11.
The wide hallways and expansive glass frontage of Gettysburg High School gave a welcome, open-air feeling to a serious place. But the front desk secretary was neither warm nor sunny. She offered no greeting when Jay arrived,, silently pointing to a chair as she dialed the phone, then softly muttered Jay’s name before the bell, the signal to change classes, rang loudly.
Kayla Franz, assistant principal and athletic director, greeted Jay with a hearty hand share and a warm smile, inviting him to walk and talk, as long as he could keep up. “Pretend you’re from the Super’s office,” she said. “You’ve got the goods to pull that off.” She nodded approvingly at his business attire. “If they see you standing too far behind me, chit-chats will be short and sweet.”
Wearing a black blazer, white silk button-front blouse and a print skirt that stopped just above her knees, Kayla would have fit appropriately amongst the up-and-coming executives at First Colonial’s corporate headquarters. Her long blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Bangs covered her forehand, stopping just above her eyelashes. With bright green eyes and perfect teeth, her face would light up any room she walked in. Kayla’s strong, tan legs worked to advantage as she navigated crowded hallways, stopping to exchange hellos and words of encouragement to students, teachers and janitors.
“This is management by wandering around.” Kayla said, as she led Jay through a congested corridor of students catching up with friends before heading to their next class. "I'm sure you've heard that phrase in your job."
“Yeah, when I was at corporate headquarters,” Jay said. “I don’t do too much wandering in Gettysburg.”
“You look like you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.” She nudged him gently below the ribs to let him know she was kidding. After returning to her office, Jay spotted a picture, a magazine cover with young Kayla in Penn State blue and white waiting to shoot at the free throw line that hung front and center on her wall of fame.
“Standard media pose, but I rarely missed from the charity stripe.”
Jay stared at the picture for a half-minute longer without saying a word.
Kayla found the staring rude. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”
“Sorry, it reminded me of some people I know.”
“Who?” She turned to the picture then quickly back to him.
“My boss, for one. He played at Maryland and got on a magazine cover.” Garrett Avery had a framed Sports Illustrated cover on the wall behind his desk. Front and center, a young Garrett dressed in Maryland white, red, and gold leaped to score over a young, flabbergasted, tongue-wagging Michael Jordan decked in Carolina blue and white. “He was just plain Michael,” Garrett had said, “long before he became Air or MJ.”
Kayla laughed. “How’d he fare playing against him?”
“Faced him twice. Scored 12 the first time, 10 the second. He’s never told me how many Jordan scored off him. I could probably look it up. But why spoil his aura?”
Kayla laughed. “Officer thinking. Is he still involved with the game?”
“Runs summer camps each year. Moms all over Baltimore ring blocks to sign up their kids.”
“Who’s the other?” Kayla asked.
“My sister, Dana. She rarely missed a free throw and got fouled enough to make quite a few She’s probably the smartest player I know, besides my boss. But her best photo was on the back page of a school newspaper.”
“Is she still involved, too?”
“Dana played D-3, but she died ten years ago. I really miss her. She was like a coach on the court.”
“I’m so sorry. Jay. Can you take what you learned from her to help us?”
“My grandfather was our teacher. He played at GW and resorts in the Catskills. Dana and I got many basketball and life lessons.” Jay spotted a red and gold gym bag off to one side by her desk, larger than the one that he carried his basketball and changes of clothes in the trunk of his car. “You work out often?” he asked.
“Yep, right here. Amazing what you learn in the gym.”
“C’mon, you’re joking. You work out with the kids?”
“They complain about little things, like cold classrooms and busted locker doors. You get respect when you fix the small stuff quickly.”
Jay was beginning to like her, even if he was being recruited to be a reluctant assistant coach.
“Well-dressed men don’t come into my office asking to be coaches,” said Kayla. “They pitch jock straps and sneakers.”
Jay nodded bashfully. “I can imagine, but Stefani and Bonita have persistent fathers, and I’ve got my boss’s blessing.”
“Well, aside from that, and your lineage, why should I hire you?”
“Honestly? I was told that you needed an assistant who knew the game, might be able to help make your players play better. “Well, for one, Stefani Baker needs to develop her game. Bonita is a true star. Stefani could become one, too, if she gets more involved under the basket.”
“You’re the assistant coach. Coach Hughes is head coach. You have to coach the jayvees and help with the varsity. I’m not hiring you to coach one player.”
Jay looked down at his shoes for a moment, then looked up. “I know. But you can call my college coaches. They’ll tell you that I was a good captain and teammate with everyone on our team.”
