The Best American Sports Writing 2013 by Glenn Stout

the boy who wanted to bury the season would replace his best friend in the starting lineup.
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    If Maria could wait three bone-aching hours in line for tickets at the Hope College field house, afraid of being trampled, begging people not to jostle her, conspiring with her younger son to hustle for a good seat, as if it were the Oklahoma land rush—
    If Gary and Jocelyn could show their faces for the television cameras with their 16-year-old son not yet in the ground—
    If the Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey in rural Iowa could build a walnut casket from their own sustainable forest and send it free of charge 365 miles to Fennville in a minivan that drove through the night—
    If the opposing Lawrence Tigers could look at Wes in that casket one day and still try to beat his team the next—
    Then maybe Xavier could hold it together.
    His stomach churned as he knelt before the scorer’s table, waiting to check in as a ceremonial substitute. No matter: everyone knew he was starting at point guard, just as Wes would have done.
    Nine boys stood at midcourt, wiping dust from the soles of their shoes.
    The substitution buzzer sounded.
    Now entering the game for the Fennville Blackhawks, number 33, Xavier—
    Applause drowned out the announcer’s voice. Xavier had never heard such a crowd: about 3,500 people, more than double the population of Fennville, most of them screaming for the Blackhawks.
    Xavier looked shaky on the first possession, after Fennville won the tip. He nearly lost the dribble at the top of the key. But after an awkward series of passes he found Pete Alfaro open in the left corner for a three. Fennville 3–0. The crowd roared.
    Then, after Lawrence responded with a basket, Xavier was called for carrying the ball. He kept picking up his dribble too soon. He threw a clumsy pass that a defender knocked away. He back-rimmed an open three. He threw another tipped pass. Even as his teammates—Alfaro, Adam Siegel, DeMarcus McGee, Reid Sexton—fought through the grief and played above themselves, Xavier fell apart. He threw a ridiculous one-handed pass from midcourt that was easily stolen by a Lawrence defender. He played lazy defense and let a Lawrence player hit a three in his face. Finally, after Xavier committed a two-shot foul, Coach Klingler mercifully pulled him out.
    â€œI don’t wanna play anymore,” Xavier said, starting toward the locker room.
    The coach grabbed his arm. “If Jocelyn and Gary can be strong for you,” he said, “you can be strong for them and stay on the bench.”
    Xavier sat down and sobbed.
    About 15 rows back, where he sat holding his wife, Gary Leonard thought,
This was a mistake
. Next fall he would work up the courage to attend a Blackhawks football game, in what would have been his son’s senior season at quarterback, and make it partway through the national anthem before leaving in a panic to sit in his truck. And then he would come back the next week and find a way to sit through the whole song.
    Down on the bench, as the basketball game went on, Coach Klingler put a brawny arm around Xavier. “If you don’t wanna go back out there, you don’t have to,” he said. Xavier lowered his head. The court reflected a grid of searing white lights.
    Next to Gary, Jocelyn looked down at Xavier and wished she could hold him in her arms. Letters from other bereaved parents were rolling in. Across America, a trail of enlarged and broken hearts: a football lineman in Nebraska, a wrestler in Oregon, a basketball player in Georgia, a swimmer right there in Michigan, and on and on. Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio. A defibrillator might have saved them, just as it might have saved Wes. Jocelyn blamed herself. She thought she’d been too slow, too indecisive, too uninformed. Well, never again. By summer she would be running a foundation to give schools and sports teams brand-new defibrillators and the training for