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Define Your Passion

What do you really want to do in life? What burns way down inside of you? What do you absolutely love to do?

VIRTUALLY ALL THE STUDENTS IN THE PACKED bleachers across from me rose to their feet, cheering wildly and jumping up and down. All I could do was sit down and cry.

Never before had I made a coaching move with this kind of impact. Never in my career had I felt such emotion. You’d think we had just won a championship. It wasn’t a buzzer-beating basket; it wasn’t a heave from half-court that made the place go nuts. In fact, it wasn’t even a play. All I had done was turn toward the player with uniform number 52, point my index finger at him, and say, “J-Mac.”

Up bounced seventeen-year-old Jason McElwain. My team manager’s dream finally came true on February 15, 2006, the last home game of his senior year. Jason—or J-Mac, a tag I had hung on him early in his sophomore year—was about to see his first varsity action.

He was small and skinny, standing all of five feet seven inches and weighing only 120 pounds, and his blond hair was partially covered by a headband. You may wonder just why the fans were going so nuts.

Because Jason was not your average team manager. He’s also autistic and learning-disabled.

He had been cut three straight years from his teams, the last two from the varsity by me. But he lives and breathes basketball, and was so dedicated that I had planned for months to give him a special treat on Senior Night: getting him a uniform and hopefully finding him some playing time as well.

Jason had taken a lot of grief over the years because of his disability. Go to just about any high school, and the kid who’s a little different gets singled out for ridicule. In Jason’s case, he was an easy target with his unusually loud voice, his tendency to laugh at inappropriate times, and his habit of repeating things he heard other people say. Occasionally I would say something to the team and Jason would repeat it several times—never anything very insightful; just general comments like “We gotta play as hard as we can,” and those kinds of things.

Basketball was his salvation, a constant bright light that outshone the teasing in the hallways. It kept him enthusiastic and filled his mind with pleasant thoughts. He was a bona fide hoops junkie—loved watching the game on television, loved Kobe Bryant, memorized Final Four rosters, scouted our high school opponents, you name it.

Above all, he burned with passion for Greece Athena, the high school for which I’m head coach and he proudly served as team manager. Jason had an infectious attitude that was so positive. I saw how, gradually, the kids on the team started to develop an appreciation for what he brought to the table every day. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” That’s a terrific life lesson.

Jason was almost fanatical in his devotion. I doubt there was a comparable team manager in all of Rochester, all of New York, all of anywhere. On game days he would go up to the blackboard at the beginning of each class and write “Beat Arcadia” or whomever we were playing that night. The players came to greatly respect him because he cared so deeply and wanted so badly to contribute. As much as some of his autistic habits and mannerisms would drive the guys nuts, he was one of us.

If there’s one thing that will forever link me with Jason, it’s our love of basketball. I’ve coached for thirty years and I am thoroughly happy with the life I’ve chosen. Coaching gets into your blood. You aren’t getting paid much for doing it, or maybe not getting paid at all, but you love the challenges, the chance to get to a higher level, being in the gym working with kids, teaching basketball. The game has burned way down inside me since I was a little kid, so Jason’s passion feeds right into mine.

Jason had persevered and worked hard on his basketball skills, and yet I had to cut him from varsity his junior and senior seasons—an obvious yet difficult decision. But at the beginning of 2005–06, I promised him the uniform for Senior Night and also ventured the possibility of his seeing some playing time. As the season rolled on, Jason checked in regularly about the uniform’s status. I said I was working on it, but the truth is I had much bigger issues at hand—in many respects the biggest problems of my career.

Our talented team had been torn by internal strife involving some players’ parents. They had demanded that I remove my longtime assistant coach because he now had two sons on the team, and the parents perceived favoritism by the coaching staff concerning those boys’ playing time. The attack on my personal integrity cut so deeply that I seriously considered stepping down as head coach just as the season was beginning. I searched my soul as never before, staying on only after my wife, colleagues, and friends noted that I should heed the same advice I’m always dispensing to my players about persevering through tough situations.

Sometimes you’ve got to simply put your trust in God, because you can’t figure out why certain things happen. Through good times and bad, I feel that God is there for me whether he’s providing comfort or trying to challenge me to become a better person. Boy, was he challenging me in 2005–06. Had it not been for my faith, family, and friends, Lord knows where I would have been on February 15. All I know is that it wouldn’t have been on the Athena bench.

Our team stumbled out of the gate during the season’s first half, barely playing .500 ball, before our collective perseverance began to pay off. We came into Senior Night having won eight out of nine games, and actually had a chance to tie for the league title.

I held firm on my promise to Jason, making the necessary arrangements to activate him for the game against Spencerport. Senior Night is always a special time, when we introduce the seniors and their parents prior to the varsity game. The seniors were introduced alphabetically and Jason got a large ovation. We always include our team managers in Senior Night, but Jason was the first manager ever to don a uniform. All the early-season troubles were forgotten in the festive atmosphere surrounding J-Mac’s varsity debut.

He had waited for that night in the same way people wait for their graduation, for their wedding day—a moment so monumental, it seems like it’s never going to arrive. For years Jason had emphasized that he was on the Athena team, and the classmates who enjoyed taking the air out of his balloon would remind him he was just the manager/water boy. Here was one night I had made sure they couldn’t say that.

During the warm-ups Jason hoisted up nothing but his specialty, three-point shots. Some went in and some didn’t, but it didn’t really matter. He was launching those shots alongside his teammates, in front of the fans. He was on the team.

Not long after the opening tip, chants of “J-Mac” began floating down from our cheering section known as “the Sixth Man.” Obviously, simply seeing J-Mac dressed for the game but not playing wasn’t going to work for them.

Chances had seemed good for him to get some action, since we were playing the last-place team in our Monroe County Division II league. We had just whipped Spencerport 67-54 a month earlier, at their place.

But I was frustrated in the first half of our rematch because we didn’t get that lead quite up to where I felt comfortable putting J-Mac in, and I was also still trying to give all the other subs sufficient playing time. We led 16-8 after one quarter and 28-15 at halftime, but I needed the point spread to be wider. Once I put Jason in the game, I wanted to leave him there until the end. Not that I thought we were going to blow the lead because of him, but I really wanted to let him finish so that he would have a reasonable chance of scoring a basket. To have him make a token appearance for one possession would have insulted his dignity. In fact, I wanted everything about his appearance on the court to look as natural as possible.

If he could score even once, wow, what a great layer of elation that would add. Hopefully it would turn out just like two years earlier, when he played in the junior varsity’s final home game thanks to a kind gesture by that team’s coach, Jeff Amoroso. Jason didn’t score a basket that night, but he was fouled on a three point attempt and made all three of his free throws.

Although I didn’t observe unusual body language from J-Mac on February 15, I did notice that he departed from his customary manager’s role of running down to the end of the bench and getting water for the players. This time I don’t think he wanted me to forget about him, so he hung right next to me the whole time. Being that we had no substitute team manager, it was self-service for water that night. I’m very sure all he could think was, “When’s Coach going to get me in?”

Other players might be offended or embarrassed by being inserted into the game when the outcome has already been decided, but this would mean the world to J-Mac. He just wanted to get out on that floor once and show his stuff to the crowd.

We opened a twenty-six-point lead, 50-24, by the end of the third quarter, and I still hadn’t gotten Jason on the floor. I think the entire Athena section was getting ready to throttle me if I didn’t put him in soon; they had been chanting “J-Mac” since the game began and were getting more insistent...