The Moment

This is my entry in midmajority.com's "The Moment" writing contest. The challenge was to describe a moment that happened on a basketball court that affected your life. Mine has been selected as a finalist. Vote for "Lipscomb" here. Thanks.

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The most remarkable basketball-related Moment in my life was noteworthy only in how mundane it was.

The play itself was as nondescript as it gets. Jacob Arnett dribbles to the right wing and passes to a curling Josh Slater at the top of the arc. Slater fires, draining a 3-pointer with four seconds to go before halftime and cutting Mercer's lead over Lipscomb to 36-32. The shot accounted for three of Slater's twelve points that night, the assist one of Arnett's three.

And yes, I had to go back and look at the stat sheet on the Lipscomb website a few minutes ago to get all the details right.

For Erica, that extra step would not have been necessary. She just knows.

If you saw the game on pixelvision, you might have seen Erica. She is the little girl in the yellow sweatshirt and purple pants about 15 rows up from the Mercer bench. You might not have noticed her much, though, because for the first twenty minutes of the game she sat almost perfectly still.

That's right. She's seven years old, and she Did. Not. Move.

Typically, that kind of rapt attention is reserved for Star Wars and Fetch with Ruff Ruffman. And, apparently, Lipscomb basketball. Otherwise, she is your typical, active, loud little girl. She likes to run around, play with her sister, tell stories, and when she's not reading books generally make as much noise as she can for as long as she can.

It wasn't until later that I realized how big an impact that shot had on that little girl. You see, I was in Allen Arena to watch Lipscomb win a championship. Jacksonville had lost earlier that day, meaning Lipscomb would win the A-Sun regular-season title with a win. And at halftime, Lipscomb was down 4 to a Mercer squad missing its all-everything big man. If James Florence woke up in the second half, or if Adnan Hodzic didn't, the Bisons were in trouble.

I was worried about the outcome. Erica was enjoying The Moment.

But one random Thursday morning in late March, I walked into the kitchen and overheard Erica talking to her twin sister Katie around the breakfast table. “And then Jacob Arnett looked up and saw Josh Slater coming around and he passed it and Josh Slater shot it and it went in and Mercer was only ahead by 4!”

Since it was morning, I have no idea what the context of that sentence was. I did remember the game, since it was one of the two we got to attend last year. I remembered that Adnan went off in the second half (upon further review, 21 and 11 after Slater's shot). I remembered Lipscomb cutting down the nets after the game. I also remembered the conference tournament loss to Kennesaw State and the not getting invited to the NIT and the fact that Lipscomb only wins 27% of the time when both teams lead in the last 4 minutes.

But for a second there, in our kitchen, Erica and I had a Moment.

The fact that the Moment revolved around a basketball team that had ultimately disappointed me didn't matter. Because our Moment wasn't about me being a fan, but a Dad. Our Moment was a memory my little girl could carry with her a month later, and I was there when it happened, enjoying it right alongside her. Our Moment may look to outsiders like just another shot in just another game, but that's okay. What's important is not what makes up the Moment, but the fact that it is Ours.

The big life lesson? What my children need from me is not a storehouse of objects, a privileged position in the world, or a lifetime of ease, comfort, and safety. It's a Moment. Then another. Then another one after that.

And if basketball can help make that happen, then so much the better.