THE UNKINDEST CUT
THE UNKINDEST CUT FOR BASKETBALLERS IN COATESVILLE, PA., AS FOR TEENAGE ATHLETES ALL ACROSS AMERICA, HIGH SCHOOL TEAM TRYOUTS ARE WRENCHING TESTS OF HEART AND EGO
It starts with the boys who cut themselves. They are a blessing. Take the freshman who trips in the first set of suicide sprints. Coach Jim (Scoogy) Smith whistles the start, and in a crisp volley of chirping sneakers the kid goes down. He promptly rights himself, but soon he is a full court behind the pack, his skinny arms and legs chugging, his buzz cut tucked deep in his shoulders, as if the gym were about to collapse on his head. Scoogy (rhymes with boogie) loudly counts off the long seconds of the boy's humiliation.
He never recovers from the fall. Within days he is gone from the group of about 50 boys who showed up for the start of basketball intramurals, or preseason workouts, at Coatesville (Pa.) Area Senior High. The two-day tryout from which the 12-man varsity will be chosen is still six weeks off, but each of the hungry young hearts in the gym knows that it's in the intramurals that he will or won't make the team. And making the Red Raiders, wearing the red and black, is about as big a deal as there is for a teenager in Coatesville.
Mark Hostutler, a junior who has spent hundreds of solitary hours launching jump shots at the Y near his house in a suburban development, sums it up for many of the boys in the gym: "Basketball is my life. I have to make this team. It's all I think about."
Coatesville (pop. 11,038) is a worn-out steel town about 45 minutes west of Philadelphia, where the land begins to riffle up toward the Piedmont Plateau, Blue Mountain and the mighty Appalachians. The town bends like a gray scar along an old rail line between two wooded ridges that, as basketball season begins, are in full autumn flame. Coatesville High takes most of its 2,176 students from the upscale developments and small towns scattered across the surrounding hills, but it draws its reputation--and nearly all of its basketball players--from the hard streets of Coatesville proper, where most folks are poor and black.
These players grow up under the looming gray sheds and black stacks of Lukens Steel, in a hive of run-down row houses and bland projects around a derelict downtown strip whose only thriving retail trade is in crack. Here basketball is more than the biggest game in town. It's hope. It's often the only thing that keeps teenage boys off the streets. Basketball can be a ticket to college, to a life. This was true when Scoogy wore the red and black in the 1960s and was still true when his assistant Ricky Hicks was a Red Raiders star in the '80s. Coatesville is a perennial power in Philadelphia-area schoolboy basketball. The high school game is the town's intergenerational glue.
The boys who show up for intramurals are signing on for an ordeal familiar to every kid who ever chased a dream of sports glory: the sizing up of talent and the hazarding of ego called trying out. It's a process that began for most of them years ago with the choosing of sides on the asphalt at Ash Park or the Ninth Avenue rec center, where the nets hang in tatters and the backboards are gray from the smudges of a million caroms. Those who were chosen, who kept being chosen, who went on to star in rec leagues and summer basketball camps, have reached the ultimate reckoning at this new gym tucked against a leafy ridge east of downtown, where Scoogy's practiced eye decides who will become a Red Raider and who won't.
"It's hard," Scoogy says, sitting with the back of his plastic chair tilted against the wall in his office a few days before intramurals begin. He toys with his whistle. Scoogy, 50, is a rangy man with pale copper skin, big hands and a round face whose features are so large that they need an extra second or two to arrange into a smile or a frown. He got his nickname as a baby--it was his grandmother's word for an especially wiggly, insistent child--and it still fits. Mouth and man are in constant motion on the court, teasing, instructing, berating, howling with pleasure or, more often, dismay. He's a cheerful tyrant.
Some parents don't much like Scoogy--who was a basketball assistant at Coatesville High for two years before being named head coach in 1995--because he's blunt and impatient and so demanding of their boys. But most of the parents do like him, and what the players feel goes way beyond that. They want to be his boys. The task of choosing only a dozen of them, of dashing so many tender hopes, gives Scoogy pause. He hums a sustained bass note and then repeats with emphasis: "Hard."
