Dynasty Dreams

 

Not everyone wants to be at Uconn.  Not everyone belongs at Uconn.  A reporter once asked the head coach of the Uconn Women’s Basketball team, Geno Auriemma, how he consistently motivates his players to work as hard as they do, year after year, to be the best they can be and maybe even push for a little more.  He replied that he doesn’t have to motivate his players – he coaches motivated kids.  These kids – let’s not forget that many on the team this year are teenagers – arrived with qualities that had already been taught to them long before stepping on the highly decorated court at Gampel Pavilion.  If they didn’t, then they had to learn it quickly and either sink or swim in it.  They have to come with grit, an unparalleled work ethic, and a deep understanding that nothing is handed to you, that you have to earn your place on this team.  You have to know that Uconn Nation and the dynasty of 11 National Championships didn’t happen overnight.  Before Geno orchestrated the greatest winning streak of all time at 111 games, he lost 137 of them.  It has to be intrinsic in every part of you to be able to look at an already historic legacy in the eye and say, “I can do better.”

                                                                                                                                

Perhaps it is strange that thoughts of my beloved Uconn women’s basketball team has run parallel with the students I teach everyday.  It began in November when the Uconn women were not expected to do well.  They were a young team who graduated arguably the best player Uconn has even produced in Breanna Stewart, along with standout superstars Morgan Tuck and Moriah Jefferson.  Sophomores Katie Lou Samuelson and Nypheesa Collier lacked experience and maturity.  Both players had just recovered from injuries, Lou from a broken foot sustained during last year’s NCCA tournament and Nypheesa had hip surgery.  Juniors Gabby Williams and Kia Nurse were perhaps untested in their new roles as team leaders.  Senior Saniya Chong struggled through her previous three years on the team – what would make this one different?  The Uconn bench was nearly and laughably nonexistent.  The loss on Friday night against Mississippi State was unexpected, but remember, this was not the team originally expected to be as dominant as they were, and to make it look as easy as they did.  This was a team that was supposed to lose repeatedly early in the season to teams that were bigger, faster, more experienced and plainly better than they were, and in a grueling travel schedule dubbed as the “Road of Death.”  Even Rebecca Lobo, part of the Uconn alum that started it all in 1995, had doubts over victories against Baylor, Notre Dame, Kansas State, and Maryland.  Yet, every game they showed up and figured out how to win.     

 

It made me think of the children that I teach on many levels.  My students are the Uconn team at the very beginning of the season – by society’s standards they are not the ones who are expected to win.  Some believe that this has been a systematic result of racism in our country, that the poor education of inner-city children, the dependence on government handouts among people of color and the lack of expectations and positive role models has been deliberate and deadly.  If this is so, I wonder if the most important lesson I could impart on these young minds may not necessarily be how to cite evidence or identify central ideas in a text, but to change the belief system taught to them, subconsciously or not, that they cannot hope for anything better than what the projects offer them.  I realized that this is a task that will lead many educators through the “Road of Death,” but I believe we must set ourselves as examples – not so much in where we have been and what we have achieved, but in allowing our students to glimpse a life outside of their own realities.  No one expected Uconn to win in the fashion that they did this year, but through hard work and complete trust in each other, they changed everyone’s minds so unequivocally that the mere idea of a loss was blasted off the radar. 

 

But winning, even at Uconn, isn’t a privilege.  It is hard work, sacrifice and a complete dedication to the things we are passionate about.      

 

This led me to a new inquiry: How do we instill these qualities in the children we teach?  How do we connect the idea of hard work and success when what they see everyday tells them otherwise?  How do we give them the opportunities to want to strive higher when the odds are historically stacked against them?  How do I reach a child who has decided to sit at his desk with a broken pencil for forty minutes because it was “too much work” to get up and sharpen it?       

 

I do not know the answer to these questions.  As a second year teacher, I am barely able to figure out how I will teach my lessons on a daily basis – but I do know this… a winning streak of 111 games didn’t magically appear overnight.  It had its beginning on November 23, 2014 when Uconn dismantled Creighton 96-60.  Beginnings are a funny thing, you see.  You can never see it as it is happening, but the beginning is where possibilities emerge.  The children I teach may never have experienced a win of any kind in their lives, not through a lack of talent or desire, but the idea that they can.  What if they were given this new beginning?  As their teachers, mentors, and biggest fans, we must not underestimate the power of giving students opportunities to experience and celebrate even the smallest victories.  I know the winning itself is not important, but the beginning of new beliefs, the rise of confidence.  If they have not experienced that first success, how could they think of building themselves up for the second?  Or the 111th?     

 

There are those who hate on dynasties as if getting to that point were easy.  There are those who argue that domination is synonymous with boring, predictable and even entitlement.  However, the dynasty built by the Uconn Women’s Basketball Team over three decades is defined in part by their diligence, teamwork, attention to detail and tenacity to improve every single day.  We may not see what happens behind the scenes, but champions have the ability to make the impossible look… well, easy. 

 

It wasn’t easy to watch Uconn lose to Mississippi State in the Final Four, but this feeling of melancholy won’t last for very long because I know what kind of team Uconn is and has always been.  It is what the faint of heart such as myself love about the predictability of hard work.  Samuelson has already vowed that she has, “two more years left to work as hard as I can.”  Collier shares the same sentiment, “A lot of us haven’t been in this situation before so we can really use it for next year to grow.  I know none of us want to feel this way again.”  This is what champions do, they learn from when they win and even more so when they lose.       

 

Every dynasty has its challenges, but what will define them is how they find a way to rise above.  Every story has a beginning and the most important is the one we spark in the conscience of our students everyday.   After all, every beginning is only an untold story until that dream is realized.