasn’t. Truth be told, Mama was really an English major in college. The only reason she had this job as a gym teacher because that was the only opening at Austin when she applied, and, thanks to old Jim Crow, Austin was the only high school in Knoxville where you could teach if you were Black. And that was really how sports came to be what she did for a living.

As for me, I was not good at your everyday sports. “Not good” is a kind understatement, “lousy” is a more accurate description. As a kid, I longed to be able to jump rope, my playmates singing chants to keep time while the rope slapped the ground. Didn’t happen. They’d be swinging the rope, I’d jump in, get tangled up, and fall. And forget Jacks. No matter that Evelyne tried to teach me how to play this game where you pick up as jacks as possible before the little ball hit the ground. No way. I could never master it.

I was great at climbing trees, at the swings, and at hand-walking Jungle Gym bars, but those weren’t group games, which I just couldn’t seem to pull off. Swimming, though, that was a different thing. I took to it like a natural. Not like me and softball. Not like me and volleyball. I have to admit that it was a point of pride with me that I could swim fairly well when most Black people in Knoxville didn’t know how to swim.

Even Daddy couldn’t swim. And he was Mr. Sports personified— the revered coach and gym teacher. The reason he’d never learned goes back to his mother who’d dreamed, one night, that he drowned. This scared her so badly that she’d warned him never to go into the water, and he never did. At first, Mama couldn’t swim either; she learned to swim along with me, but I was better at it because I got to spend more time doing it than she did. I can tell you, the best things about swimming, to me: number one, there were no balls that I had to hit or catch; number two, it didn’t require the kind of hand-eye coordination that was my nemesis; and, number three, it wasn’t a team sport.

Unfortunately, at Vine Junior High, I was faced with having to take gym, and those group games I was so bad at playing came back to slap me in the face, reinvented with a new name: team sports. This time, I couldn’t avoid them. Everybody had to take gym every year. And to make the situation even worse, Mama was my teacher.

In autumn, Mama had us playing volleyball. That was unfortunate because when I played volleyball, my feet inevitably tangled up as I looked up, reaching, with both hands, for the volleyball coming my way. My feet would tangle and that’s when I’d fall on the player in front of me, or I’d collide with the player next to me. The other team loved it. My teammates did not.

In winter, Mama had the class playing basketball. She’d point to a couple of girls to be opposing captains, usually somebody like Pansy or Rosalyn or Janice or Judy. Then, the captains called out the names of girls they wanted on their team. Do I need to tell you that I was always one of the last chosen? Always last—after Charlene and Bea. It was excruciatingly embarrassing, and I got fed up with it, but I couldn’t really blame them. Who’d want somebody playing guard position who was so scared of fumbling and falling that she hardly ever moved around on the court? That meant girl I was guarding always got to make a lot of baskets when I was on the floor. My teammates, of course, didn’t like that.

Even the other losers in class who couldn’t play well enough to save their souls got disgusted with me. Folk got real savage about winning the game, you see. So, I resolved to do better next time. Next time came and I found myself guarding Juanita who was moving all over the court like a jackrabbit. I gritted my teeth with resolution, determined to do better, and desperately tried to keep up with her. She faked to her left, and darted forward. At that moment, I lunged at her, heavily off balance, tripping myself up and lurching into her.

Of course, Judy, who was refereeing the game, had to call a foul. She sighed and gave me one of her Judy-looks that said: "I want to cut you a break, but all you seem to know how to do is throw a wrench in the works." After Juanita got her free throw, scoring off my foul, we began again with her moving this way and that way, and me lunging around like a lumbering cow. It was beyond frustrating to me to try to guard somebody darting around on the floor. Why didn’t she stop moving so I could do my job?

Finally, in a reckless attempt to do better for my team, I simply snatched the ball away from her. Well, I can tell you that didn’t go over well. Not with Juanita, who started shouting at the referee to do something. Not with Judy, who was blowing the whistle at me in a long, aggravated screech. Not with my groaning teammates. Not with my mother, who looked at me like I was an idiot. In the end, I ended up on the bench for the rest of the period.

Come springtime, it was softball that was my nemesis.

Once more, I’d always be the last one picked for a team since it was widely known among my classmates that catching the ball was simply beyond me. Because it would have been plain foolishness to put me on one of the bases, I was always assigned an obscure outfield position.

One fine day, after they’d put me out there, Pansy made a hit that stopped both teams cold. Everybody watched the ball go up, up, up into the blue, looking as if it would outrace gravity and never come back down again. Eventually, gravity snagged it; and, slowly, it began to curve down to the ground. Down, and down, and down, it sailed, coming into the field area where Judy, Charlene, Beverly, and I were positioned. As I watched the ball, it suddenly occurred to me that I might be expected to do something... to-- Ohmigod!--catch this thing.

At this revelation, I looked to my right. Judy was running, eyes up tracking the ball as fell downward, her hands out to make the catch. I looked to my left, and there was Charlene, who, like me, lacked the athletic prowess to catch anything--there she was, caution thrown to the wind, making tracks for the ball, too. Behind me, deep in the outfield, Beverly was coming up, full steam ahead, legs pumping, dust flying, looking like the Roadrunner. I looked up at the ball again and trembled. What was I to do? This one, I calculated, was coming in like a cannonball—picking up speed as it dropped, so it would hit somebody or something—hard!

Here was my problem. Flying balls terrified me. I had gotten hit so many times when I was little, standing on the sidelines as my parents’ basketball teams played, that now, the moment a flying ball came my way, I froze, not sure whether to run, put my hands over my face and head, or try to catch it.

Staring up at the ball, I decided right then, it wasn’t going to be me trying to catch this thing that could maim me for life. Let the others come and get it. Let them get knocked senseless. There’d be no more flying balls going upside my head. This ball was not going to make me its target. Not today.

And I stepped back and out of Judy’s way. She caught the ball in a fluid, one-handed jump that was a beautiful thing to see. Her catch won us the game. Our team was still cheering as Mama sent me to the showers. And believe me, I was glad to go.

It makes for a funny story now, but back then, I wasn’t going to risk life and limb for a flying ball. Not then, and not now. No, sir. Not me. So, you can see what I meant when I say I was lousy at team sports.

But I’m not at lousy at swimming.

In the pool, the green-blue water laps at my arms; the smell of chlorine is strong and clean in my nostrils, and the feel of the water on my legs is like luxurious silk. I’m the only one swimming in the regular lane for lap swimmers.

No team members here. No group games. And no flying balls either.

Thank you, Jesus!

(end)