In the ninth grade, I was cut from the basketball team at Broadneck High School. At 14 years old, rejection is a tragedy. But as I sat and cried in the living room – not because I knew I wasn’t Broadneck basketball material, but because I was told I wasn’t good enough to make the team – I knew there was another path out there. It led straight to the school’s outdoor athletic complex.

Monday afternoon, I joined the indoor track team. And at my first track practice, I was brusquely greeted by Bruce Villwock, who led the 40 freshmen through stretching and warmups. He barked orders. He yelled at kids who goofed around. He told us that the 15 minutes we spent stretching and warming up would make us healthier and stronger.

I was terrified. Out of those 40 freshmen, only a handful of us became four-year letter winners in track. Little did I know how much Bruce Villwock would make an impression on me in that time.

As a shot putter, you don’t have much interaction with the runners and jumpers on the track team. You’re isolated in a corner of the track. So it was us and Coach Villwock on those cold afternoons. Three of us were serious about the art of putting the shot, and while the others didn’t, Coach Villwock still took the time to work with them. He could have easily written them off as slackers, but that wasn’t in his nature. Little did I realize that underneath that gruff exterior – part and parcel of years as a football and boys lacrosse coach – he was also an empathetic person, that this was his way of teaching someone who wasn’t as talented or as athletic that they had a value and a passion and that what they learned, somehow, would make them a better individual.

As I prepared for a meet one day, heaving that 8-pound lead shot ahead of me, Coach Villwock called Jerry Kiple, the head track coach and distance coach, over to our corner of the football complex. Coach Villwock pointed at me and declared that in four years, I would throw at the Maryland state indoor track championships. I kind of shrugged, grinned, and said something along the lines of, “yeah right.” But the bug was in my head. And for the next four years, I made it a point to get good grades, to train, to listen to what my coaches and teachers told me and to stay out of trouble because I had this goal in front of me.

My final indoor track meet was the Maryland state 3A championships, where I finished third. I remember two people watching me compete: my father and Coach Villwock.

I read in my hometown paper today that Coach Villwock is retiring after 37 years of teaching. Coach Villwock said something that is reflective of the values of his era of teaching and parenting – one that was in my household, as well, as my parents were teachers:

“The number one reason for my success would be that I put the students first, regardless of whether I was teaching or coaching them. I tried to instill in them the things I instilled in me by my parents.

“The kids come to me and I tell them that they’re special and that they have a gift to give to the world, as I’m trying to encourage them and build their self-esteem.”

It sounds frilly, but Coach Villwock had this no-bullshit way of trying to find what was great about each of his students and that life wasn’t a competition but a chance for each of us to cultivate and share our own greatness, whatever it was, and not to worry what other people think.

I still have my medal from the state championships, and the first-place ribbon I won for the regional championship. When I wonder what my purpose is, or why I am staying up late to research my next story, I think about that medal and those ribbons. They are reminders of all the hard work and training I put in for four years to achieve the goal that was set for me and the goals I set for myself. What I reaped, I sowed.

When I read that Coach Villwock is retiring, I didn’t realize how emotional I would get over it. I took down my medal from the state championships and looked at it for a while, and told my husband this:

When I was 14, I didn’t have a lot of faith in myself. I don’t think a lot of people outside of my family had faith in me. But like he did for so many of his students, Bruce Villwock put faith in me. It was one of the best things a teacher ever did for me.

Here’s a universal truth: When you’re in a crisis, you learn who your true friends are.

You find out because they support you, they stick with you and they find out who you really are.

We spend too much time measuring our worth by the number blog hits we get and the number of Facebook friends, Twitter followers and Flickr uploads we have. I’ve met too many people who have validated themselves by these numbers, and one thing I learned from losing my job is that we’re better than being just numbers. Its not a healthy existence and it gives someone a false sense of security. Even worse, it’s a fleeting substitute for face-to-face contact.

When we do something good and post it on our Facebook page, were deluged with likes and love. But when we have to bear our bad news, who responds? And who responds with more than just a comment? Who do you think will reach out to you and, more importantly, stand by you? You’ll be surprised.

There were people who inquired through those first six rounds of layoffs I survived at the Portland Press Herald. But I didn’t hear a peep from them after I was handed the pink slip in October. And when I did, it was in passing or well after the fact. And it was awkward.

No, really, thanks so much for your concern.

But I found out who my friends were. I found out who the people were, who were brave enough to bring up the issue of my unemployment – it’s not an easy issue to bring up – but who handled it so well. Who handled me so well. Seriously, after what my husband has dealt with, Tommy deserves season tickets to Allen Fieldhouse. For life. (He’s a diehard Kansas basketball fan.)

These past few months have brought a different meaning. They’ve brought rest. I joke that I caught up the sleep that I lost during the first 13 years of my career.

But when your professional responsibilities are suddenly taken away from you, you just can’t flip a switch and turn off the fact that you’re wired to find facts and you’re keyed in on making deadlines, and on edge waiting for phone calls. There were days I didn’t want to get out of bed. Days I didn’t want to speak to people. Days I was angry, confused, hurt and betrayed.

