Never Let the Kids Win.
This one's for my seniors. Class of 2023.
In Stephen King’s vast landscape of fiction, there’s a seven book long tale that stands above the rest of his work. It is known as the Dark Tower series, and it starts with one of the best lines ever written in fiction, “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” From that sentence on you follow the gunslinger, Roland of Gilead, and his never ending quest to find the Dark Tower. There are epic gunfights, incredible friendships, romantic stories, heartbreaking loss, parallel universe travel before it was cool, and there’s even a huge sea turtle. Like, massive. But tucked in between all the plot points, is the story of how Roland became a gunslinger in the first place.
You see, to become a gunslinger (think cowboy/protector of the universe with two BIG pistols) Roland must pass the test, and that test is to defeat the man who taught him the ways of the gunslinger since he was a boy. That man’s name is Court. In the book Court is described as a compassionate yet brutally pragmatic man, fearsome as he is clever. He loves his students while simultaneously pushing them to their limits. On test day he shows no mercy, because for a gunslinger to truly become a gunslinger a student must display the creativity and fortitude to defeat the one who taught them. Otherwise they lack the ability to take the training they have received and grow on their own. Most do not pass and leave the test broken. Those few who pass claim the title gunslinger.
I bring up Court, because in many ways I am Court. Take any fantasy series or science fiction or manga and I aspire to be the grizzled old gnarly sword-master or the cunning aged jedi master, here to push the youth to greatness. I don’t always participate in my own P.E. class, but when I do compete, I play with no mercy. I do my damndest to model high levels of athletic play. I leave competitive sixteen year old boys whining, and when I join a team the cowards on the other side consider the game over before it’s even begun. Damn right I take supreme validation by destroying high school kids in gym class. Its adrenaline straight to the veins bebe. I am Court. I am Gurney Halleck. I am Obi Wan Kenobi.
…All this to say I play for blood in the staff vs student games.
The Final Boss
There is a tradition in my school called the Intramural Cup. Three times a year the high school hosts a school wide tournament based off of the P.E. curriculum. The first sport is handball, the second is volleyball, and the third and final tournament is Ultimate frisbee. Ultimate frisbee is by far the most contested.
The tournament structure is simple. The 12th grade plays the 11th grade, and then the 10th grade plays the 9th grade. The winner of the upperclassmen game plays the winner of the lowerclassmen grade. The remaining grade plays the staff/alumni team. The champions of that final game win the Intramural Cup and extreme bragging rights until the next tournament. The entire school pours into the gymnasium to witness this drama. And this past year, the school got to watch the grittiest frisbee game the tournament has ever had the pleasure of hosting.
To set the scene, you need to know that the Seniors are desperate for a win. Going into the third and final tournament of the year they are winless. In the handball tournament they lost a defensive battle in the final against the staff when in the final minute my team punched a hole through their zone, and I delivered a blistering fast ball past their goalie into the back of their net. I still enjoy showing the following pictures to the haters in the senior class.
In the volleyball tournament the seniors were humiliated by the juniors in a 24-24 game, where the most athletic kid in the grade, Angel A, had the final serve and choked, sending the ball into the net and the juniors into the final. That kid tells me he still loses sleep over that serve. The staff summarily crushed the juniors 25 to 19 where I contributed a 10 point run by serving nothing but hot fire aces. The kids said, “He soloed that game.”
When the school calendar started getting close to the Ultimate Frisbee tournament there was a certain buzz in the air. The seniors and juniors were going extra hard in regular P.E. class. Frisbee was no longer a calm way to get a grade, it was either hustle or get off the court because other people wanted to play and win. The kids I had appointed refs for each of the respective classes had their hands full managing calls and ignoring the abusive language aimed at them. The seniors were looking particularly good in practice. Making hard throws, cutting hard, and making some truly spectacular catches.
I knew the staff team had its hands full for this tournament. I had always known the handball game we won was a fluke, and we couldn’t rely on a monster volleyball serve to win a frisbee game. So I called up some back-up. I texted a couple of the most athletic kids I taught from last year to come and help me quell this senior menace. These were the kids who smashed the seniors who were then juniors in the Intramural Cup last year and went on to defeat the staff team as well. All of the alumni I texted agreed to show up and put the seniors back where they belonged - in the loser column.
I had no problem rubbing this in the senior’s faces. I had monster college kids coming back to do to them what they did last year, oh and they had to deal with their pesky shit talking P.E. teacher while they were at it. Victory was assured. I had successfully created a team the school was now calling, “Final Boss.”
Broken Arrow
The day of the tournament, the seniors crushed the student body. The juniors put up a fight for about 30 seconds and proceeded to lose 7-2. The sophomores beat the freshmen, and then the seniors promptly pummeled the sophomores 8-1. I almost had to call a mercy rule.