Intramurals run from late September through October and into November, three evenings a week of demanding drills and scrimmages. Official tryouts start Monday, Nov. 11, and two days later Scoogy will pick his team. Some boys, like the hapless sprinter in the first suicides, will do him a favor and cut themselves. They will fall on their faces or simply size up the competition and go home. But most of the others who show up are infected with the dream. Each can see his career as a glorious progression from playground to state championship to NCAA Final Four to ... the NBA! And the only obstacle to this megabucks, slam-dunk future is one man with a whistle.
September
They come to the gym in groups of two or three and anxiously await his arrival. They wear jerseys that hang to midthigh. Their playing "shorts" billow to below the knees and are pulled down at the waist far enough to show off a full hand of Fruit of The Loom. They wear anklet socks under yacht-sized sneaks. Their sleeveless T's and jerseys advertise summer basketball camps and rec leagues.
Newcomers and former jayvees admire from a distance the joyful ease of returning varsity players, most of whom regard the intramurals as beneath them. They are an established elite. Counting one or two sure bets who are playing football and won't be out for basketball until after Thanksgiving, Scoogy has only five or six empty slots on this season's varsity.
Among the dozens vying for those slots are Mark Hostutler and three seniors: the short, tightly muscled Damon Watson, who considers himself, at least in spirit, already part of the team; the tall, talented but dreamy Tion Holmes; and the lanky, at times clumsy Eric Kruse, who wants to play small college ball. For the seniors, it's the varsity or nothing. Mark, a junior, can still play jayvee, as he did last year, though to him that would be another endless season in limbo.
"Making varsity is the best thing in the world, the best," says Clarence (Nin) Bacon, a sophomore with long dagger sideburns who is vying with Damon and six others for one of three point-guard spots. "It's everything. I was on the ninth-grade team last year, and we got in to see all the varsity games. The gym is filled, and it's so loud, and when the team comes out, the crowd goes crazy, man ... it's ... it's.... " Nin just puts up his hands and smiles. "It's the biggest thing. If you're on the team, everything is great. Your problems are all gone. Even your schoolwork goes easy. Everybody looks up to you, because everybody would like to be on the basketball team. At the parties after the games, you're the man. The girls, like, line up."
Tion has a better chance than most. He's 6'4", with long arms and big hands and a grace remarkable for a boy his size. Scoogy has already mentally penciled in Tion, not only on the varsity but also in the starting five--so long as he doesn't mess up. Tion has a history of defeating himself: He lacks discipline and direction. Predictably, he's not in the gym on the first night of intramurals.
Scoogy's arrival hushes the crowd. "All jewelry off!" the coach shouts. Then he lines the boys up at one end of the gym for suicide sprints and blows his whistle. The ordeal has begun.
October
Five-on-five, shirts and skins. Ten guys on court and 30 or so who stand and wait. Getting noticed is your only chance. When Nin, a shirt, gets poked in the nose and starts to roll around on the court, Damon, on the sideline, sprints for his own T-shirt.
But before Damon gets back, pulling on the shirt as he Scoogy has waved another boy in. Damon shrugs his thick shoulders and slowly pulls the shirt off. He stands all of 5'5"; his naked back is a taut black triangle. The other boys tease him for being so eager.
Damon wasn't going to try out. His desperate hope of making the Red Raiders survives alongside an almost certain knowledge that he won't. Damon didn't come out for basketball in his first three years of high school. He could kick himself for that. Scoogy is close to the other point guards who did play, guys like Lamar (Maury) Boyer, who started a few games last season, and Dennis (Doober) Holmes and his cousin Kris Bottoms, who were on the jayvee team. Maury and Doober wear their jersey numbers on their earlobes, having stuck tiny, white-numbered videocassette labels there. Maury is a lock to make the Red Raiders. Doober is a strong candidate, as is Kris, who a few years ago moved to Coatesville from New York--Poughkeepsie to be exact, but the boys aren't big on geography, and to them New York means, like, Harlem. "He grew up playin' on the playgrounds in New York," says Damon, unduly intimidated.
Then there's Nin (short for Ninja), perhaps the most skilled of the four. But he's just a sophomore. Scoogy will probably stash him on jayvee.
Even so, there's too much traffic at point guard. Damon feels that because he didn't come out in previous years, he has marked himself for doom. He always had a reason for not trying. As a sophomore it was a bum ankle. Last year it was his asthma; it started kicking up something awful. At least that's what he told his friends. "The real reason is, I was scared of gettin' cut," Damon says, offering up the worm in his gut. "I went out and saw how good the other guys was, and I just quit."