There were good days, too. They’ve brought clarity. No joke. I noticed things around me on the drive to the grocery store – things I considered trivial six months ago.

And there were great days, too – including today.

I’m joining the staff at the Toledo Blade at the end of the month. I am grateful and thankful for this opportunity to return to journalism and to be a part of something bigger.

I’m going to keep getting my hustle on. I probably won’t be posting on here as much as I do, because I’ll be representing an organization once again. Professional decorum is vital, especially in an industry like journalism where transparency is key.

Some people would think this experience has jaded me, but it’s made me appreciate journalism – especially good journalism – even more, and it’s made me evaluate what’s important to me: my family, my ability to contribute, my sense of self-worth.

Furthermore, it’s made me appreciate having the opportunity to start fresh. I will appreciate every time I send in a story or crack a joke with a coworker. I’ll appreciate being stranded in some big city or some airport.

I’m looking forward to going back to work.

I’m looking forward to being a part of a team and contributing to a greater cause, and to representing the Toledo Blade. Each time I walk in the door of the Blade or get ready for my next assignment, I’ll think of the people whom I discovered were and are my true friends.

The people who stood by me. The people who surprised me. The people who pushed me forward.

Your support has kept me strong. It has motivated me. It will keep me going.

For a February day, it was an unseasonably warm day in my hometown. I had stayed after school to turn in my uniform and equipment and I waited in the gymnasium lobby with another one of my teammates, for our ride home. We weren’t old enough to have our drivers licenses.

She and I looked out the window of the lobby, waiting for her mom’s minivan. We said to each other, Did you hear about the quarterback? 

Whispers had circulated through school that something had happened. That a classmate of ours was in jail. That someone was hurt. That someone else had stayed home from school, then came to school and found shelter in the school library.

We went through the school, in search of the local paper. It was on a desk in the main office. The assistant principal wouldn’t let us see it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that may have been a violation of the First Amendment. Or some form of institutional censorship. Still, I anxiously wanted to get home. I wanted to find out what happened.

I’ll call you and tell you, I told my teammate before I got out of her mom’s minivan.

The paper was in our red box. The story was stripped across the top of the front page. Our former classmate was in jail, accused of killing a former classmate two days earlier. The story explained that he was being held after allegedly stabbing our former classmate – whom the paper described as a “rival suitor” – in front of his house and burying the body nearby, under a pile of leaves. The story also explained that the former quarterback from our high school was enrolled in his first semester at a private school in the city.

His absence wasn’t prominent. In fact, I hadn’t noticed was of gone from the school until that day, when people in my seventh-period art class talked about him in hushed tones.

But I had grown up with his family.

His sister was one of my teammates and a person whom, even at a young age, I connected with.

His brother was a happy, friendly kid who reached out to help people, especially in sports and gym class. I remember his sincerity and his sense of humor. His brother was what you would call “a sweet kid,” and he would have made a fantastic coach.

That all changed. They were suddenly isolated and had isolated themselves, cast as a certain pariah on our peninsula. I felt badly for his brother and sister, that they had to go through this. But I didn’t feel badly for the quarterback. He’d committed a heinous crime and later pled guilty. He remains incarcerated.

***

I don’t remember the day he pled guilty as much as the day we found out he’d committed the crime. My best friend recalls the moment he found out, too, when an older classmate of ours stormed into the lobby of the school, holding up a fresh copy of the local paper, and screamed, “I never trusted that fucker!”

It stuck with our school – and divided our school – through the remainder of the school year. There were two factions: those who stood by the former quarterback and those who saw him as a person who committed a brutal crime.

But there were layers.

We remembered seeing him walk home after football games, carrying his equipment bag. It was rumored to be  punishment if he hadn’t performed to his father’s expectations. We remembered how he was surrounded by girls. We remembered how he had a certain swagger to him, how he always seemed to have his way.

That summer at field hockey camp, the stories came spilling out. How the former quarterback had tried to drown someone at a pool party. How he had attempted to push someone out of an amusement park ride on a class trip to Virginia. How he had grabbed classmates and thrown them into walls, lockers, goalposts … How he nearly ran someone over in his orange sports car. Years later, I realized that we were dealing with an unstable individual. And that the emotional instability wasn’t just limited to him.

I recently had dinner with a friend of mine from high school and we talked about that time.  She told me a classmate of ours believes and maintains the killing was justified because the man he stabbed “fucked with the quaterback’s head.”

“Excuse me,” I asked, setting my fork down onto my dinner plate. “But who deserves to be brutally murdered in front of heir own house and buried under a pile of leaves?”

***

Twenty years ago this week, my classmates and I were taught a hard lesson in morals. We learned that classmates killing other classmates didn’t just happen 30 minutes north of us or an hour west of us, or in the parts of those cities we’d only seen in movies or heard about in hard-core rap music.

