The Unbearable Weight of Potential Talent

Writer: Alex Haigh

Illustrator: Andrew Gragg

“Blood, guts, gore! Veins hangin’ from your teeth!”

This is what my dad yelled at me, a 14-year-old girl, every time I checked in to my JV and JVII basketball games in high school. I played on both teams because, as my 6th grade basketball coach told me, I was what one might call a "cusp" player: not consistent enough to be mediocre, not bad enough to be awful. It didn’t matter to my dad which team I played on or how well I played, though. He left it on the court every night, even if I didn’t.

“It was 1998; boys were grody, and ball was life.”

I started playing organized basketball in 6th grade, just before they started making kids try out. There were nine girls at my school who were interested in playing basketball, so we all got to play. The girls who didn’t want to play were probably too busy being hot and cool (Happy Women’s History Month), something I didn’t understand and wanted nothing to do with at the time. It was 1998; boys were grody, and ball was life.

My dad would drive me to practice every night, stay and watch, and drive me home. His car at the time was an 80-something Ford Granada, and I remember the heat would start working just as we pulled into the church parking lot where the gym was. I would be eager to run sweet sixteens and warm up.

In our first season, the Blue Lightning (our jerseys were blue, we thought ourselves fast) were undefeated, largely due to our prodigal point guard (we’ll call her Stephanie) who would often stay after practice with our coach, Larry, to work on her ball handling skills. In some ways I was jealous of her; I wished I were good at basketball, or even that I had the drive to become good at it. Truthfully, though, I was happy just playing the game. I mean I was 10 years old, for Christ’s sake. I was still playing with dolls, and Stephanie was running drills after hours in the gym. Thanks to Stephanie’s hard work, I ended up with a trophy. But I wouldn’t get off that easy.

At the end-of-the-season team dinner, Coach Larry handed out letters to each of the players, detailing our strengths and weaknesses and suggestions for what we could work on in the off-season. I never saw it, but I imagine his letter to Stephanie read something like this:

“Stephanie,

You are the reason I coach, the reason I wake up every morning and look forward to my job, my day, my week. Your undying love for basketball and your dedication to improving your game are an inspiration to me, my family, and our country. Thank you for everything you do, here is a $10,000 gift card to Cinnabon and Spice Girls tickets for tonight’s concert! There is a convertible PT Cruiser out back waiting to take you and a friend (it has to be a player on the team who is as good as you). Have a great time!

Sincerely,

Coach Larry”

My letter, however, read much differently.

“Alex, 

I think you have a lot of potential. You are fast, you are an enthusiastic defender. You are on the cusp of being a solid player, but you need to work on the fundamentals. Blah blah blah, stuff like that, and more of the same.

Sincerely,

Your Newest Enemy”

I have taken some creative license in my transcription of the letter, but the message was clear: I could become a decent basketball player, but I would need to try.

Well…that sounded like work, and I was 10. And honestly? That letter hurt my feelings, as embarrassing as that is to say. I started playing basketball to have fun, to run around, to try and steal the ball; and by these metrics, I was already incredibly successful. But to my coach — the person I looked up to most in this, my first foray into sports — all of that seemed unimportant. In the days following that team dinner, I felt deflated, and for reasons I have dissected in therapy, let that determine my level of effort going forward. For the next four years, I continued playing basketball my way: fundamentally not great, but having a decent enough time to keep suiting up for the games. I may be making myself sound like I wasn’t an athlete — I was. I was fast, and I was great on defense — just don’t talk to me about offense. My dad will sometimes remind me that I poked the ball away from the McDonald’s Player of the Year a few times “that one game.” That’s what brought me joy, messing up someone’s offense. My HS coach would beg me, “Alex, you’re just swatting the ball out of bounds. You need to steal the ball.”

Sure…but what would I do with the ball once I stole it?

“Someone on my team must have been sick, had broken both of their legs, or was abducted by aliens, because for some reason, I was checking in at the next dead ball.”