Quitting was better than getting cut: It preserved the illusion that he would have made the Red Raiders if he had tried. This was the fragile base that sustained Damon's ego. Until last summer, that is, when his mom found $275 that she could hardly spare and sent him to a one-week summer basketball camp in Reading, Pa., with Scoogy and the guys on the team. Damon played with them day and night and slept in the same dorm with them. They bonded. "I overcome my fear," Damon says. "It's like I'm on the team. I hang with the guys all the time. We always be playin' ball. I know all the plays. I hustle. Other people, they good, but when I hustle I can play with any of them. I decided I got to do it for my mom. If I get cut, I get cut. I can handle it. I think I'm gonna make it, though."
Two weeks into intramurals, Mark comes home in a funk. He dumps his books in his bedroom and emerges with a deep pout. His mom, Kathy, prods. "Scoogy's got me running with the third and fourth teams," he says. Mark knows that won't be good enough to make the varsity. He's a skinny 6'1", with an Adam's apple so prominent that it gives a sharp angle to his long, thin neck. He ranks 17th out of 517 students in his class, but schoolwork is a secondary concern to him. Basketball is his obsession. He is an exception; whites make up 65% of Coatesville's student body, but the Caucasian boys have all but conceded basketball to the black kids. Mark and Eric are the only white guys at intramurals. Mark's friends call him the Great White Hope.
Mark lives in a redbrick colonial house with a basketball hoop in the driveway. His dad, Jim, drives him down to Ash Park in the summer so Mark can play pickup ball in the playground, where teams of high schoolers often take on teams of older guys, many of them former Red Raiders, and get whipped every game. Mark is often the only white person there.
He thinks he has a shot at varsity this year, but he's not sure. Scoogy doesn't like to load the jayvee with juniors, so there's a chance Mark won't make varsity or jayvee. "I don't know what I'll do if that happens," he says. "My dad said that if he has to, he'll send me to Bishop Shanahan [a Catholic school about 16 miles away in West Chester, Pa.], where I know I could play."
Later, out in the yard, Jim says, "I don't know if I can afford Bishop Shanahan. We're just praying he makes this team."
Scoogy is constantly annoyed by the boys' inability to dribble with both hands. He blows his whistle to interrupt play for a speech: "Can anybody here honestly tell me they worked on their weak hand? Anybody? Too busy trying to dunk"--he mimes a comical dunk--"tryin' to dribble between your legs, tryin' all this fancy s---. Work on your weak hand! That's what summers are for. The weak hand! The weak hand! The weak hand! You need to put your body between your opponent and the ball. You've got to be able to use both hands. That's the difference between a mediocre player and a good player. Which hand is your good hand? Put it in your damn pants! Play with yourself! I don't care! Just get rid of it.
"Y'all are lookin' at me with that coach-be-talking-s--- look. Tell me I'm wrong. Because I know I'm right. Know why I know? Because I did the same thing when I was your age. Listen here"--his voice drops to a stage whisper--"this is wisdom talking. I'm trying to pass something along here."
Tion has shown up. It's a few days into the second week of intramurals. He's the tallest kid on the court. He can dunk from a two-step jump. He looks born to the sport. Anybody surveying the crowd of boys playing in this gym would pick Tion as the one with a future in basketball.
Scoogy runs the boys in teams of five. Though he doesn't say which is the first team and which the second and third and fourth, the kids can tell. On one of his first days out, Tion is asked to replace Glenn Gray, the 6'3" center who played varsity last season, on the first team. "Tion, we'll give you a break," says Scoogy. "This'll be interesting. You ought to be dead by the time you run up and down the court twice."
Tion plays hard, and well, for about 10 minutes. Then he poops out. "What, hurt again?" Scoogy asks scornfully as Tion shuffles upcourt. Tion says nothing. Scoogy motions for someone to replace him. Tion skulks off the court and eases himself to the floor, grimacing as he slowly stretches his long, slender legs. "My hip," he says. "I had it X-rayed. Doctor said there's no damage. But it hurts."
When Tion came out for intramurals last season, he left in the middle of the first session. Just walked off the court and out of the gym. "I had a problem with the coach," he says. "I can't stand to have nobody fussin' at me."
