He seemed to be about 6’4 to all of us. He seemed to never miss a shot. He walked the halls of Rosemont Junior High School in 1965 and 1966 with every young basketball players eyes following every move he made.

He had been undefeated in his first year at another school, came to Rosemont and won every game in his first year. He was a ninth grade basketball coach…yet to us he was as big as Phil Jackson was with the Bulls and Lakers.

We hung on every word he spoke.
And when he said to my friend,
Ricky Ford, who was a “Troy Aikman” in the eighth grade, that Ricky had caused him to lose his first game ever as a Coach…we all took it as though Moses had thrown the tablets down and broke them because of us.

After lunch each day everyone would walk out onto an open area next to the track just outside the Wood/Metal Shop area until 5th period started.

Coach White would walk out sometimes and literally hold court among us.

One day he came up to our group and began talking with us.
He looked at me and said,
“Terry, give me your hand.”

I lifted up my right hand to him, he took it in his two hands and in front of Ricky Ford, Eric Johnson, Rudy Lambert, Sherman Lee and Don Warren…
he began lifting my hand by my middle finger with his hand, and releasing it.

He did this three times.

As my wrist would flop down he again lift up my hand and let my wrist drop my hand.

He looked around the group.

As he held my hand still in the air,
he looked at me and said…
” Guys ….this is a shooters wrist.
It’s an NBA shooters wrist.”

That was said to me in the Fall of 1967 and I remember it as clearly as these keys I am now touching. I can tell you the sun was bright that day and we all looked at him with awe as he walked back toward the Gym.

I became a very good shooter.

I did not achieve the level he mentioned… but at the moment he spoke those words and for years after I felt like I might.

 

The words we speak to those younger or dependent on us carry 50 years or more of weight and significance.

 

I am still a very good shooter.

I do not play any longer because I do not want to try and do something my mind had committed to memory… but my body might have let slip.

My mind recalls what Coach White said to me often.
I also remember what another Coach once said to me which dripped of doubt and skepticism….but not very often.

What Coach White said has remained
an encouragement …not merely about my ” shooters wrist”….
but combines with other encouragements that have created the confidence that my Creator has allowed me to have.

Speak light.

Whether Bill White actually believed I possessed an NBA “shooters wrist” or not, is irrelevant.
Those words, and others from him,  hit the ears of a group of eighth graders and lifted all of us to a better place.

Of that group, I know three played major college athletics and one preached successfully for many years.

Speak life.

You can cause an effect to be present in a young life and be manifested in a variety of ways for over 50 years. To the positive or to the negative.

It is your choice.

Coach Whites words still resonated within me.

I still see him looking at me in the eyes and speaking.

I still feel his hands lifting up mine.

 

 

Terry
July 2016

 

 

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