Healing and Sheltering

Psalm 23

 I read an article about four years ago and I’ve wanted to preach on it since. I just couldn’t find the right time. Today might be a right time. As we are in a time of social isolation and maybe even of sheltering in place, as we are in a time of great need for prayers for healing, of the need for good leadership, this story might serve as a guide and a buoy for us. I hope you will hear this story about a basketball coach and her players and remember all the sheep and their shepherds and all the people who need healing and guidance through the valleys.

In 2016, Coach Pat Summitt, storied coach of women’s basketball at the University of Tennessee, died after having been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. In the days and weeks after she died, I was not at all surprised to hear former players and rival coaches speak of her deep skill, tenacity, and fierce care for her players.

One of her former players, Abby Conklin, said, “There’s something about that woman. She gets things out of you that you never knew were in you.”

Another player, Candace Parker said, “She taught me hard work. She’s the hardest-working woman I’ve ever met in my life. She just didn’t just say things; she did what she said. That was evident in the way she lived and the way she taught us as players.”

While I read those two quotes in an article by a journalist named Mechelle Voepel, they echoed something I always heard growing up in Tennessee. Pat Summitt was a really good coach.

Another article, though, showed me parts of Coach Summit’s career that I knew less about. Professor Jonathan W. Gray wrote about her for Fusion Network. He said, with a clarity that I appreciate as an East Tennessean, that Pat Summitt was the greatest college basketball coach of all time. He also said that it wasn’t just her impressive win record (She did lead the Lady Vols to 1,098 wins in her 38 seasons as coach) that helped her merit being called the greatest. He said that “her character and her quiet commitment to her players’ well-being, both on and off the court” was what made her the greatest. You see, Coach Summitt cared deeply for her players. She worked for the well-being of their whole selves in a way that few coaches have reproduced.

Dr. Gray argues that you can look at the diversity of the background of her teams, teams that she began cultivating in the 1980’s in East Tennessee, to see evidence of the trust she was able to build with each team member and their families.

She was able to convince black families from Chicago, New York, and Atlanta that her program would be a safe place where their daughters would flourish, even though it was in a smaller, less diverse, southern city. Many of these students flourished under her mentorship. Some of the players with the greatest legacies as Tennessee Volunteers are black women like Semeka Randall, Tamika Catchings, and Chamique Holdsclaw. They trusted her with their college careers, and she made sure they could thrive in Knoxville.

Coach Summitt would also find great players in rural and small towns across the country, many of them white, and convince their parents to send them to a city, any city, to play. They may have never even had a conversation with someone who was black, much less played on a team with black players.

Coach Summitt would take all these players under her wing and teach them to be a team.

Dr. Gray held up Chamique Holdsclaw as a particularly powerful example of Coach Summitt’s dedication. While she was a Lady Vol, the team won three back to back national championships. Holdsclaw has also been called the best women’s basketball player of the 20th Century. Holdsclaw played professionally after college, too, but struggled with physical injuries and significant mental health issues. At one point, she didn’t believe she should live anymore. At her lowest, she was arrested and ended up on probation for three years for assault. She is doing better now. She has a treatment plan for her bipolar disorder and depression and has worked hard to help break the stigma around mental illness. In talking about her recovery, she has talked about Coach Summitt’s role in her life.

Holdsclaw began to have depression symptoms while she was in college. She came to Coach Summitt and Coach made sure she could go to a therapist off campus, where she felt more comfortable. Holdsclaw herself talks about how hard it was for her to actually engage with that first therapist and she didn’t go for very long. She would have another low point several years into her professional career, disappearing into her home and not responding to anyone who came to check on her. Coach Summitt came to her city to try to help. Later, after Holdsclaw was arrested for assault, Coach Summitt asked her to come to Knoxville to check in. Holdsclaw credits that conversation as being a start to a recovery of her health. When Coach helped her see that she’d need to work hard to be well and work with a healthcare team, Holdsclaw began to put in the work she needed to with this different kind of team to get to a better place.

Also important to this story is that Chamique Holdsclaw had come out as a lesbian while in college. It wasn’t widely known in the media, but her coach knew. It was not easy to be an out college student in the late 1990’s, especially with all the attention that was on Holdsclaw for her basketball skills. Other coaches during that same era demanded that their players be in the closet and recruited players by assuring homophobic families that there were no lesbians on their teams. At least one division 1 coach actually had a reputation for forcing players who she assumed were gay off her team. Coach Summitt never did that. She never insisted her players remain closeted. She never chased them off her team. She just coached them.

Chamique Holdsclaw wore number 23 on her jersey when she played for the Volunteers. In that era, most people assumed she did so because it was Michael Jordan’s number and he was her favorite player. But she actually wore 23 because of Psalm 23. Her grandmother June was deeply religious. She had raised Holdsclaw and had been a deep well of support for her throughout her life. Psalm 23 was her grandmother’s favorite Psalm.

Today, when I hear these words from scripture about a God who is a good shepherd, I think of Coach Summitt’s work as a shepherd to her players, to Chamique Holdsclaw in particular. Imagine what Holdsclaw’s life could have been had she ended up with a coach who did not support her mental health or tried to run her out of basketball because she was a lesbian. Imagine how things might have been had her coach not continued to care for her long after her college ball days were over. It seems clear that, even when her life was the hardest, she was confident, with Coach Summitt, that she was always welcome at the table. She was confident that she would be offered mercy, confident that in their relationship she could find stability in the valley of the shadow of death. When I hear this story, and the Divine Spirit that connected these two women, I am sure that it is one place where scripture comes alive.

Right now, we are living in our own deathly shadows. Those of us who are lucky have safe homes to shelter in, flexible jobs, and family and friends who can run errands for us if we are sick or worried about getting sick. We have working phones and internet services to keep us connected. Even if we are lucky and have these supports in place, we may still be fearful for our health, the health of the people we love, and the health of our nation and world.

It is good in these times to be reminded of the ways that we see the Good Shepherd reflected in the good shepherds in our midst, be they basketball coaches or the directors of the Maine CDC. It is good to be reminded that good shepherding looks like hard work and fierce care for the most vulnerable. And it is good to be reminded God is here, in our valleys, with us.

And if our Good Shepherd is here, we can find a way into the green pastures. May we find comfort in this valley as well as discover a path to get us out of it.

Christina Cataldo

Winthrop Congregational Church, Winthrop, ME

_{Sources mentioned in this sermon:}

_{Mechelle Voepel’s article for ABC News: https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/tennessee-legend-pat-summitt/story?id=40242052}

_{Jonathan W. Gray’s article for Fusion: https://fusion.tv/story/320009/pat-summitt-tennessee-basketball-coach-hero-queer-black-women/?fbclid=IwAR2zZRlDMGeNWz1gX4JK1g9DfxBJ18FFMk6EsEoyYCIqmQ39ZQaRbCTKEr8}

_{Vic Vela’s interview with Chamique Holdsclaw: https://www.cpr.org/podcast-episode/ep-3-chamique-holdsclaw/}

_{Training Rules Documentary: https://www.trainingrules.com/training-rules.html}