When Eric screws up, he balls his fists at his cheeks and mouths a silent scream. He doesn't get in that often, and he plays timidly. "I do better when I'm just playing pickup, you know, not running all these plays," he says. "When I get out here with these guys, I tense up."
Eric has the kind of size Scoogy needs. He's 6'2", and he's solid enough to stand his ground under the boards, but he's got flat feet and moves like a caricature of the thick-legged white guy. As a sophomore Eric made the junior varsity under Coatesville's longtime coach, Ross Kershey. But last season, when Kershey retired and Scoogy took over, Eric was cut. He thinks Scoogy has already dealt him out this year, too. "You can tell by the way coaches talk to you," Eric says, "and by the players they like to put into certain situations. They always leave me out. I know that I'm not as fast as these guys."
Eric probably wouldn't have come out if he hadn't received a letter from a Division III college recruiter who saw him in action last summer at a basketball camp. The letter convinced Eric that he could play, even though he didn't grow up breathing basketball on the Coatesville playgrounds. He's grimly determined. What he lacks in gifts he tries to make up for in heart.
"I hate this part of coaching," Scoogy says. "No, don't say hate. I don't like to use that word. There's too much of that in the world already. Say I extremely dislike this part of coaching."
Scoogy is off to one side of the gym with jayvee coach Nick Guarente, taking a break from all his strutting and hollering. His long legs are stretched flat on the floor before him, his big feet drooping to the side. In a few weeks he will have surgery for a ruptured disk between two cervical vertebrae, but the real pain in his neck right now is the cutting he must do.
Last season he got lucky. He had forward-center Richard (Rip) Hamilton, a player with talent and determination. Rip was one in a million, and he led Coatesville to a 26-4 record. He's now a freshman at Connecticut, where he's starting at guard-forward. This season Scoogy has a group of boys who ... well, let's just say state championship doesn't spring to mind. At one extreme are the gifted who won't work; at the other, the inept who will walk through walls. Scoogy will keep 12 who fall in between and make them run, run, run. The rest must go.
Last year Scoogy cut a big player with megadreams and slow feet. Scoogy put up the cut list at 7:15 a.m., and the kid's parents were at his office before noon. "It was one of those love-is-blind situations," says Nick. "In that case, stone blind."
"They called me everything but the N-word," says Scoogy. "As much as said I cut the kid because he's white. I hated to cut the kid. I've got a rainbow mind. I'm out here looking for talent. The kid's mom told me her son was going to go on and play in college and prove me wrong, and I told her, 'Good, I sincerely hope you're right. I wish him nothing but the best.'" The kid did not speak to Scoogy again. Just walked past him in the halls without a look. Scoogy could feel the boy's hatred. "Some of these boys, I have them in my phys-ed classes," he says. "I came up with their parents. Some go to the same church as me."
Damon, the muscular little point guard, is inserted into a scrimmage. He plays like a dervish. While playing pressure defense, he ties up two men by himself. They pass back and forth at midcourt, but Damon keeps up with the ball, finally slapping it downcourt and then outracing everyone to it. He dribbles back toward half-court, allowing his teammates to set up on offense, and then, with a flurry of fakes, he makes a suicidal drive into the key. The ball ends up across the gym.
"I got one word for you guys who love all that playground razzle-dazzle s---," Scoogy scolds loudly. "It's a four-letter word. Most of you haven't heard it. It's pass."
Late in October, Mark is regularly playing in the first five. He's so blond and pale he could be a film negative of the other boys on the court. His torso glows pink with exertion. Mark was the best player on his Catholic school team in the eighth grade, but the first time he came out for basketball at Coatesville, he says, "It was, like, whoooah. I was getting killed. The black kids were just way quicker and had more skills than I had."
Jim Hostutler says many white parents in the area discourage their kids from playing basketball. "I've seen kids with talent playing with Mark and heard their fathers say, 'Why waste your time?' Because they just assume their kids can't compete with the black boys from the playgrounds. The white parents steer their kids to football and baseball." Coatesville's football team is 58% white, 42% black. Its baseball team had one black player last season.
Asked who he thinks Scoogy's final 12 will be, Mark picks out players intently. Among them are two from the football team who haven't come out yet. Mark does not pick himself.
