am now haunted by these other feelings. I am close to falling in love with a young woman whom I will marry eventually.
And the old curiosities from my boyhood, when I read most of the books in the Rockford library, are surfacing.
Other things bother me, too. Somehow a boy’s game has been turned into something else. Grown-ups outside the university actually
care about our sprained ankles and the quality of our man-to-man defense. I cannot attach the level of importance to winning
that seems to be required. Practice and films and practice and films. Locker-room talk in which women fare poorly leaves me
cold. The special study sessions for athletes where amazingly accurate information about upcoming examinations is handed out
are repugnant. On principle, I refuse to attend these sessions and am laughed at for it. There is something wrong, deadly
wrong, and I know it.
I drop out of school. My father is disappointed and hurt in ways he cannot even express. A few months of menial work, and
Iowa State Teachers College takes me in. No scholarship, no financial aid. My parents send money, and I work at a local bank.
Good basketball in a lower key.
Norm Stewart comes to coach. He teaches me more about defense in three weeks than I have learned in a lifetime. Mostly, aside
from keeping your rear end down and staying on the balls of your feet, he teaches me that defense is pride and gives me tough
assignments in the games. I like that. It fits the way I am starting to think about the world,
The purple and gold bus rolls through the mid-western winters with Jack at the wheel. I stand up front in the door well and
gather images for the songs and essays to come. The jump shot is still there. But things are different now. I am studying
literature, playing the guitar, spending Saturday mornings reading Clarence Darrow’s great closing arguments to his juries,
and wallowing in all the things that college and life have to offer.
I am so deeply in love with a woman and with music that basketball becomes something I do because people expect me to do it.
Seldom do I reach the levels I know I can touch with the jump shot. Oh, there are nights, in Brookings, South Dakota, and
Lincoln, Nebraska, when twenty-five feet looks like a lay-up, the way it used to look in Riceville and Manly, and the baskets
are there for the taking. Mostly, though, the old magic is gone.
Still, my dad drives down from Rockford on below-zero nights to watch what is left of it. He sits along the west sideline
in the old teachers college gym, and, moving downcourt, I can pick his voice out of 4,000 others, “Go get ‘em, Bobby.” He
was there with the same words, years ago, on winter nights in all the Corn Bowl Conference towns.
He calls on a March morning to say that I have made the All-North Central Conference first team. He heard it on the radio,
he is pleased, and I am pleased for him. I ignore my remaining eligibility, take some extra courses, and graduate.
There is one final moment, though. The University of Iowa seniors barnstorm after their season is over. Another player and
I team up with a group of high school coaches and play them at the Manchester, Iowa, gym for a benefit. It’s a good game.
We are in it until the last few minutes when our big center fouls out, and I am forced to guard Don Nelson, later of the Boston
Celtics. And, for one more night, the jump shot is there, just as it once was. Twelve of them go down from deep on the outside.
The jump shot, with some 2,500 points scribbled on it, has lain unused for over twenty years. It rests in a closet somewhere,
with my old schoolbooks and Flexible Flyer sled. I got it out once to show my daughter, who asked about it. It took a few
minutes to shine it up, and she watched it flash for a little while in the late-afternoon light of a neighbor’s back yard.
I put it away again. It was a boy’s tool for a boy’s game, for growing up and showing your
And the old curiosities from my boyhood, when I read most of the books in the Rockford library, are surfacing.
Other things bother me, too. Somehow a boy’s game has been turned into something else. Grown-ups outside the university actually
care about our sprained ankles and the quality of our man-to-man defense. I cannot attach the level of importance to winning
that seems to be required. Practice and films and practice and films. Locker-room talk in which women fare poorly leaves me
cold. The special study sessions for athletes where amazingly accurate information about upcoming examinations is handed out
are repugnant. On principle, I refuse to attend these sessions and am laughed at for it. There is something wrong, deadly
wrong, and I know it.
I drop out of school. My father is disappointed and hurt in ways he cannot even express. A few months of menial work, and
Iowa State Teachers College takes me in. No scholarship, no financial aid. My parents send money, and I work at a local bank.
Good basketball in a lower key.
Norm Stewart comes to coach. He teaches me more about defense in three weeks than I have learned in a lifetime. Mostly, aside
from keeping your rear end down and staying on the balls of your feet, he teaches me that defense is pride and gives me tough
assignments in the games. I like that. It fits the way I am starting to think about the world,
The purple and gold bus rolls through the mid-western winters with Jack at the wheel. I stand up front in the door well and
gather images for the songs and essays to come. The jump shot is still there. But things are different now. I am studying
literature, playing the guitar, spending Saturday mornings reading Clarence Darrow’s great closing arguments to his juries,
and wallowing in all the things that college and life have to offer.
I am so deeply in love with a woman and with music that basketball becomes something I do because people expect me to do it.
Seldom do I reach the levels I know I can touch with the jump shot. Oh, there are nights, in Brookings, South Dakota, and
Lincoln, Nebraska, when twenty-five feet looks like a lay-up, the way it used to look in Riceville and Manly, and the baskets
are there for the taking. Mostly, though, the old magic is gone.
Still, my dad drives down from Rockford on below-zero nights to watch what is left of it. He sits along the west sideline
in the old teachers college gym, and, moving downcourt, I can pick his voice out of 4,000 others, “Go get ‘em, Bobby.” He
was there with the same words, years ago, on winter nights in all the Corn Bowl Conference towns.
He calls on a March morning to say that I have made the All-North Central Conference first team. He heard it on the radio,
he is pleased, and I am pleased for him. I ignore my remaining eligibility, take some extra courses, and graduate.
There is one final moment, though. The University of Iowa seniors barnstorm after their season is over. Another player and
I team up with a group of high school coaches and play them at the Manchester, Iowa, gym for a benefit. It’s a good game.
We are in it until the last few minutes when our big center fouls out, and I am forced to guard Don Nelson, later of the Boston
Celtics. And, for one more night, the jump shot is there, just as it once was. Twelve of them go down from deep on the outside.
The jump shot, with some 2,500 points scribbled on it, has lain unused for over twenty years. It rests in a closet somewhere,
with my old schoolbooks and Flexible Flyer sled. I got it out once to show my daughter, who asked about it. It took a few
minutes to shine it up, and she watched it flash for a little while in the late-afternoon light of a neighbor’s back yard.
I put it away again. It was a boy’s tool for a boy’s game, for growing up and showing your
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