While the seniors were making quick work of the lower grade teams, my alumni team was strolling in. If anything the kids were bigger than I remembered, Dante, Avian, Luis, and Savannah all walked with a certain cocky strut that sort of said, “were more athletic than you, and we know it.” The seniors on the sideline looked visibly shook when they saw the size of the kids who had trounced them in the final the year before. The alumni were already sneering at the competition.
And so the scene was set. The Seniors vs. Final Boss.
Game on.
Final Boss won the coin flip so the Seniors had to throw off the frisbee to us. The first point couldn't have gone better. We sliced through them like a hot knife through butter*. I passed to Dante, Dante found Luis, Savannah cut back for a quick pass from Luis. I shook my defender and cut around Savannah’s back for a dump pass, and then I found Dante in the end zone. It had taken us less than thirty seconds to leave the senior defense in shambles and score our first point.
Then it was our turn on defense. While on the line I assigned each alumni a student to play man defense on. I had played against the seniors first period every other morning for the past 2 months. I knew exactly who could throw, who could catch, and who had speed. My team matched up perfectly. We threw the disc off and each of my alumni team players clamped down on their assigned senior. They smothered them. We quickly forced a turnover and scored again.
At that point I knew the game was ours to win. We could score at will and it didn’t look like the Seniors had any answers to our defense. I switched out our starting line and got some of our second tier players on the line so they could get some play time. There was a long drawn out point with many drops and poor play on both sides as the second line tried to find their footing. After what seemed an age, the seniors finally punched in a point and made the game 1 to 2. Then I put my original line back on, and we scored another 2 points which meant Final Boss was up 4-1.
It was at this moment that the brilliant military mind of our school’s history teacher, Mr. Turrie came into play. Mr. T called “TIME OUT.” Mr. T’s job for the tournament was simple: coach the seniors and ensure every single student who signed up to play got a chance to participate. But when he brought his players in a circle, he looked them all in the eye and called, “Broken Arrow.” They all understood. At the time I had no idea what it meant, but the team now understood this was no longer about fair play and participation. This was about beating the fucking staff.
The next point the very best players were all out on the line ready to receive the disc. Ibrahim, Angel A, Angel E, Amanda, and Tyler all faced my alumni team with murder in their heart. The thing was, I was slow to recognize the shift in gears. I had sent out our players who hadn’t played much yet. We were up 4-1, there wasn’t much time left, and I was still in the mindset that we could score at will. This was a mistake.
The seniors received the disc and played like they were shot out of a cannon. It suddenly looked like my second rate players were underwater. The seniors almost immediately scored. They didn’t drop it once, and they scored so fast they left one of my alumni kids looking around confused trying to figure out why he was being taken off the court 20 seconds after he had been put on.
I put my main line of top tier athletes back on the court. There was a problem though. They were still cocky. They still didn’t hold much respect for the current Seniors on the court. They hadn’t seen what this line could do when they were fired up and ready to play like I had seen during P.E.. It was the Seniors turn to smother us. We couldn’t get anything going offensively. They forced a turn, and scored. The score was now 4-3.
The Alumni and I could feel the momentum shifting but it was like being stuck in a riptide we didn’t know was going to be there. The Seniors came out and scored again. The senior Amanda was dominating in particular. Part of the rules for the intramural cup included always having at least two girls per team on the court at once. These were mandatory mixed teams. Guys were not allowed to cover girls, and Amanda was out running, out throwing, and out catching every single player I tried to match up against her. She was like a cheat code for the other team. Despite the best efforts of the female alumni and my assistant principal, she always found a way to get open and move the disc.
By now we all knew we were in trouble, and as much as I hate to admit it, I had made a tactical error. As athletic and deadly as the alumni were, they simply weren’t conditioned for this kind of play. The seniors had been playing frisbee non-stop for the past two months, some kids going so hard they soaked their shirts with sweat before English class. One kid even threw up after a game. Their conditioning was fantastic. Based on the labored breathing of the Alumni beside me, it was clear cardio was not at the top of a college freshman’s priority list.
With the score tied at 4-4 and one minute on the clock, the seniors threw it off. The seniors had charged down the court and set their defense before the frisbee even touched the ground. We made a pour throw and the seniors immediately capitalized by turning it over and scoring. The stands went nuts. The seniors roared and started hugging each other. The kids on the sideline were screaming and jumping up and down. The seniors were up 5-4 after being down 4-1. The alumni were going to lose.