On the court, meanwhile, Scoogy is amazed. Doober puts a particularly good juke on two men in the key, faking a move to the foul line and then cutting back to take a nifty pass from Nin and casually drop in a layup. Scoogy leans his head against the gym wall and howls. "Aaaaaooooohhhhh! That was the first person groaning," he shouts, both saluting the offensive play and chastising the defense. "Aaaaaooooohhhhh! That was the second person groaning. I can't believe it! That was so wide open!"
Tion walks through the door of his aunt's house on Coates Street, a block of ancient row houses on the East Side, several blocks uphill from Main Street. He lets his backpack slide to the floor, moves to the leather couch without saying a word, slips one big hand under the warm belly of his sleeping two-month-old sister and gently lifts her to his face. He nuzzles the sleeping baby, delicately fixes the pink blanket around her and speaks to her softly.
This house is his cousin Doober's place. Doober and Poughkeepsie Kris are upstairs in a tiny attic bedroom. Its slanted walls are decorated with pictures of girls from magazines and with drawings and photos of Coatesville High basketball players. Doober's mom, Roxanne, videotaped all the jayvee games last year. Doober has quite a stack of cassettes. He likes to hang out upstairs with his buddies, running the tapes over and over. Roxanne's voice provides loud, hilarious, emphatically one-sided commentary.
"I get so tired of hearing my voice on those tapes," Roxanne says. She's a cheerful woman whose long hair is woven into hundreds of thin, shiny braids. She and her sister, Cassandra, Tion's mom, who is expressing milk for the baby, practically share their children. Tion spends most weekends in this house and often comes here after school. This is also where a lot of basketball players congregate. "They come over because they like to see themselves on the tapes," Roxanne says.
Damon drops by, breezing through the front door without knocking. This is home. There are dangers on the streets of Coatesville, but there is also an emotional network connecting these boys to one another's kin and friends from one end of town to the other. Scoogy is famous in this world, and infamous. "Scoog ought to praise these boys, not be ragging on them all the time the way he does," says Cassandra. "Other guys this age? They're already out on the corner selling drugs. These are good boys. If they're out there playing basketball and trying hard, he ought to praise them all the time. They deserve it."
Scoogy is always telling the boys, "If I ain't giving you a hard time, it's because I've pretty much given up on you." There's an example of this toward the end of the month. Tion has been coming to every intramural session, but he just sits. It's the hip. This evening he's draped in a chair a few yards behind one basket.
"Tion, get on your feet!" shouts Scoogy when a couple of players come crashing down near him. Tion stirs, stands up and moves over a little to the side. At half-court Scoog reconsiders, stops and shouts, "I don't care if you sit, Tion, just don't sit there." It doesn't penetrate, but in the code of the gym, the coach has told the player, You might as well go home.
Eric can read his own subtext. Scoogy never gives him a hard time. He says only nice things to him--when he speaks to him at all. Eric, whom the other boys have taken to calling E, is the opposite of Tion. He has gotten the message, but he won't stop hanging in there under the boards.
Scoogy regards his surplus of capable point guards with dismay. There's the hard matter of choosing among boys with similar skills. Scoogy could make one or two into shooting guards and bump his bigger shooters to forward, but he would be left with no size underneath. His only hope for rebounds this season is the hefty Glenn, whom he calls Bubba and rides constantly about being out of shape. Glenn never answers back. He has thick round shoulders that slump when he's tired or depressed. He's lugging 20 extra pounds. His belly rolls over the top of his drawers. Seeing the boy's soft edges provokes Scoogy, who loathes off-season complacency.
"Some of you guys think you've got it made," he says. "Just because you played varsity last year, you think it's going to be handed to you. You come out here all lumpy and out of shape. Well, believe-you-me, nobody is giving away jack. You got to be hungry. You should have been running all year long."
In the suicides Scoogy stands at midcourt counting off the seconds while the boys sprint. If one of them fails to finish the run in 30 seconds or less, they all have to do it again. Trouble is, Scoogy kind of scooges his count. After about 10 sprints, Glenn is galumphing up the rear. His late finish dooms everyone else to another round. "Did not make it!" the coach shouts. "Come November, those are the four ugliest words in the English language."
November
"I don't know," Damon says. "I'm not 100 percent. My chest been hurting me. It started about three intramurals ago. I don't know if I'm gonna come out or not." Damon is getting cold feet. It's the last week of intramurals. Official tryouts start in four days. "I'm having a hard time keepin' my hopes up," he says. "I ain't even gonna be mad if I don't make it."