It happened in front of our neighbor’s house. To someone we know. In our little corner of Suburbia, U.S.A. And it was the second murder in our neighborhood in eight years that involved a high school student. It’s worth noting we also lost a classmate to a brain aneurysm, another to a respiratory disease and a third to a fall off a high-level bridge – that’s another post for another day – but none of the losses stuck with me as much as this one. And I barely even knew the person who lost their life. I barely knew the person who took it.

I remember now a lot of the good times from high school, more than I did 10 years ago when the adolescent anger was still fresh.  I remember the people – the classmates, the teachers, the coaches, the administrators – who helped me and who made an impact on me.

I remember the people who sat next to me in classes and the conversations we had. I remember funny moments with teammates.

I remember the good times I had driving around with friends on a weekend night.

On one of those Friday nights, I remember riding in one of those cars, seeing the high school quarterback walking down the two-lane highway, his equipment bag slung over his shoulder and his head down. We didn’t pull over and offer him a lift home.

This is pretty much how I felt when I saw the Boston University hockey team was wearing a blue puzzle piece on their uniforms for autism awareness … as opposed to a white ribbon for a campaign against violence towards women, a campaign sponsored by the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.

Or would that be hypocritical?

The Terriers wore white ribbon stickers on their helmet during the annual Beanpot tournament … days before Max Nicastro was arrested and pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape.

Come on, now,  BU. Consider one of the finite rules of public relations: Presentation is important.

Amd given the current state of affairs in the BU hockey program, it might behoove both the hockey team and possibly the athletic department to do a little more than just assemble a “task force” to examine the culture surrounding the hockey program.

Boston University president Robert A. Brown announced today that the school wants to assemble a task force “to examine the culture of men’s hockey.”

Wait. So two days after Max Nicastro pleads “not guilty” to two counts of rape, Boston University’s administration wants to assemble a task force to examine “the culture” of the program?

Two BU hockey players – Nicastro and Corey Trivino – have faced charges relating to sexual assault (and have been suspended) in a four-month span, and the administration wants to create a glorified committee, with meetings and all?

Becuase nothing says, “hey, let’s do something proactive about this problem” like conducting meetings over the next few months.

This situation doesn’t just require an examination. It should require consequences.

Consider the extreme: Suspending the program for the remainder of the season – or at least forfeiting  berths in the Hockey East and/or NCAA tournaments – and making an example of the group. Such has happened before: In 2000, Vermont suspended its men’s hockey program for the remainder of the 1999-2000 season, in light of a hazing scandal on campus. Duke suspended its mens lacrosse program in 2006, after allegations of rape surfaced following an off-campus party. (Charges were ultimately dropped against three lacrosse players and the district attorney who prosecuted the case was disbarred.)

But that won’t happen.

From today’s BU release regarding said task force:

“We will ask the task force to look at our program with fresh, impartial eyes,” Brown says, “to determine whether the culture of hockey at BU meets the high standards of our academic community. If it does not, if the task force finds a culture where players are privileged or entitled or held to lesser standards, it will recommend changes to the way we think about and manage our hockey program.”

Furthermore, this task force will include ” representatives from the faculty, staff, and University trustees and overseers” and “will be determined over the next several weeks, as will the specifics of its charge.”

Here’s a tip: Include students on this task force. Maybe even include non-hockey athletes.

Seek out people who interact with members of the hockey team on a daily basis, who live in the same buildings and take the same classes as members of the hockey team. They’ll be able to give you some stronger insight on the kinds of people members of the hockey team are (no, they aren’t all bad, but what’s happened at BU hasn’t helped the profile), what they bring to the culture of the school and how they are perceived, character-wise, versus who they really are.

So. A few days after Boston University announces it’s adding men’s lacrosse as a varsity sport …

… Max Nicastro, a junior on the BU hockey team, gets arrested on sexual assault charges and is suspended indefinitely. It’s the second such arrest this season of a BU hockey player. Nicastro joins Corey Trivino in that hall of shame.

And Nicastro’s arrest comes less than a week after the championship game of the Beanpot, when Terriers, Boston College, Northeastern and Harvard wore white ribbon stickers on their helmets, as part of a campaign against violence towards women.

Now, really, do you think Max Nicastro was listening? Or was aware? Or, when he allegedly committed the assault he’s charged with, was he just too drunk to make the “right” decision?

(If you’ve been paying attention to the George Huguely V case, this is pretty much the defense’s argument in favor of Huguely, a former Virginia men’s lacrosse player who is being tried in the death of Yeardley Love.)

Is Boston University’s hockey program sliding down the same slope that Virginia lacrosse and Penn State football tumbled down: harboring and enabling a culture of despicable behavior?

Is the collective behavior of Nicastro and Trivino, as well as a handful of suspensions and arrests over the past three seasons, indicative of  the culture – and what’s permissible, acceptable and/or overlooked – in a program?

Or will fans stick to the belief that winning, ultimately, will simply make up for all these problems?