But I wasn’t done yet. With red in my eyes and hate in my heart, I dragged my team down to the other end zone and barked at the seniors to throw it off. We had 25 seconds left and I was damned if we weren’t going to give it a shot. Angel Alba threw the disc off, but the rest of his team was still drunk on premature victory. They didn’t set their defense quite as fast, and we got a couple of easy throws down the court. When they finally got into position I thought we were going to lose, so I simply charged down the court in the hopes one of my teammates would launch it into the end zone and give me a chance to catch it. With 5 seconds left, Luis sent a crappy throw into the endzone that was smacked away by one of the seniors...and somehow caught by the alumni Savannah. I peeled around behind her and caught the disc in the end zone with 2 seconds to spare. The gym went nuts.
And so it all came down to this. The game tied at 5-5 and one sudden death point for the win. Both teams were now gassed. Who wanted it more was all that mattered. Score 0-0. Game to 1. The Alumni threw it off for the final point.
Angel A received the disc. He was the senior I was covering so I sprinted down the court to cover him. Here’s the thing about Angel A. He may have choked on his final volleyball serve, but he’s freakishly fast, and he can change direction on a dime. He is one of the most athletic kids I have ever had the pleasure to teach. I have a basic strategy when covering him - containment. There’s no shutting him down completely. I was just doing my damndest to make sure he didn’t gain any significant yardage. I succeeded with my strategy, but it wasn’t enough.
The seniors made a couple of easy passes to start, but then Angel cut across the gym and received the disc at half court. I was on him in an instant, keeping my hands moving and forcing him to make a difficult throw. As the stall count climbed higher and higher Angel’s eyes saw something in the end zone and he sent it.
It was a high loopy throw that came down fast. It would have been difficult to catch with no defenders. In this game it should have been impossible. It wasn’t. My teammate Luis leaped up to smack it away but mistimed the jump and just missed it by fingertips. The senior Ibrahim caught the disc clamping it between his two hands. He was standing in the end zone. The gym exploded with cheers again, even louder than before. The sideline and the crowd charged the court to hug their teammates. The rest of the school was chanting, “SENIORS! SENIORS! SENIORS!” The game was done. The Seniors had won.
Reflection
There’s actually a video of this happening. Ibrahim catches the disc and the crowd charges the court. And just on the side of the screen you can see me walking off the court, hands in my hair, looking down. I remember being furious. I was white hot angry and ready to tear my hair out…for about two seconds. Then, in that same video, you can see me take my hands out of my hair and begin to clap over my head. There’s a huge grin on my face and I’m close to tears.
You see, it all hit me in that moment. I had been teaching these kids for 4 years. Ultimate frisbee was the sport I fell in love with when I went to college, and these kids had never played a single game of it until they met me. Through the years I had taught them how to pivot, how to throw sidearm, and how to alligator clap the disc for an easy catch. They had learned all these skills while practicing their own emotional competitiveness. And being their only P.E. teacher for four years, they had done it all on my watch.
It was the highest honor to lose to these kids. I felt like Court, lying broken in the circle of single combat after losing to Roland. There was nothing but joy in his heart as he embraced Roland and named him Gunslinger. I had set an impossible challenge for them to overcome. In no way should these kids have been able to beat me, a 4 year college Ultimate frisbee veteran, and a bunch of athletic Alumni that were bigger and faster by any recognizable metric. But they did. They had taken all the lessons I had taught them over the years, and grown from them in ways I couldn’t have dreamed.
I am Court, I am Gurney Halleck, I am Obi Wan Kenobi. And I had just witnessed Roland, Paul Atreides, and Luke Skywalker surpass me. This is what I live for.
Epilogue
A couple days after the tournament, I walked into Mr. Turrie’s Senior class and a bunch of the kids were reminiscing about the tournament. The Intramural Cup was sitting on Mr. Turrie’s desk (the seniors had elected to keep it in his room) and taped onto the trophy were the words “Broken Arrow,” and a list of student’s names who had played on the final line that beat my team.
Which reminded me to ask, “Hey T, what the hell does Broken Arrow mean?” Turrie laughed and pulled up a youtube clip from the movie, “We Were Soldiers.” In the clip Mel Gibson is an army commander stoically walking around a battlefield in Vietnam and slowly assessing his crumbling position. Surrounded by enemies on all sides and seeing his soldiers getting picked off one by one he turns to his comm guy, nods, and yells over the explosions and whizzing bullets, “Broken Arrow!”
Turrie then pauses the clip and explains that “Broken Arrow” was what soldiers said during the Vietnam War when they knew their position was about to be overrun. This in turn, triggered every single air unit within 100 miles to immediately fly over to their position and rain napalm over the entire area.
I say, “So let me get this straight, in this metaphor my team is an overwhelming force raining hellfire on your senior team, and the main line of kids you sent out represents napalm sent with the fury of a thousand suns?”
T gives me a smile, “That’s about right.”
I laugh, walk up to T and give him a hug and a slap on the back. Every once in a while I feel like we’re doing something right at our school.
“Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
- Winston Churchill
Not even high school frisbee.
PS: Best Fit To Teach yet!