But he'll be embarrassed. "'You didn't make it, you're not as good as me,' that's what people be sayin'," he says. "I don't think I can handle that." Then he sees another possibility. "If I don't make it, maybe I'll be manager. Sometimes Scoogy, he let the manager suit up, be a backup. He did that twice last year."
It all comes down to two days of deciding. Snow falls on the fateful first morning, the second Monday of the month. "Intramurals are over, boys," says Scoogy with a giant grin as he greets the players in the chilly gym. "Now you're mine!"
He makes them run a mile outdoors in the freezing air, a torture whose advent was rumored for weeks but fervently disbelieved. Some of the boys are pleasantly surprised by their times. Scoogy is not. He makes all of them run a mile again the next day, indoors this time.
On the second day of tryouts, even some boys who should have an idea of where they stand don't. Despite what he senses, Eric remains stubbornly hopeful. "I don't know," he says. "Ask me after this practice."
Damon, who has come to the formal tryouts after all, just shrugs and smiles sheepishly. "I'm tryin'," he says.
There are more than 40 boys in the gym. Twelve will play jayvee. Twelve will play varsity. A yellow legal pad lies on the floor, off to one side of the court. At one this morning Scoogy sat with the pad at his kitchen table, sipping a glass of iced tea, and wrote out 16 names in pencil. He wrote down the returning varsity players: Maury, Glenn, Carl Cannon, Ty Legree, Johnny Miller, Robert Taggert and Brian Ward. He also wrote down Nin, Mark, Poughkeepsie Kris, Doober, Maurice (Cup) Peterson (a 6'2" senior guard-forward who has shown ferocity under the basket), Dante Buchanan (a gaunt junior forward with terrific skills but a brooding personality that troubles the coaches), Preston Jones (a dignified senior guard with good moves whom Scoogy cut last year), Keenan Chase (a forward from last season's jayvee who's a prodigious leaper) and Ramzee Stanton (a promising junior forward-center who recently transferred to Coatesville High from a school in Philadelphia).
Already axed are Damon, Eric and a number of other seniors hustling through the second day of tryouts, desperate to make an impression. They are as oblivious to their fates as Tion, who is still lounging in the corner, holding a big blue winter coat over his long legs. It's as though he believes that making the team is simply a matter of showing up. His hip is fine now, but he's in danger of flunking one of his classes and becoming ineligible. "My teacher gonna talk to Scoogy about it," he says. Asked about Tion, Scoogy just shakes his head.
Scoogy had planned to hang this list of 16 outside his office tomorrow morning and take one more day to make the last four cuts. But after practice the list is further trimmed. The coach stands in the middle of the gym with Nick, Ricky and a third assistant, Mark Bailey. Most of the boys have gone home. A few wait for rides in far doorways.
"I don't know why you have him on this list, the way he drags himself up and down the court," says Mark, pointing to Dante's name. "I'll never forget what he did to me in that jayvee game last year, after I pulled him out. When I sent him back in, he just sat there on the bench staring at me. Just flat-out refused."
"He's got talent, but he hasn't showed us anything," says Ricky.
Scoogy draws and redraws a red line through D. Buchanan.
The next target on the list is Poughkeepsie Kris. His skills are on a par with those of the other top point-guard candidates, but he missed two weeks of intramurals when he was suspended for fighting, and he's in academic trouble. "If he stood out a lot from the other guys, maybe you'd consider it," says Mark, "but with these other things...."
"You've got too many point guards as it is," says Ricky.
Scoogy draws another red line, through K. Bottoms.
The discussion turns to Preston. "He's a great kid, a super kid," says Ricky. "But you can't have that many guards. Why drag it out for him?"
Scoogy has Preston in gym class, and he likes the kid a lot. He slowly draws a line through the boy's name.
"You're going to have to get rid of Doober," says Nick. "You can't keep that many point guards."
"Yeah, but Doober, he's the smartest kid on the court sometimes," says Ricky.
"I'll give him another look," says Scoogy.
When they finish, Ricky ribs Scoogy: "Man, you are gonna be unpopular around here. You ain't even gonna be able to go to church! People gonna be throwin' Bibles at you!"
Wednesday, 7 a.m.
