Xs and Os: My Love Letters to Sports (Amid the 2020 Sports Hiatus)

I took a class titled “The Branding of Me” my senior year at Carolina. One of the projects on our personal brand journey was to create a blog that helped define our voice and give a space to the things that are most important to us. We chose a theme, a name, the whole nine yards.

While the website my blog lived on no longer exists (a deep regret), I kept the blogs in my trusty Google Drive (that stuff is eternal). A few of my favorites are below.

Table of Contents:

On a Break: Shining Moments in a Spring with No Sports

March 15, 2020
I’ve been gone on spring break all week with a broken phone and a laptop with low battery. In the midst of this world’s current craziness, I was in absolute heaven. With no coronavirus updates pinging my phone, I was living in a utopia of denial while tanning my oblivious-self by the pool in the Eden of Montego Bay. The one time I finally caught up on the news was the morning I heard March Madness was cancelled. I grabbed my computer, whose battery percentage glared at me with a bright red 5% and typed in ESPN. I needed more information. The Masters postponed, The Players cancelled, all conference tournaments over…I got that feeling that chokes you in sad movies. I’m not being dramatic when I say that. There were tears about to happen. I then clicked and watched a video talking about the incomplete stories of senior-year athletes because of the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament. The tears happened.

A phrase in that video hit me like a ton of bricks: “This will be the year without one shining moment.”

I know what he meant: the Shining Moment video released at the conclusion of the championship game is absolute gold. (Why, yes, of course I linked the 2009 one. It’s the best, don’t fight me on that.) It makes us cry and laugh and reminisce. Those three minutes bring the madness of March all together in an artistic story that we know the end of but want to rewatch over and over and over again.

Yet, isn’t it even more important now to find the shining moments? They aren’t going to be on the court, no, but look around you. There are tons of glistening moments; millions of moments that show us that underdogs can win it all and that comeback seasons are the most exciting; stories of Cinderellas who danced their way to the top and won our hearts. So no, there isn’t going to be one shining moment. But I can bet ya, even in this season of fear, you’ll be able to find a whole lot more.

Our family friends have a son who loves basketball with his whole heart. He wears jerseys to our “framily” dinners, has a worn out mini-hoop hanging on his door, proudly displays a Grant Williams shrine in his room, and sorts his basketball cards in his spare time. When his mom had to tell him the NCAA tournament had been cancelled and the NBA season was postponed, he dropped to the floor.

To amend this little broken heart, his dad has decided to set up a basketball game each day for them to watch. He’s made a list. All the greatest games that have occured; the games any basketball-obsessed kid needs to know by heart. He will sit with his son (probably donning whichever jersey matches his sneakers best that day) and proudly witness his son watch the plays that sparkled in that year’s “One Shining Moment” montage. He will watch as his son discovers that the names chanted during NBA games now were once players who absolutely dominated the college game.They will sit together and watch the buzzer beaters and the alley-oops; the blocks and charges; the Cinderella stories that shocked a nation. And he’ll watch his once-sad-son’s face absolutely shine.

No, there won’t be the Shining Moment highlight montage this year. But is it possible that we could all craft our own?

Perhaps finding the little shining moments will get us through this big dark void.

Moments like walking in your home and finding out your mother has stocked up on dozens of games and puzzles. Moments like forming an at home ‘wine and design’ with your best friends (in a group of under 10 with plenty of hand soap, of course). Moments like hearing your dad on the piano in the other room testing out some Jackson Browne classics for the first time in a while. We are surrounded by shining moments, whether it’s seeing how happy your dog is that you’re home or finding a new world within a passed down novel.

Shining moments aren’t just dunks and buzzer beaters; it’s watching the greats with your dad and competing in bake-offs with your sister. Shining moments are singing loudly in the face of fear from personal balconies and finding unity in the center of this immense separation. Shining moments are belly laughs and inside jokes and memories that bring joy bigger than any crisis.

I wish with all my heart that we could watch new basketball stories form themselves this March, but I know that if we pause and pay attention to the highlight reel happening around us, we will each have more shining moments than any 3 minute video could ever fully capture.

There are stories to be told about Spring 2020: there are the ones that are flooding our news channels, filling our minds of fear as we sit in our locked homes.

However, more than any other time in my life, I feel thankful for the other stories. The ones that bring safety and pride. The ones that are full of family and friends. The ones that I am positive a little jersey-donning, Grant Williams-loving, mini-hoop-dunking kid will tell his own children one day when he, himself, is a father : that his dad brought solace in this time of fear and insanity. His dad gave him sports.