“Ok, it’s close to the start of the season. I’ve got no one knocking on the door for the job. So, you’ll need these while I follow up with your coaches.” Kayla tossed Jay a whistle and handed him a rule book. She grasped his hand as firmly as any First Colonial executive and wished him luck. The inch-thick rule book occupied much of the front passenger seat in the Mini Cooper. Jay had only a week before the opening game to study the unique rules of the girl’s high school game. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t have Dana around to explain them.
12.
The next day was a Saturday, so Jay headed for Reisterstown, Maryland, not far from his parent’s Pikesville home, to visit Dana, hoping for divine inspiration.
Jay always brought potted flowers, lilacs, purple mixed with white, Pikeville High’s school colors, reminders of glory days. Like many Jewish families around Pikesville, the Silers had a family plot. Dana was buried close to hergrandmother and grandfather. The burial grounds were well maintained, grass cut down to fall length. Flowers varied in arrangements and colors, some graves well adorned, others unadorned, except for small stones atop the headstone. Jay tried to visit Dana at least once a week during high school and came as often as he could in college as soon as he could have a car on campus. Then as now he always brought the same flowers to replace the arrangement he’d brought on his previous visit.
Jay knelt and placed the pot in front of her grave, then he looked up at the name inscribed on the headstone, Dana Lauren Siler.
“Hi sis,” Jay said, looking directly at her name, not caring if anyone might be watching. “Sorry I haven’t come by lately. But, hey, I’ve got some news. I’m coaching. Can you believe it? You should see Bonita Blount. Her instincts, moves, shooting eye, Dana, they’d blow you away. You would’ve loved playing with her or matching up against her. Her friend, Stefani Baker, you’ve gotta push her, but she could really elevate her game. Remember how you’d get Lily Thompson all worked up when she was having a bad time? Next game she’d score 20 because you made her work harder under the basket? Well, that’s Stefani.”
Dana was 19, four years older than Jay, when she passed away. Starting in elementary school, Dana and Jay practiced with their grandfather. Norman Siler played point guard at The George Washington University in the nation’s capital, “back when small White guys could play,” he often told his grandchildren when they got older. He regularly got into games against pros while working summers in the kitchens. Grandpa Norm had been quite spry. He could shoot, pass, and drive to the hoop with authority well into his sixties, until he hurt his hip. By the time he “retired” from basketball, Grandpa Norm taught Dana and Jay all of the tricks that a small man needed to know in a game that was evolving into a big man’s game. Jay and Dana’s parents were also supportive. They set up a regulation height net and backboard up on a pole over the driveway to encourage brother-sister match ups. A backboard and net hung over a garage door wouldn’t do.
Dana led Pikesville High, a low seed, deep into the state playoffs her junior year, only to lose to Catoctin, the one seed, by only two points. It was a magical ride, and Jay was there for Dana for every minute of every game he could attend when he was not playing varsity ball in middle school. But Pikesville’s last loss was also their head coach’s last game, and her assistant was also moving on. Fully vested in Maryland’s pension system, they were ready to move on to a comfortable, happy retirement.
With most of a successful team returning for the next season, Pikesville High searched for a new coach. The Panthers’ recent successes and the well-to-do community attracted so many applicants from the Baltimore area, the athletic director needed a committee of volunteer parents to screen them. They chose Vince McNally, a coach from a small but mightily successful men’s program. Coach McNally also possessed a biology degree as well as a master’s in science education. Pikesville High needed a science teacher as well as a girls’ basketball coach. So, it seemed fiscally sensible to fill both vacancies with one person. Coach McNally arrived in Pikesville with strong recommendations. But one problem, overlooked in the search, became serious: the new coach had never coached girls, only boys.
Vince McNally thought that he could push the girls as hard as he could push the boys. Yelling, verbally abusive language and indifference to pain were character building, he believed. While Coach McNally knew his X’s and O’s, he didn’t know the strengths of the opposing teams beyond films. Dana and the other seniors did, but Coach McNally ignored their opinions. Players play, coaches coach, was his old-fashioned reasoning. Jay vividly remembered the angry looks on Vince McNally’s face when Dana and her senior teammates relied on their own instincts to manage a game.
Dana’s senior season got off to a very bad start. The Panthers lost their first five games to opponents they had beaten the season before. Instead of trying to work with his players to learn what went wrong, Coach McNally’s language became cruder and cruder. Worse, he singled out the players who were also taking his advanced placement and honors biology classes, embarrassing them in the classroom when they answered questions wrong. Dana was among the Panthers who got hit with the McNally double whammy on the court and in the classroom. She went to her parents, who organized her senior teammates’ parents, who collectively complained to the athletic director and the principal. However, they were told that it was too late to make a coaching change. After hearing about the complaints, Coach McNally became angrier and more hostile to his seniors. He drove them only harder, to the point where Dana became too angry and too exhausted to play. The season lost, Coach McNally benched the seniors, played out the losing season, and left before the school board could fire him. Always a fine student, Dana did ace Vince McNally’s AP Bio class and scored a 5, the highest score possible, on the AP exam. The coach had made her senior year miserable on the court, but at least he did not compromise her academics.