I found out once, when I swung up to varsity for one extremely hyped-up game against a rival school. It was their Spirit Day, or Senior Day, or some such other ceremonious occasion that caused the entire school to be in attendance for the women’s varsity basketball game, which in 2002 wasn’t very common. Someone on my team must have been sick, had broken both of their legs, or was abducted by aliens, because for some reason, I was checking in at the next dead ball. What happened next, you’ll just have to trust is the truth, because I hardly remember it - I was both conscious and fully blacked out from stress at the time. The details of this game are quite inconsequential.

I checked in and it was dark out there, like the lights didn’t work. All I could see in the stands was a sea of bare hands, nameless faces, pom poms. I was getting tunnel vision, like when I would play Dr. Mario for seven hours straight on my ten-inch tv. I was there, but I wasn’t. I don’t know how long I was in for, and I don’t even remember running the length of the floor — in my mind, I checked in, ran to the wing, and then, by lapse of judgment or lack of options, Stephanie passed me the ball.

Blood, guts, gore. Veins hanging from your teeth. I could hear my dad’s words in my head as my reality set in. There was no other way around it— I had to shoot the ball.

I barely gathered before turning to shoot, using the same follow through motion one might use to break someone’s nose in a self defense class. There was no cookie jar on this fateful day, there was no follow through. Just a shaky push from the heel of my hand. I let go.

They printed the game recap and box score in the paper the next day, and there I was, listed with the rest of the scoring players.

“Haigh, 2.”

My dad bought a paper, made photocopies of this section, and laminated them. He put one clipping on the fridge at home, and kept one on his desk at work, along with my tennis team photo.

Despite my two varsity points that year, I pivoted to tennis, another sport introduced to me by my dad. I was much better at tennis, and appreciated the control over my own destiny that the sport presented. If you lost, it was on you; if you won, it was on you. I liked that, and I put a lot of work into improving my tennis game. I credit my dad’s passion for tennis and my incredible coach for encouraging me to continue working on my skills.

“ I signed up for Twitter a week later just to talk about the Blazers with other fans. ”

Leaving basketball caused me to take about a ten-year break from being a Blazers fan — I was done done — until one day in 2013, I was offered tickets to the Blazers-Mavericks game, so I brought my dad. We were in my company’s suite, and one of my coworkers was wearing a Jerome Kersey jersey. We were all milling around, eating popcorn and waiting for the game to start, when we heard, “HEY — that’s my jersey.” We all turned to see Jerome standing in the doorway to the suite, laughing. He came in and took a picture with my co-worker. My dad was overjoyed to see one of his favorite all-time Blazers at his first game back in a decade. It was also lucky that we attended a game that came down to the wire; LaMarcus Aldridge hit a turn-around jumper to win in the final seconds, and as my dad and I jumped up and cheered, my love for the game flooded back. I signed up for Twitter a week later just to talk about the Blazers with other fans. That eventually led me to join a Blazers fan account where I live-tweeted games, which inspired me to create Rip Twitty, a women-led Twitter community started with friends I met on the internet. My Twitter presence and the relationships built there gave me an opportunity to be a co-host on NBC Sports Northwest’s Blazers Outsiders, and finally, brought me to Flagrant Magazine as co-founder and designer.

These days, my dad isn’t much of a Blazers fan. He’s an Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball fan, thanks in part to having grown up there, but mostly because of Caitlin Clark. “You know, she wears your number.” (What an honor, for her, he must think.) My dad calls me now and then to update me on the Hawkeyes’ record. I’ll sometimes ask just to be sure, “men’s or women’s?” He’ll almost always answer “Oh, women’s,” in a way that reminds me I should already know the answer. My dad has watched women’s sports longer than I have, first with tennis, then with Olympic gymnastics and figure skating, and in the last decade, women’s basketball. He introduced me to all of these sports, and it’s really because of him that playing sports as a girl felt normal to me. I remember he would go into work at 4am just so he could make it to my early tennis matches on time. He’d often bring the whole team bagels (which got him the nickname "Team Dad" on my tennis team), as he is a firm believer that they are the superior pre-match food.

I looked up from my laptop while I wrote this to catch Caitlin Clark hit a game-winning 3-pt shot against #2 Indiana, and proceed to run around the arena flexing for the Hawkeyes’ crowd.

I got a text from my dad.

“Did you see that shot? She’s trying to be like you.”