Bad Dates: The Power of Full Circle Moments

March 3, 2020

Facebook memories are always scary. Rarely do you get an “On this day (however many) years ago…” and feel, uh, how would you say it… un-humiliated? Today was a prime example. I got an alert that 8 years ago I posted this :

I’ve learned about repressing and altering memories in psych classes, and I have to admit it : I have 100% altered this memory into a cute thing that 9 year-old CB did with her allowance. Turns out, I was in eighth grade and wanted the world to know about it. Thanks a lot, Facebook Memories.

I’ve decided to throw on the rose colored glasses, though. I’ve decided to laugh at the 13 year old basketball dork and then acknowledge it was a cute little hint about who I’d become. Eight years later, I was standing in the Dean Dome watching my last “Jump Around” during senior night. Eight years later, I was working on my last “Carolina PostGame Live” show… a show in which the trivia question’s answer was my dear gnome’s namesake : Tyler Hansbrough.

My dad has told me the story of his last basketball season as a student : “I still feel a little sick when I think of the final UNC game my senior year.” He went on to tell me how in the last game of his senior year, the Heels lost to Ohio State in the Sweet 16. He knows the exact bar (Bub O’Malleys) and even admits that he remembers starting the game at He’s Not and moving to “Bub’s” at halftime hoping to change the mojo. He recalls he stormed home immediately after the game. It was March 27th.

Wanna know something neat? Six years later, on that exact date, lil Caroline Bynum was born, and he became a dad. As he put it, “That date turned out pretty good in the end.”

For the record, my mom remembers my dad storming home without her after watching the Heels lose. She was pissed. She had no idea what date it was; she just knew it was a super annoying night. She does have another story for March 27th though… It was March 1998, and the Heels had just lost in the Final Four. She recalls watching Antawn Jamison kiss the floor as she sat in hospital bed, crying because the season had ended. Ready for it? Little baby CB cured her Final Four heartbreak (she claims). I would like to acknowledge that, to me, a crying baby would add stress to the situation, but I appreciate mom trying on the rose colored glasses as well.

Now it’s time for me to attach my part to the story. I’ve grown up knowing the Antawn Jamison kiss, while holding your newborn part. Antawn Jamison (and fine, a Carolina loss) is how my story began. Two years ago, I worked my first “Late Night with Roy.” It’s a night full of dancing, silly games, and a scrimmage to send us into an always promising season. Two years ago, Antawn Jamison was the host. I got to take out cheese puffs and hard boiled eggs for relay races and give them to the man who is a character in the beginning of my story. Hey Facebook, where’s that memory?

My mom once wrote a poem about how our lives’ timelines are a series of befores and afters. They appear more vertical than horizontal; phases of our lives that have points that turn our path; bookmarks or chapters in our life’s novel.

I wonder, though, if they are more circular. Times that may not make much sense until that little circle wraps up; until that small story’s path comes full circle. Yes, the circles overlap and connect, but each tells it’s own story. A story that is a mystery until it clicks to the beginning and we say, “Alright, alright, alright, now I get why you bought a gnome in eighth grade.”

I don’t know when the 2020 Tar Heel season will end or if the date will end up coinciding with the birth of my first child. I know I had to watch the Heels lose in 2016 and cry tears of anger and sadness, so I could cry tears of elation while jumping on Franklin Street a year later. I have a lot of incomplete story circles and know some will remain semi-circles forever, but it sure is comforting that some bad dates can turn into a ring in the end.

Can’t Stop Thinking About You : Sports Memories That Haunt Us

February 4, 2020
I love basketball. I am bad at basketball. I am good at watching basketball.

It took me a while to realize that in its entirety, though. For a while, I figured, ‘Oh gee, I come from a sports-obsessed family, and I sure do love watching sports. I must be good at them too, right?’… Not so fast. Literally.

It was 2012. I was an eighth grader who carefully applied sparkly eyeliner each morning and absolutely did not wash it off when it was time for basketball practice.

The moment occurred in the dimly lit gym of Charlotte Covenant Day. It must have been towards the beginning of the game because I was still in — see, my coach was one of my mom’s friends, so I started each game (out of pity) and promptly hit the bench at the five minute mark.

The eighth grade boys’ team was sitting on the sidelines because they had a game following ours. Yeah, my braces-clad crush was watching. Okay, so, I was near mid-court ready to pass to our point guard, and boom. I stepped in before releasing the ball. Wtf, right? But uh yeah, the whole athletic movement thing isn’t my forté. Whistle blows. The ref points to my bulky black sneaker that was positioned fully inbounds. Covenant Day ball.

So now, whenever I watch a basketball game (which is frequently), and a player sets up an inbounds pass by the scorer’s table, my heart jumps and my hands get clammy. Turns out, they typically know the proper order of movements, and the ball successfully arrives in the 1’s hands.

