PRIVATE FACES, PUBLIC PLACES : Coaching for the Game of Life
Fairfax High School, it must be said, has all the attraction of Italian Fascist architecture: brutish, hard, every component larger than the people within. Doors are locked, entrances barred, concrete-blank faces pass without a word.
Twice a week, Harvey Kitani unlocks the gym for all comers. Today, one young man is here, the thump of his ball, the shuffling of his sandals echoing around the room. Coach Kitani sits by the rack of basketballs that he has patiently wheeled through from the locked cupboard next door. He does not fidget, his face hardly flickers: a still figure in an empty setting. Compacted energy.
Coach Kitani has been at Fairfax for 10 years. He has led the basketball team to eight straight league titles. He is not proud of that. Almost every one of his players has graduated from high school, 75% have gone on to college. That he is proud of.
Slowly, his team comes in. Feet: scuffing, banging, dragging, enormous feet beneath gangly legs with strong, hard muscles. Hair: an expression, shaved, cropped, patterned, buzzed. Faces: flat, silent, as if there were only two gears behind them, stop and go. How threatening they seem: invincible, tough, unafraid.
Suddenly, a strapping center rushes in half-naked, clutching his sneakers like a small, anxious boy. No one is late for Coach Kitani--and no one cuts school or homework, or good manners, either. Coach Kitani always says: “Forget about all the winning and all that--being responsible, on time, working hard, that’s what counts.”
There is a small tournament today. The hours of practice, the hanging out together, the turning away from idleness and danger--this is what it is for. “Those other teams,” says Coach, “they haven’t paid the price.” He talks intensely--of sacrifice, of effort, of dedication. The silence is thick with attention; how lucky they are to be held this tightly.
How did he get here, this slow, short, kind man who for years taught handicapped children and special education? Gardena High School, Cal State Long Beach--he came from streets such as these. He went to college as a business major; his father, a Sansei gardener who went to internment camp during the war, saw the whole world as business. He scrimped and saved for his family from long hours. And yet Coach Kitani cannot remember a morning his father did not wake him for school.
A basketball coach: 10 cents an hour if all the hours are added together, the hours combing the city to study other teams, other players, to practice, plan, train, hold the players together. A basketball coach: an insignificant job in the scheme of things, paid as it is valued. But watch these young men, heads held in attention; armies would like to seem thus.
And watch them later winning the first round, the semifinals, the final: the concentration, the way of dropping a ball without question after a call, of turning away like a rifle shot from a referee’s harsh decision, of going in with heart, of coming out with dignity.
But look, too, to the stands behind the Fairfax team--to the mothers, grandmothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, there for every game. Burt’s father, honeyed with pride as his stocky son runs his heart out. Hamp’s father, work boots covered in dust, sits at the back without moving. But watch his eyes--they are a hawk’s eyes full of deep, rough love for his boy. Roderick’s grandma: Everyone knows Roderick’s grandma--and no one swears around her, either.
Ryan Hickman, the all-star, 6 feet, 6 inches, a hair’s breadth away from a college scholarship: bumped, guarded, chided, taunted and finally, in a flash of anger, he rounds with a snarl. From the stands comes a high, piping voice: “Ryan, you calm down!” In an instant, he recoils. It is the only time all evening that anyone hears from Ryan’s mother.
For years these parents have worked--jobs, extra jobs, tired hours of holding a boy fast, watching over him, making a difference. For some, this game will be all there is.
Coach Kitani is not a shouter; his anger, though, is ice cold, his disappointment cuts with its fury, his praise is barely perceptible. Were he teaching history, would he be tolerated thus? Do classroom teachers have this control, this right to fury and passion? Or is it only in sports, which we think is so much like war, that young men may be screamed at, drilled, driven beyond themselves--but also inspired, touched, cared for and believed in?
