My Losing Season by Pat Conroy Page A

Do you understand? I’m hurting the school down the road. You can understand that?”
    â€œYes, sir,” I said, trying to disguise my misery.
    DeSarno was generous in allowing his overstocked team adequate playing time, and he ran us in and out of games. We ended up wearing down those understaffed teams who depended on the stamina of a starting five. Our talent was evenly distributed and we played well together even though we lost our big games by shockingly close scores. We lost to DeMatha, on its way to becoming a national power in high school basketball, by two points, and to our archrival, St. John’s, by a single point.
    After our loss to DeMatha, Coach DeSarno singled me out in a team meeting after the game and said, “I’d like to apologize personally to Pat Conroy for taking him out of the game after the first quarter. He was playing a hell of a game. But I kept thinking of next year, Pat, and we don’t know whether you’ll be back or not. The old story.” I had scored eight points in the first quarter of the game when DeSarno replaced me with Buzzy Vail. His doubts about my availability were prophetic.
    The following month I was in my room catching up on the voluminous homework that was the scourge of every Gonzaga boy’s existence when my mother knocked on the door.
    â€œCould we have a talk, Pat?” She was carrying my infant brother, Tom, who’d been born in October.
    I read her face and said, “No, Mom. Not again. I can’t move again. I won’t do it. You can’t make me.”
    â€œThe good news is that we’re going to Cherry Point,” my mother said. “You’ve always loved Cherry Point.”
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    I N THE BEGINNING OF M AY , my father came into the city for the annual father-son banquet and the awarding of letters to Gonzaga’s athletes. Gonzaga had become my home and I wanted my father to see for himself how easy I was navigating its hallways and shortcuts. I gave him a brief tour of my domain, even taking him down to the grotesque basketball court, a converted swimming pool, that was, by far, the worst gymnasium I ever saw. I walked him up to 2A, a room I had fallen in love with, and introduced him to all the teachers he had heard me talk about during the year.
    My father’s mood was withdrawn and saturnine that night, and he resented my perpetual sunniness. We ate dinner among the other fathers and sons without Dad directing a single word to me or to any of the fathers. He brought a closed shop to that banquet and I put a quietus on my own ebullience when I saw his blue eyes go arctic.
    After the banquet, the crowd moved toward the school’s compact auditorium where the athletes were seated in the fifteen front rows with our fathers seated behind us. The Jesuits possessed a gift for both order and organization, and each athlete had been given a number which told us where we’d be seated during the ceremony. I found a piece of paper with the number 63 taped to the back of the chair that corresponded to the number I carried in my hand. I sat down between Chris Warner and my basketball teammate Tim McCarthy.
    When Father McHale, the headmaster, finished his opening remarks, Father Coleman walked up to the front row and barked, “First row of athletes, please rise.” The first row, led by the now-famous William Bennett, walked up to the side steps of the stage, then walked across the stage one by one as Father McHale called their names and presented them with their letters.
    Finally, the line of boys sitting directly in front of me were ordered to stand and they responded. A Gonzaga boy sitting to my right, next to Warner, deftly took one of the taped numbers from the seat in front of him and attached it to the bottom of the sports coat of the unwary sophomore who stood with his back to us. Gonzaga boys were famous for their tireless pranks on one another, and this seemed