Brandon Robinson won the NCAA National Championship his freshman year. That same year, he almost went shirtless in the Dean Dome.

“I forgot my jersey in the locker room, and when I went to take off my shooting shirt, I realized I didn’t have it on,” he told me. Turns out, both teams were going to wear jerseys that day, it wasn’t a game of shirts versus skins.

Embarrassing moments don’t define us, but they can direct us. BRob recently dumped a career high of 29 points in the Miami game and leads the Tar Heels in made three pointers…He also wears his jersey each game. And, me? Well, I discovered that I needed to find a new outlet for my passion in sports… off the court.

Moral of the story: sports are tricky and (in the wise words of Hannah Montana,) everybody makes mistakes.

Well, that was how that post was going to end. Cute and tied up with a bow; a Disney lyric to send ya home. But then my parents reminded me of the one time I accidentally shot an ‘own basket’ but missed. ( I guess my lack of skill comes in handy, sometimes?) Oh, and that time I got a concussion during soccer…warmups. And the fact that every time the coach would call for a substitution in any sport, I would eagerly look over to the side to see if it was my time to go join the bench. So the question was prompted: why do I love sports? Okay, okay, it actually was phrased like this: Why the F do you like sports if you really aren’t that great at them?

The fact that I have enough embarrassing moments and ungraceful movements to fill a (quite painful) highlight reel may be exactly why I love sports. Sports have so much to offer all of us regardless of skill — so you may not be great at shooting free throws, but man, can you lose your voice yelling for someone else to make the bucket. Or maybe you’re not going to play in the Super Bowl, but throwing the pigskin in the backyard feels like the Big Game to you.

I was the kid doing loops on her bike in the driveway announcing out loud as if I was in the damn Tour de France. “Annnnnd she makes her final turn. Look at that purple helmet zooming by. By golly, it looks like she’s going to win! There it is folks, Caroline Bynum, the champion…again” I won every time.

So now, here’s the real ending : Who cares if you step over the line or if you really only win when you are the only one competing? We play sports because they’re fun, and we love them. Yes, I’m no longer racing in driveways, and my purple helmet is long gone, but I will never give up sports because of what they teach us on and off the court.

So, don’t hang your head if you miss the free throw–just keep playing. As long as you’re enjoying yourself, you’re doing it right.

… unless, of course, you are on the team I’m cheering for. ‘Cause in that case, don’t you dare miss that bucket.

The Real Thing: Louisa Commits to Washington and Lee

February 6, 2020
Okay forgive me, this post is a proud big sis post.

My younger sister, Louisa, used to make us play a game called “Bocker” in the driveway. Basketball, soccer, a little four square, some relay racing, all mushed together in a confusing game that, somehow, she always won. She would change the rules after each point and try to convince us: “Well yes, I got five points from doing that last time, but now it gets you negative three…” She just made shit up.

I messed up. This sounds like an annoyed big sister post.

The point is that she’s always had competition in her veins. Even as the youngest in the family, she challenged us and herself and that’s pretty neat (even if Bocker is one of the worst games I’ve ever played.)

From day one, she had a goal : play soccer in college. It was written in her room on a mirror that she looked at every day.

In seventh grade, she emailed the Varsity head coach to check on the game time of one of the upper school away games. The coach looked up to the stands that night at the game and saw Louisa sitting in the stands alone, intently watching the varsity girls battle it out. “This was commitment. In that moment I knew she had bigger aspirations,” is how her coach put it.

She looked up to those athletes so much. Each Christmas, she receives a different soccer gift, “Soccer Girl Problems” sweats or an autographed magazine or a jersey. She follows all of the National Team players on Instagram and could probably recite their birthdays, anniversaries and children’s middle names.

She has always looked up to “real” players.

Last week, she became one. On Friday, Louisa signed to officially play at Washington and Lee University. At our close knit school in Charlotte’s assembly, she got to stand in front of the crowd and thank her family and friends. She kicked ass. A few highlights :

Our “framily” got a shout out in which she thanked them for teaching her the correct way to hug and that laughing at yourself is the only option.

Dad’s calming nature was highlighted when she said, “Thank you for being the calmest person ever. When it doesn’t feel possible to be in control you always make things better.’

And Mom: Thank you for teaching me that the most important things in life are family and laughter. I’m going to miss hearing your loud cackle from downstairs every night as I am trying to go to bed.

Woah, right? As a senior in high school, she’s already figured out the important stuff – family, laughter, good hugs, and finding people who are your peace.

