Athletics, Teammates, and Racism

My good friend, Tom Kennedy, the author of the insightful and informative BRAIDWOOD BEGINNINGS, asked me to put together some thoughts on athletics, teammates, and racism. Tom has written on this subject and wanted to get some other perspectives from Tony Delgado and me. I am honored to address this topic as best as I can.

Written by Pat Sullivan

“Individual commitment to a group cause is what makes a team, a business, a church, or a country work.”

Vince Lombardi

SOCIETY and ATHLETICS

Society could learn a great deal from the athletic arena and the teammates it creates.

I was raised in a neighborhood that was African American, Italian, and Irish. The focal place where Black and White athletes met each other was the outdoor basketball courts at Sacred Heart School. We would play basketball until dark, then we often sat and talked about everything from sport, to religion, to our hopes and dreams for the future. No topic was off limits.

Teams

Teams were picked each night. Black and White had absolutely nothing to do with the order in which players were picked. There was only one criterion. How well you could play was the only factor in how players were chosen. The team you played on was extremely important because your team had “to win to stay.”

There could often be twenty-five players at each of the two baskets. That number led to five teams per basket. While two teams were playing, three teams were waiting to get on the court. The only way you stayed on the court was to win. When you won, the next team entered the court to play you. 

As long as you kept winning your team stayed on the court. The quality of teammates you had led to the number of games you played each night. Therefore, color was never a factor; could you help the team win was the only factor.

As a young boy I learned what you could contribute to a team superseded color every night.

White and Black Together

It was not uncommon for me to be the only White kid at the court. The younger athletes played on teams at one end while the older, better players played at the opposite end. I had my “rite of passage” one night when the older guys called me to play at their end. I can still remember how proud I was to tell my dad later that night about getting called to play with the bigger players.

It was those games that brought the Black and White young men together, much more than merely together. You became friends for life, and you were so proud of the accomplishments your Black friends achieved later in life as they were of you. 

Billy Thompson became an exceptional boxer who fought George Foremen and Ron Lyle at the amateur level. Foreman became the heavyweight champion of the world and Lyle fought Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship.

Joe Daniels became a super-star in the automobile industry. He started his career as a salesman and ultimately worked his way up to owning a franchise.

Charles Winters accepted a football scholarship to the University of Nebraska when they were annually in the running for a national championship. Willie Boyce was awarded a basketball scholarship to Creighton University. Both men have had very successful business careers. 

Ken Howard and Ronnie Sims went on to outstanding business careers and Eddie Jones had a successful career at Caterpillar.

I could continue with many more success stories from those Sacred Heart courts because as teammates we stayed friends for life. There is a bond in athletics that transcends race.

We needed no minister, psychologist, sociologist, or teacher to teach us the equality and dignity of man because we learned that at a young age on those athletic courts.

Change in the Neighborhood

Years later the baskets were taken down. I felt the neighborhood begin to change. There was more fighting between Black and White young people and more division between the two races. I attributed this change to the basket removals. In my youth we saw each other as teammates, hung around together, and truly got to know each other. When there were altercations, they had nothing to do with color. They had everything to do with who fouled who!

It was an interesting dynamic. In my youth we had the bond of teammates that brought us together in strong friendships. When the teenagers younger than us no longer had that teammate bond, the ugly head of racism began to emerge.

Coaching

I spent forty-four years as a basketball coach, teacher, and administrator. In my career I coached Black and White athletes – ten years at the high school level and thirty-four years at the collegiate level. I remain so grateful for my upbringing on those Sacred Heart courts. They taught me the values of athletics and the strong bond of friendship that teammates develop.

If I were to identify what athletics is all about in one word, that word would be RELATIONSHIPS. And racism does not live in those athletic relationships. But life-long friendships do live there.

It is not a Mary Poppins world. There can be conflicts between Black and White teammates. One year, right before our post-season playoffs were to begin, we had a fight between two of our starters – one Black, one White. My initial thought was, is race an issue on our team? We immediately got the two players together and I quickly found out race had nothing to do with the fight.

One player was a post player, the other a perimeter player. The fight was over the perimeter players passing into the post players. The post men felt they were not getting the ball enough. This was very critical to our team because we believed in Inside/Outside basketball.

Once we found out the problem and decided how to fix it, we won the playoffs and advanced to the national tournament. In the last analysis it was the athletic, teammate bond that took precedence over race.

Conclusion

I have always valued the insights of two iconic coaches in the world of athletics. Vince Lombardi coached football with the Green Bay Packers and John Wooden basketball at UCLA. Both coached Black and White players. They understood the bond among teammates and the importance of team play.

Lombardi – “Individual commitment to a group cause is what makes a team, a business, a church, or a country work.”

Wooden – “The main ingredient of a star is the rest of the team.”

Society could gain so much from these two men and the world of athletics.

They developed teams that defeated racism and their athletes – Black and White – formed life-long bonds.