My Losing Season by Pat Conroy Page A

looked up in time to see my father entering the gym with a busload of Rambler boosters he had driven to the game. My father had gotten lost in the snow and had found himself pulling his bus up to the campus of Queens College instead of Charlotte Catholic High School. He did not see me score a single point but my joy was so great I wanted to freeze-frame that moment of time and suspend myself in the honeycomb amber of that sublime moment.
    The next afternoon, before a packed house, the Sacred Heart Ramblers took on the Cougars of Charlotte Catholic, the big-city team that had beaten us twice during the regular season, and we beat them by four points. After showering and dressing, my team sat together and watched the other semifinal game where the two most powerful Catholic schools in our part of the Southeast were about to take to the floor against each other. Bishop England of Charleston lined up against Benedictine of Richmond, which had a powerhouse athletic program that chose its athletes from five hundred Virginia boys. But it was only minutes into the game when we knew that Benedictine of Richmond was going to overrun Bishop England with its superior depth and firepower and speed. Bishop England went down by a score of 64–41, and I knew we did not belong on the same floor with mighty Benedictine of Richmond.
    The next morning, the hallways of Sacred Heart shimmered with an excitement that was almost chemical in nature. Even the college nuns and coeds had caught fire with the improbable story of the thirty-boy high school competing against the largest Catholic school in the South, a high school power that looked all but unstoppable.
    As I dressed for the game, I could feel the sudden paralysis come over me that terror brings to an inexperienced athlete’s body. I’d experienced butterflies before, but nothing like this. I felt like vomiting all during the warmup period. The Benedictine Cadets looked every inch like the Boston Celtics warming up. They appeared to be three inches taller than us and carried themselves with an arrogant grace that let you know that playing us was a kind of insider’s joke to them. They laughed and cut up on the sidelines. We were as serious as a quadratic equation, but I was the only one on our team who seemed afraid.
    My first prayer to God that day was to thank Him for healing Buddy Martin’s right hand. My knees were shaking on the bench as I watched Sam Carr jump center against their big man. It took about five minutes of a game played with extraordinary intensity for Benedictine to know they were in a game and at least another minute to realize they were in the fight of their lives. One minute Wofford would have the hot hand and the next Carr would distinguish himself, or the pure hustle of Martin would carry the day or the heart of Sam Carr or the tenacity of Nicky Vlaservich. Together, they blended so effortlessly that if a team stopped one player cold they lit a fire beneath another on another part of the court. But on this night, Benedictine had more than it could handle from the chain-smoking, tough-talking little point guard, Johnny Brasch.
    Though not a great jump shooter, Brasch lit it up with long-range jumpers all night long to the ecstatic cheering of the entire community of Sacred Heart who filled the gym to capacity. Every nun from the convent had come over with my father in the school bus and their cheering section looked like a lost colony of emperor penguins.
    When we went ahead by eleven points, Benedictine went into a blanketing full-court zone press. I knew we were in trouble the moment they moved their players all over the court. Their guards Meyer and Berry started stealing the ball frequently from our guards. They began cutting into our lead and I saw Coach Crunkleton giving me the eye. But with a minute and a half left, Bud Wofford fouled out of the game and I heard the coach call my name. After I reported to the scorer’s table, I ran out to