So here’s the cheesy part :

All these years, grudgingly playing Bocker and getting ticked off at her when she’d get too competitive during family game night, I thought I was leading her along. I thought I was the big sis showing her the ropes. Wasn’t I the one teaching her what to wear to that party or what text to reply to girl drama or how to best approach a weird conversation with mom and dad?

Turns out, I was learning from her. (I know, yikes.) I learned about hard work and pursuing a goal without letting any limitations get in your way. I learned to appreciate the small things like the right kind of hug, laughter echoing through hallways, and finding the time to say thank you.

She’s my little sis but she’s got some big stuff figured out.

There was no doubt she was going to reach her goal because from a young age she understood that you don’t break rules to succeed… but sometimes, it helps if you make them up.

Commitment : I Love Sports, Southern Food, and No-Snow Winters

February 21, 2020
Last year, one of my guy friends dressed up as ‘commitment’ for Halloween. He walked around shouting to anyone who would listen that he was the spookiest outfit of the night. It’s a daunting thing. To fully dedicate and devote yourself to any sort of person, place, thing, idea, even verb, I guess. Madlib anything after “committed to,” and it’s scary.

Until it’s not. Until it just sort of makes sense, and you just know.

Shoot, you think I’m talking about my special someone.

Not so fast. Today, I am thinking about the South. Here we go.

I’m the first to admit the South has its faults, so this will not be a “rah rah rah the South is the best” post. However, like any real relationship, nobody’s perfect, but you love ‘em anyway.

It’s the feeling I get that solidifies that this place is home… And perhaps a realization that I’m a bit less tough than I’d like to be in certain areas.

What areas, you may ask? Let me start with precipitation. My encounters with precipitation within my nearly 22 years of life have been quite simple : April showers bring May flowers; one snow a year during which the bread, milk and bottled water aisles are cleared; half an inch of snow will cancel school for the indefinite future. I like rainy mornings, but only when I get to sleep in. I like snow days, only when you get to build a snowman, drink hot chocolate, and take a nap. Okay, so I like precipitation within the context of no responsibilities. Today, I drove three hours in the snow. A snow in which I can only describe my visibility as a flat gray color with blips of red brake lights. A snow in which school was cancelled, and I’d venture to say most bottled water shelves were depleted. A snow in which a two hour, fifteen minute drive took me nearly four. Fine, it was a snow of one and a half inches in North Carolina.

And you know what? I was freaking out. My best guy friend called me twice begging me to turn around. I received a Facebook DM from my grandmother (yes, you read that correctly) that just had this photo attached:

I should be giggling at the ridiculousness of it all, but I have to be honest, those three and a half hours made me think through my choices and my values, and it’s time to announce it: I’ve decided to take my talents south of the Virginia border and verbally commit to a lifestyle in which I only have to see snow once a year. Where do I sign on the line?

On the third call with my dad on the ride, I had to admit it: “Dad, two things. One, I have to pee and now it’s dark outside so I don’t wanna stop at a gas station. Two, I promise I will never move north of Raleigh” I know, I know, I am one tough son of a gun.

Sooooo.. Commitment, yeah? Sometimes not so scary. Sometimes it just kinda makes sense.

You know, like committing to a team. Even when you’re facing a losing season, and it’s a big ‘ol bummer, the dedication to supporting the team no matter their downfalls and hard times seems worth it. Or commitment to any value, really. Committing to find time for laughter with friends or game nights with family. Committing to practicing your creativity or incorporating more gratitude in your day to day. Commitment is simply a promise you make to yourself and something or someone else, to keep going no matter how tricky times get.

That was a sweet tangent… Let’s not forget I started this about my commitment to the south because of its lack of severe precipitation. I can turn it around, don’t you worry.

I am committed to the area I’ve called home for my whole life because of the way every Saturday feels like a holiday. Because of the way a low country boil in your yard as you wait for the game to start can feel like a five course meal. Committed because the Tobacco Road is the the most nerve-racking road I’d like to face and because getting anything other than Bojangles at 100 points would feel wrong. I love my place because you can drive three hours one way and be sipping a cold one with toes in the sand, while you drive three hours the other and you’re hiking to beautiful views. I am committed to the importance of pimento cheese while watching a smooth putt in the absence of technology, and I am committed to the sweat that beads on your forehead as you rush Franklin Street. I am committed to golf courses that look like scenes from the technicolor part of the Wizard of Oz all year long. I am committed to cheering for my city even when my favorite players leave and the team name changes and a new dynamic is introduced. I am committed to this place, and yes, it’s more than flippin snow, it’s the beauty and comfort and passion of this place.

I am committed to 100 degree summers because I am committed to never spilling the sweet tea in grandma’s car.