Thinking About Athletes As Artists

This column appeared in the Wednesday, 2.1.06, edition of the Tribune & Georgian newspaper.

It all came back to me this week while reliving a moment from my childhood. And brought to mind an unrelated photo that I saw more than 20 years ago. Both memories stirred a common theme, however, about how tied together the arts and athletics are in lessons about commitment, risk-taking and life learning.

What transported me was some ballet, theatrics and ensemble work I saw on a wooden floor last Friday evening at Camden High. These artists of the hardwood, engaged in ensemble play as good as any ever imagined by “Bounce Pass” Berlin Rowe, showed their audience they had not forgotten how good a play can be when all the actors work toward delivering their lanes with the same intensity.

OK, enough with the puns already! It is true that CCHS’ senior roundballers and their teammates played just that way, even though on a different kind wooden stage. Watching them, I hearkened to my youth when Rick Mount, the gunslinger from Lebanon, Indiana lit up our gym for nearly 100 points total in two appearances. (My friend Denny Hoff bragged to me with pride, the day after Mount scored 44 in his senior appearance: “Hey, he only scored 16 on me in the second half!” Laughingly, I suggested this was because Mount’s arms and legs were exhausted from hoisting the rock so much in the first half.) Mount’s only problems were he never was a true team player, could never master the balletic artistry of defense nor the commitment to real team play, whether at Lebanon, Purdue University or the ABA’s Pacers. And that was what I was struck by. Our local hoops artists, men and women both, showed that commitment to the ensemble, to the artistry of team defense and to the elegance of dancer-like offensive positioning would make them winners. Congratulations to our senior athlete-artists of our “other” hardwood.

As I conceived of our athletes as artists, however, I was reminded of a photo (I must have seen it in Sports Illustrated) that I looked at over and over when it appeared. It was in the post-Trump, post-WFL era, after he had arrived in Dallas to blaze trails for the Cowboys. There he was, maybe the greatest running back of the era, in tights and tunic spotting the beautiful ballerina for the Fort Worth Ballet. She must have never felt so secure as in those strong hands and arms. And I marveled at his honesty and the depth of his self-knowledge to appear so and to do it with charm and in the typically Herschel-like work ethic. In the accompanying article, Georgia’s biggest Dawg noted that his on-stage training and its demands were as significant as anything he had undertaken on the gridiron. When I got a chance to meet him many years after seeing this photo, I complimented him on taking this chance, this challenge; and that the photo and story had broadened my appreciation of him. He just smiled and said: “You can’t just stay at only one thing.”

Opportunities for this week and upcoming weeks: “Almost Abba” at Alhambra Dinner Theatre, I got a chance to see it last weekend, lots of fun and memories, through 2.5; athletic Australian hoofers in “Tap Dogs,” UNF, 2.2, 7:30 p.m.; jousting and jesters at the Hoggetown Medieval Faire, 2.4 & 2.5, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Alachua Cty Fairgrounds, Gainesville; “20th Anniversary Extravaganza” by Douglas Anderson School of the Arts alumni and students, TUC, 2.3, 7:30 p.m., stunning athletes as a human circus as Acrobats of China perform at FCCJ’s Wilson Ctr., 2.3, 8 p.m.

If you have ideas or events you want me to share with readers, send me a note at pkraack1@tds.net.

2.1.06