Longshot (17 page)

That next morning I walked slowly to the Bennion Center, taking in the stupidity of it all: I had earned, for three straight semesters, Academic All-Conference Awards and had the highest GPA on the team—and not with a cupcake major like communications. Yet here I was, about to be tested for a learning disability.

I entered the office that said “Human Resources” and gave the receptionist my name. I sat for a second and looked at all the motivational posters lining the office walls:

“Failure is an event, never a person.”

“While most are dreaming of success, winners wake up and achieve it.”

“The achievement of your goal is assured the moment you commit to it.”

I never hated those tacky posters so much in my life as I did at that moment.

My name was called, and I sauntered in. I shook hands with the tiny lady.

“So, Lance, I read that you're here to get tested for a learning disability?”

“Yes,” I said curtly.

“Well, there are several types of learning disabilities, and there are many ways to test, but not many ways to deduce.”

“Yes,” I said once again, unable to hide my discomfort.

“Well, why don't you tell me a little about yourself.” I began to sum up my life: my hearing, my speech therapy—the works. After hearing me speak and noting the words I chose to use, she seemed entirely confused.

“I see. So you have struggled in school?”

“No.”

“Do you get bored in school?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are you frustrated often because you don't understand the material?”

“No.”

She scribbled a note. “What are your grades like now?”

“I have a 3.8 GPA.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I daresay that's probably one of the highest on your team.”

“Yes.”

She attempted to make another note, but then sighed. She dropped her pen and removed her eyeglasses as she sat back in her reclining office chair and began to rub the bridge of her nose. “Explain to me again…. Why are you here?”

“My coach wants to humiliate me,” I said matter-of-factly.

She nodded. “I see. Well, I can assure you, you're a bright and articulate young man, and even if you were even just a tad bit slower, making you an ‘average' person of intelligence, I wouldn't have the time to work with you, as there are other people who are in more dire need of the resources here than someone like yourself.”

“Sounds great.”

“But, let me say one thing. You don't have to put up with it.”

I nodded. “How do I tell him that I'm thinking too much? It sounds arrogant.”

“You'll know when the time comes.”

I left the office, walked back up to the Huntsman Center, and handed Coach Rupp my clean bill of health—a pink slip with a written assessment that I had no learning disability, at least not one yet known of. Rupp looked at and placed it on his desk, sighing at the exercise in futility.

I asked, in my best deadpan way, “Do you need to keep it, or can I place it on my fridge at home?”

Say what you want
about sticks and stones, but when you hear day in and day out about your flaws and are being told that you're not good enough, after a while, even though you may not entirely believe what is being said about you, it's nearly impossible to not entertain the thought or at least question it, especially after three years of it in your face. When Coach Majerus would tell me day after day, week after week, that I had to have a learning disability and was stupid, it wasn't that I believed him and believed that I was stupid, but I allowed it to enter into discussion with my inner thoughts.

Still, for the most part I was getting by. But that began to change on January 6, 2002. We were in the Bay Area, practicing at Saint Mary's College, getting ready for a game the next day. One of my teammates made a mistake during practice, a bad pass or something trivial, as all things basketball are trivial when compared with real-life issues.

Coach Majerus stopped practice and had us all line up on the baseline as he paced back and forth, going up the line, taking turns with each of us like ducks in row, calling out our deficiencies, flaws, and weaknesses. We stood there and took it, as we always did. Usually you tried not to laugh when Coach was talking and humiliating another teammate, not because you liked seeing your teammate humiliated, but rather because you knew your teammate and knew what they were about; and the things that Coach Majerus would say to them were so ridiculous that they were almost comical. It wasn't, however, comical when he was speaking to you.

After Coach had ripped into Britton Johnson, making crude references about his girlfriend, he looked at me, even though I had done nothing in this particular instance.

“You know, Lance, you're the worst of all. You use your hearing as an excuse to weasel your way through life. You're a disgrace to cripples,
and if I were in a wheelchair and saw you play basketball, I'd shoot myself.”

This was in front of everyone—the entire team, the coaches, and Coach Rupp. Many of these witnesses, if you ask them, will tell you that this happened—and many have, although some chose to remain anonymous.

I said nothing, which only made Majerus more angry, as he could never get a reaction out of me.

But inside, it ruined me. Here was a man that I had dedicated three years of my life to, that I had idolized, that I had sweated and labored to play for since I was sixteen. He had turned against me and betrayed me. Had I never met the man, or had he meant little to me, I would've laughed at what he had just said.

But this was a man I had entrusted my entire future to. How could I muster up the courage or even the passion to go out and play for this man anymore, knowing that no matter what I did, he would get the glory? Conversely, any shortcoming of mine would be mine and mine alone. Majerus let it be known loud and clear that it was my fault if something went wrong. And I believed it when he said it, because I was already prone to do so.

Basketball had been something that had allowed me to feel normal, to fit in, and yet Majerus, like so many before him, isolated me because of my disability. He didn't discriminate against me. If he had not played me because I was deaf, that would've been discrimination. Instead, he simply used my hearing impairment as a means to humiliate me. Sexual harassment isn't discrimination; it is, however, against the law. Humiliating someone in the professional workplace because of a disability isn't discrimination, nor is it against the law. But does that make it right?

When I called my mother from the hotel later that day to wish her a happy birthday, I didn't tell her about what happened. I didn't tell anyone about what happened until Mom and Dad heard from Britton and Jeff Johnson's parents about it. My parents sat me down and confronted me. I remained removed and aloof, which was the only way I knew how to be at this point, until I finally broke down and admitted what had happened. Why didn't I tell them earlier? Because, as when I was a boy, I wanted to deal with it myself. I didn't want my parents to fight my battles for me. But more than that, I was too ashamed to tell them.
Mom, Dad, Coach was mean to me today. Boo-hoo.
Cleverly, Majerus
always challenged me at the end of a berating by saying, “You can go cry to your mommy now.” Basic bullying tactics that I bought into.

My mom was a threat in Majerus's mind, as he was aware she held a lot of esteem on campus, especially after she gave the commencement speech. He did a good job of putting up a psychological barrier between me and my mother by often bringing her up during his many soliloquies, daring me to go whine to her. And I felt I had to prove him wrong—that I didn't need my mommy.

I finally told Mom and Dad about all the things that were going on, and how I had been tested for a learning disability. They were enraged. But I asked them not to do anything and just let me finish the season quietly. I was committed to my teammates. I loved my teammates, and I loved Coach Rupp. I have never quit on a team, and I never will.

I had hidden myself in basketball, allowing my obsessive-compulsive tendencies to channel through the sport. No longer was I praying compulsively, questioning whether I was gay or whether I had failed this or that test. I could instead obsess about missed shots or bad passes I had made. But my brutal self-criticism combined with Coach Majerus's was a recipe for disaster. All of my emotional walls were crumbling around me, and I had become a zombie. I didn't talk to anyone anymore, because I was so vulnerable and unstable. I flirted with suicidal thoughts every night as I'd watch the clock and count down the hours until the next practice. Ten hours and thirty-seven minutes until I have to see Coach Majerus again. I feared, loathed, and despised him so much that I really did want to kill myself some nights, just so I wouldn't have to see him again and reflect on my failures and shortcomings. No one knew I was thinking these thoughts.

Many nights I contemplated suicide versus quitting. Quitting meant I'd leave in the middle of the season and the community that had invested so much in me would look at me as a failure. Many, due to my past actions and arrogant facade, would say I was a spoiled brat. Suicide, on the other hand, meant no more practices, no more disappointed faces—no more pity, either. But both avenues meant quitting, and that's why I never chose either. I'm not a quitter.

The last straw came on my birthday, February 2. We were playing Colorado State, and it was a late-night game broadcast on ESPN. Coach had said to me during practice the day before the game, “Lance, if you make a mistake or embarrass me, you'll come out and go to the bench for a long time, and I'm speaking not in terms of a single game.”

What was I going to do? Play a perfect game? Of course not. The game is under way, and a few minutes in Jeff Johnson is trying to throw me a lob pass, and I'm shaking my head, mouthing, “No.” My mind is saying, Please don't throw it, please don't throw it…. Jeff throws it. Please don't drop it, please don't drop it…. And what do I do? Of course I drop it, and the ball goes out of bounds.

Majerus immediately subbed me out, and I didn't step back onto the court during a game for over a month. While being banished to the bench was the final blow to my nearly flatlined confidence, at the same time I actually welcomed the exile, because while I wasn't playing I was also free from persecution during film viewing and practice. Majerus ignored me at that point. Given the circumstances, isolation was much more to my liking than daily degradation.

But Majerus didn't just bench me. I could've handled that. Right after he benched me for dropping the pass, the commentators were discussing why I was no longer playing. One said, “Well, Majerus says Lance has to learn that there's no ‘I' in team.”

Had Majerus just said, “I choose not to play Lance,” that would've been fine. But he chose to publicly justify his decision by slandering my character. This was the greatest insult, and a false statement to boot, as my teammates were the only reason I even chose to stay and continue to deal with the man.

I sat for two months, not seeing the floor for the next ten games. I finally entered a game, my very last for Utah, where we lost to the University of Indiana in the first round of the NCAA tournament. By then I didn't care about how I played. I just went out and got a couple of rebounds, hit a few free throws, and told myself, “Hey, I'm here playing in the NCAA tournament, and I'm never playing for Rick Majerus ever again. Just go out there and have fun.” And I did.

After the game was over and we were back at our hotel, I found Coach Rupp in the restaurant. We went into the conference room that the team had reserved for the tournament and sat down in the dark. I looked at Coach Rupp as stoically as I could, but I could barely get the words out of my mouth before I started to cry: “I need out.”

“I know,” Rupp said quickly. “I'm sorry. I want out, too. Had I known this is the way it really is, I'd never have let you come here. Heck, he fooled me, too. Go somewhere and play. You deserve it. I might go back to East, but I think I'm going to stick this out for a few more years, just to give myself a chance to move on up somewhere else.”

“I'm sorry I let you down, Coach. I know you put your neck and reputation on the line, vouching for me and defending me.”

“There isn't a thing you could do to let me down, Lance. I'm proud of you. I have no sons, only daughters, but you're one of my sons. Let people on the fringes say what they want to say, but you and I—and most importantly, you—know what you have been through and endured, and there's no shame in that.”

When I announced my decision to leave the following Monday, Coach Majerus granted my request. I went to say good-bye. I took one last walk around the Huntsman Center, walked into the basketball offices one last time, and said good-bye to all the secretaries and coaches. I walked past all the trophy cases and then out onto the dark Huntsman floor. No one will know how much I loved that place, and how much it meant to me growing up as a kid, seeing the dome from various places around the valley, telling myself in silence, “I will play there someday.” Though I achieved that dream, it turned into a nightmare.

I was alone. I stared up at the jerseys that I had hoped one day would carry my name, but now I knew they never would. I smiled at the side of the court—my preferred side of the court, where I opted to run my sprints. I then looked at it all and asked the darkness, “Why?”

The years I played for him, I saw Majerus's shortcomings and brutality, as well as his good, generous side. However, my shortcomings at the University of Utah were mine and mine alone. I cannot blame him for my lack of development and performance. I take full accountability for my disappointment. As I put no blame on Majerus for my subpar development, I give him no credit for my future success. I went into a program that had been in place for over a decade, and I was treated no more or less cruelly than dozens before me. So why should I be any different than the rest of them? Why should I believe I was special and should've been treated more tenderly? It does not work that way, and so the fault lies with me.

I walked back up the steps I had walked so many times before, and looked back down to the floor, imagining the band's songs that rang out come game time, and the rush I felt so many times when the crowds roared. I did love that place.

Then the voices in my head came and cackled at me, telling me the crowd had never cheered for me and that I, like my time at the University of Utah, was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.