The cold morning sky is streaked with orange and purple clouds. The school is stirring to life. A few boys come wandering down the hallway leading to Scoogy's office.
"Where the list at?" one says.
"List ain't up yet?" asks another.
Scoogy strides in at 7:10. Overnight, sitting up at his kitchen table, he decided to keep 13 players on the varsity, something he vowed last season he wouldn't do, because it means more disgruntled guys without enough playing time. He'll deal later with the players coming from the football team. By then at least one of these boys will have difficulty with his grades or will miss a practice--in other words, will cut himself. For now, though, Scoogy has his team. He opens his office door, thumps his briefcase on the desk and withdraws a white 8 1/2"x11" lined sheet of paper on which he has written in bold pencil:
The following individuals should report for boys varsity basketball practice today at 2:45
B. Ward
R. Stanton
J. Miller
C. Bacon
R. Taggert
T. Legree
M. Peterson
L. Boyer
M. Hostutler
G. Gray
C. Cannon
D. Holmes
K. Chase
He tapes the list to the brown tile wall outside his office. "I just thought to myself coming in here, Technically I'm 50 years old," Scoogy says. "Now I'm 51. I like to just put it up and get the hell out of here."
Which he does. Quickly, boys in bulky winter coats crowd around the list.
"Cup!"
"No! Cup made it!"
"Nin."
"Ooh, Dante's not on it."
"Keenan made it, and Ramzee."
"Kris ain't on it!"
"Kris not on there?"
Cup emerges from the crowd overjoyed. He is embraced by one of his friends.
Nin, the little sophomore with long dagger sideburns and big varsity dreams, approaches alone. "You on it," a friend tells him. "You on the list."
"Don't play with me, man," Nin says. The crowd parts for him as he approaches the wall. He makes two fists and leans up close. "Oh, my god!" he shouts.
Ty, one of the returning members of last season's varsity, saunters down the hallway wearing a white stocking cap that sticks up five inches from his head. "I ain't got to look," he says. "I know I'm on it."
Mark, the Great White Hope, arrives with a friend. He stands before the list silently for a moment. No more worries about transferring to Bishop Shanahan. He turns away from the list with a broad smile. As he walks off his friend asks, "That isn't the varsity list?"
"That's varsity," says Mark.
"You kiddin' me? You made varsity?"
Poughkeepsie Kris has gotten the word. He comes down the hall, his head down, his face a mask of anger and disappointment. He looks at the list briefly and then heads into the adjoining boys locker room.
Next comes Damon. He's afraid to look. "Am I on it?" he asks a friend. "No, I know I'm not on it." He walks up, studies the list for a moment and then steps into the locker room. Inside, Damon and the starting point guard, Maury, try to console Poughkeepsie Kris. "You got all year to work on it, man," Maury tells him. "Next year, you come back, it'll be your year to shine."
"That's right, Kris, you still got a year, man," says Damon. There will be no next year at Coatesville for Damon.
Eric comes down the hall alone. He approaches with the same grim determination he showed standing on the sideline during all those intramural sessions. Eric does not dress in baggy jeans like the other boys. He has on straight-legged pants and a sweater. He stands at the back of the crowd around the list, craning for a look. "Let me see," he says.
"You ain't got to see," says one boy, teasing. "You cut, man."
Eric leans in, blushes and then turns to walk away.
"No, no, wait, E!" shouts Ty, pushing clear of the crowd, chasing Eric with his hand outstretched. "You did good, E. You did good."
Ty stops, hand still outstretched, as Eric walks slowly away without turning back.
Epilogue
When Scoogy went home the day he posted his list, he found an angry note from the grandmother of a boy he had cut. During the season the team struggled, as the coach, who turned 51 in December, had feared it would. The Red Raiders ended the regular season last Friday with a 10-14 record, good enough for the Ches-Mont League championship, and will go to the state District One playoffs, which will begin this week. Coatesville's most consistent scorers were Maury Boyer and Glenn Gray. Nin Bacon was a spot player and, according to Scoogy, "got some good experience." Mark Hostutler came off the bench in one game and scored 18 points. "It was the best night of my entire life," he says.
Eric Kruse didn't attend any of the Red Raiders' games. He played on two rec league teams and plans to throw the javelin for the Coatesville track team in the spring. Damon Watson, meanwhile, helped out the Red Raiders part of the season as team manager. He attended almost all of the home games.
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