I love this story; stop me if you've heard it already.
I've found my new favorite basketball coach. His name is Jim Johnson, and he coaches high school hoops in a little town outside of Rochester, N.Y., called Greece. The school's name is Athena.
For their last home game, against a somewhat overmatched opponent, Johnson let student manager Jason McElwain dress and sit on the bench in uniform. I was a student manager; I would've probably given my right nut for the chance to do that.
With 4:30 to go and his team way up -- they eventually won, 79-43 -- Johnson put McElwain into the game. The fans go nuts, chanting "J-Mac! J-Mac!" It probably could have been interpreted as teasing. This was, after all, the 5-foot-6 student manager.
He gets the ball and throws up an air ball on his first shot. Then he missed a layup. So much for the nice ending; sit down and grab your clipboard, kid.
Not exactly.
Over the next four minutes, the kid hits 7 of 11 shots, including 6-of-10 from behind the 3-point line. The manager scored 20 points in four minutes, and set a school record for most 3-pointers in a game. I would have given both my nuts and a few of my toes to do something like that.
The manager scored 20 points in the only four minutes of high school ball he'll ever play.
Oh, by the way: The kid is autistic.
"I've had a lot of thrills in coaching and I've coached a lot of wonderful kids, but I've never experienced something like this ever in my life, you know other than my own personal family things," Johnson told WROC-TV. "My emotions, I couldn't stop crying."
I love this story. I hope this was the breakthrough moment for this kid; experts claim that high-functioning autistics can have experiences that actually help unshackle them from disease.
"This is the first moment Jason has ever succeeded and was proud of himself," Debbie McElwain, Jason's mother, told WROC. "I look at autism as the Berlin Wall; he cracked it."
For his sake, may that be the case -- and may he keep finding hammers to chip away at that wall.
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts