There's Now Crying in High School Basketball
With Championships At Stake, Tears Likely

By Jeff Nelson
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, March 14, 2008

Three years later, Tommy Kramer still recalls every moment, every detail from one of the most compelling high school basketball championship games in recent memory.

He can picture his Bethesda-Chevy Chase teammates trying to corral one more rebound to seal a state title. He can see the final seconds of overtime descending and B-CC failing to come up with a loose ball amid chaos. Then, the most enduring image -- Randallstown's final shot going in at the buzzer.

"That's pretty much burned in my memory, the end of that game," said Kramer, who was a sophomore reserve in 2005. "It's that clear in my mind. I remember seeing our point guard, Carl Buck, collapse, and one of our forwards collapse. They were on the floor forever."

A generation ago, according to interviews with a dozen area coaches, the players on a team that lost in such painful fashion would have taken a deep breath and walked off the court. Emotions would have been suppressed; tears would have been unthinkable. But not anymore.

If there's one certainty this weekend as state high school basketball championships are decided in Maryland and Virginia, it's that tears will fall.

Sometimes they will come from the winners, sometimes the losers, sometimes both. But at the end of nearly every game, regardless of sex, some players will break down and cry.

"I think it's a human thing," said Eleanor Roosevelt Coach Rod Hairston, whose team is the three-time defending Maryland 4A girls' champion. "I don't think it's a boys' or girls' thing anymore. When you put so much time and effort into something, I think you can't help but have those kinds of emotions and feelings about the outcome."

Now a freshman at Stanford University, Kramer remembers his teammates -- especially the seniors -- letting it all out. They wept on the court as Randallstown's players celebrated; they wept on the bench while waiting for their second-place trophies; they wept in the locker room as the seniors contemplated the end of their playing careers.

"I've never seen that kind of emotion until my guys [three] years ago," Bethesda-Chevy Chase Coach Steve Thompson said. "I didn't cry, but I wanted to. For them."

Male and female coaches who attended high school in the 1970s said girls always have been permitted to cry. It's always been an acceptable outlet of female emotion.

Not so for their male contemporaries. In that era and the years preceding it, coaches said, tears represented "weakness" and "being soft."

"I could never [imagine] my high school coach crying when he played," said Gwynn Park Coach Michael Glick, a 1984 high school graduate. "I think generationally, it wasn't accepted."

Gradually, attitudes started to shift.

Several coaches pointed to N.C. State coach Jim Valvano running around the court in 1983, looking for someone to hug after his team won the NCAA championship. Another cited Michael Jordan in the locker room after his first NBA title in 1991, clutching the trophy, his body convulsing as he sobbed.

Since then, Terrell Owens has cried on camera after playoff wins and playoff losses. Last week, Brett Favre's tear-soaked retirement news conference was broadcast live across the nation.

Unfettered emotion has become a central component in sports' iconic moments. The movement from "hold it in" to "let it out" has permeated society.

"We're constantly telling people to be more in touch with their feeling and express themselves," said Ivan Thomas, whose T.C. Williams boys' team is in tonight's Virginia AAA final. "Basketball and sports in general is an emotional roller coaster. You have guys who work so hard up until that point, and win or lose, it's an emotional feeling you just can't really control. We're all human."

Crying is not only accepted from boys these days, it is widely thought to be a positive sign.

"As a coach, that's what you want to see," said Millbrook Coach Scott Mankins, whose boys' team defeated Blacksburg last night in the Virginia AA semifinals. "You want someone to care that much."

Gwynn Park senior Harold Washington has no problem wearing his emotions on his cheeks. Last season, when Largo bounced the Yellow Jackets from the postseason, he never considered what he should or shouldn't do. He just cried.

When asked if he thought crying might show weakness, Washington said: "I don't believe that. If you can show emotion, I believe that makes you a stronger person. You're not scared to be you."

Nearly everyone, coaches and players alike, suggested that crying is a healthy reaction. But it's not that simple, according to Patrick Cohn, a sports psychologist and founder of Peak Performance Sports in Orlando.

Cohn said crying is the sign of an athlete who is highly motivated and cares deeply, and he understands if the tears are coming from the finality of a senior's career or a team's season. "But if they look at it as failure, that 'there's something wrong with me,' then [those feelings are] not healthy," he said.

On the flip side, Cohn said, there's never anything wrong with tears after triumphs. "That's coming from a positive emotion," he said. "The crying is coming from joy."

Washington, whose team plays tonight in the Maryland 2A semifinals, is all but certain to become emotional one way or the other this weekend. If Gwynn Park's season ends with a loss, his career will be over. If the Yellow Jackets win a championship, he'll likely use his jersey to wipe away tears.

"I can see it happening," he said. "It's like when you're a little kid with the toy you can't get, and when you finally get it, you're so happy. I've been chasing a championship for four years, and when you finally get that, I don't think you can help but cry."