How my Family found Spirituality in Sport

Just the Eight of Us. David, Natalie, Andrew, Sarah, Rachel, Meghan, Hannah, and Melanie.

Sorry, Its Just Not for Us.  We were raised Catholic. Sunday mornings were reserved for mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on the White Horse Pike in the small town of Berlin, New Jersey.  It was well-known amongst all eight kids (and most of Berlins youth) that Church was a snooze-able affair and should be avoided at all costs. So every Sunday morning without fail, we hailed a torrent of excuses Mom’s direction: I’m sick. I’m allergic to Jesus. I don’t believe in God. Etc. Etc. She literally had to drag us, sometimes kicking and screaming, to mass.  Oh, the torture. We were forced to endure a complete hour (ok 45 minutes if you had Father Quick) of feigned stillness and silence. However, as a reward for good behavior, Mom treated us with Shop-Rite donuts. No jelly, please.

So it was clear from the onset that the dogma of Cathlocism, donuts aside, had little effect on us Dawson kids. We begrudgingly appeased Mom and went to Church every Sunday. But for the rest of the week, we needed a different spirituality. 

Spirituality on A Square Slab of Concrete. A square slab of concrete still sits at the very back of our yard on 16 Hamilton Ave. A seventy meter stretch of uneven, ankle breaking, grassy terrain sits between  the squeaky backdoor and the square slab of concrete. Seventy meters is all that separated household chaos from freedom.

When Santa Claus visited 16 Hamilton in 1990, he left us with an NBA basketball hoop. The hoop sat in a box undisturbed in the garage through the winter, spring and following summer. Eventually, David, impatient with waiting, demanded his court.

Dad laid the court in the very back corner of the yard, adjacent to Mr. Schimdt’s garden, where Mom's small garden used to sit. A new growth was ready to emerge.

Handprints. The concrete was laid in the fall of 1991. Four separate squares of gray, grainy mortar meeting at a center point to form one large concrete square. On the east edge, seven sets of prints are inscribed on the concrete – six sets of handprints accompanied by a distinct youthful signature, and one set of footprints for Hannah who was still a baby.  (Youngest child, Melanie, had yet to be born)

The concrete was laid. The basketball pole, backboard and net (which has since gone missing) installed. Mom’s garden had become a basketball court.

Upon the concrete, a religion grew; a religion resting upon simple, blue-collar tenets: passion, dreams, hard work, and a relentless determination to succeed; a meaningful religion that worked for the 8 children of a landscaper and his wife.

Like all major religions, our religion ensured both a mode of survival and an escape during the challenging times of a crowded upbringing. It also paved the pathway to opportunity.

The religion grew from a garden-space morphed into a backyard basketball court. The concrete proved fertile; it flowered 8 determined athletes.

Our  religion, is cliché Americanism – faithfully true to the enduring spirit of rugged individualism and winning at all cost. Be forewarned - refinement is not to be expected from a Dawson; obscenities, harsh language, intense stares and occasional on the spot de-clothing (Andrew after a high-school wrestling match and me in a middle school Basketball Game) are almost always guaranteed. In competition, a Dawson is ruthlessly determined.

Don’t be fooled though. Dawson's love to win, and enjoy winning; but winning alone isn’t enough.  What they crave most, more than the outcome of a sports match, is the spirituality of the sport process.

The spirituality of sports. The spirituality of sports cannot be defined; it is an experience of clarity, purity and oneness through competition. It is a moment when the body of an athlete moves without thought, in the absence of time, in pure intuition of the game. The body moves neither proactively or reactively, but rather, decisively at the specific moment of demand. The movement possesses fluidity, solidarity, and dare I say, grace. In the very nature and timing of its movement, the body behooves a spiritual elegance.

For some, this elegance comes naturally. But for most, this elegance is only achieved through rigorous training. Only when one invests so deeply into training, will certain actions become innate responses.

That is what happened on that square slab of concrete. We trained for our moments of transcendence.

First, it was David - quarterback of the football team, baseball pitcher, and starting forward on the basketball team.  He had his siblings run 5 yard slant patterns to improve his throwing accuracy. He nailed a square crate to a table, laid it on its side, and threw pitches until he found his strike zone.  David trained.

Then it was Natalie. She wasn’t good enough to join the cheerleading squad, so she deferred to sports. She used the concrete slab to simulate the smooth, fast playing surface of  a turf hockey field. She used the intersection points of the smaller concrete slabs to work on her footwork.  Natalie trained.

Then there was Andrew. He trained. Then Sarah. Then Rachel. Then Meghan. Then Hannah. Then Melanie. We all trained.

More than training, we worshipped on that slab of concrete, learning how to do left handed layups, playing pretend matches against the worlds best, competing against each other until someone quit. Our imaginations grew. Pat Summit and Geno Auriemma came to recruit me.  

It was on that slab of concrete in the backyard that dreams were built. And, some of those dreams were realized. We all went away to college, sports providing the way.  I even went to the Olympics.

A few days ago Meghan and Melanie faced Hannah in a hockey match between UNC and Michigan. Last week, I faced Sarah in a hockey match between Klein Switzerland and Nijmengen, two professional hockey clubs in Holland. David beat Andrew in a Men’s Softball Championship Game.

No matter where we go, who we play, or what we do. We carry with us the spirituality we found on a slab of concrete in the backyard.