Being five-seven, like her younger brother, Dana was too small for the big D-1 programs at Maryland and Virginia. But smaller, academically solid schools like Colgate, Lehigh and William & Mary were quite interested before her senior year and approached her during summer camps. Dana’s academics fit their profile.
However, Coach McNally had his network. He made sure the recruiters lost interest quickly. Dana had so little game film from senior year; whatever she had showed nearly nothing of interest to college coaches. However, she received a very generous academic scholarship to play D-3 at Goucher College, a small school strong in the scienceslocated in Towson, practically her own backyard. Goucher Gopher coach, Cheryl Dunphy, had seen Dana play for Pikesville High and understood her story. She believed that Dana, a local star, could bring more fans to see the Gophers play, and lead her team to respectability. Dana said yes, but she told Coach Dunphy that she intended to transfer into a D-1 scholarship program after her first season. Hoping Dana would reconsider after being around a more caring coach, Coach Dunphy agreed.
Dana stayed in shape, did well in the classroom, and quickly became Goucher’s best player. But she was not happy, except when Jay, Grandpa Norm, or her parents came to see her play. Dana thought team-first, as she always did in high school, but her teammates, especially the seniors, resented her assertive suggestions. Coach Dunphy tried to soothe things over, but the Gophers still lost far more than they won. Dana didn’t help matters by being aloof after games and when she chose to sit by herself, reading a novel, studying, or staring out the window on the bus during road trips. While her teammates stayed silent after a road loss, Dana noticed that they never reflected on how they could play better in their next game as her high school teammates did. Unfortunately, the small college near the bottom of the conference standings was further off the radar than Pikesville High. A recruiter from Loyola-Maryland expressed interest, so did one from Towson University, both close to campus and home, but Dana was only invited to walk on, and the academic awards were much smaller than she’d gotten from Goucher. Dana passed, hoping that Colgate or Lehigh, further from home, would take a look.
A week after the Gophers’ season ended, Jay’s parents received bad news from the college. Dana had swallowed some pills in her dorm room and never woke up. No one, not Jay nor her parents, nor Coach Dunphy nor her teammates, had seen this coming. Dana had gotten along with her roommate, who also saw no tell-tale signs of trouble. The pills were over the counter sleeping pills, nothing she needed a neighborhood pusher to get for her.
Jay, his parents, and Grandpa Norm blamed Vince McNally for Dana’s suicide. They considered taking legal action against him, but there was probably no way that the former coach could be linked to her death. Dana’s high school teammates moved on to other colleges. None intended to play college basketball, so there was no reason for them to get involved. The former coach decamped to an assistant coaching position at a small college in New Hampshire. As soon as Jay found out where Coach McNally was coaching, he sent clippings about Dana to their athletic director. Since that team was winning, and Coach McNally was not linked to any crime, Jay’s messages were ignored.
Grandpa Norm encouraged Jay to play on in Dana’s honor. Jay never forgot their conversation after Dana’s funeral. “Jay Bubeleh, do you know any Jewish basketball stars?” he asked. “Chamberlain, Russell, Jordan, Bird worked for Jews. Jews ran their teams.” Grandpa explained. “Why play if you can run the whole team? Didn’t you know, Wilt Chamberlain played and coached for a Jewish dentist?” he quipped. “Don’t tell your mother; you’ll never hear the end of it. You know how much she wanted you to go into the ‘family business.’” Grandfather and grandson laughed as Norm ran his fingers through Jay’s thick curly hair. “Bubeleh, the Lord’s got something special planned for you. You’re not going pro, but you’ll be something special,” he often said.
Jay never felt embarrassed by the old man’s displays of affection. Grandpa Norm had been the kindest and most generous person he’d ever known. Jay’s father, Ira, followed Grandpa Norm into dentistry, but neither Dana nor Jay ever showed any interest in sticking their hands deep in people’s mouths. Not that Grandpa Norm stopped trying. He made a point to stop at the National Museum of Dentistry whenever he took his grandchildren to lunch in downtown Baltimore.
“I’ve got to help these girls, especially Stefani. Her dad, and Bonita’s, tell me that their coach is wasting talent, just like McNally wasted yours. I’ve got to help them, for both of us. But I better get down to learning the league rules.”
Jay looked towards Grandpa Norm’s grave and swore that he saw him standing there, giving his grandson a wink.