Al Kyte's Life Take-Aways

     

The sport I most enjoyed playing was basketball, mostly for its fast pace, teamwork, and frequent opportunity to shoot a ball at a target.  I played this game most days at my elementary school and wanted to play at home as well.  But I had no court.

I found myself looking around our garage and yard for something to use as a hoop and noticed that the protective wire cages around my dad’s rose bushes were shaped much like inverted basketball hoops with wire nets.  So I took one and knocked out a few wires so a large ball could fit through the tapered inner cylinder.  Then I nailed it to the telephone pole in front of our house and shot kick balls at it; I had no basketball.  Typically by my third shot, that hoop would come crashing to the ground and have to be nailed in place again.

My dad was a coach, but seldom bought us athletic equipment until we showed a strong interest in that sport.  Noticing my efforts, he built a backboard above our garage door for my next birthday, attached a regulation hoop to it, and included a basketball.  The court space was limited to about 15 by 15 feet with an additional narrow driveway offering one angle for longer shots.  I practiced shooting and playing pretend games on this “home court” for years.  

In my early teens, I would often accompany my dad to his second job as an evening recreation director at a high-school gymnasium.  There I would play in pick-up games usually as the only white player.  At first the other boys seldom passed the ball to me, but that changed when they realized I could play and shoot well.  Those games taught me to play at a faster pace as well as to protect the ball more aggressively.  Yet the most important lessons took place afterward in the locker room as we changed back into street clothes.

Those boys hadn’t been around white kids much, and I believe they were watching to see how I reacted to things. I hadn’t been around black kids either, and being quiet by nature, mostly listened as they talked. When they kidded each other it got pretty funny, and they seemed to enjoy it when I laughed with them. I noticed that they all had different personalities much like my own friends at school. I began to realize that skin color has nothing to do with the kind of person someone is. We were developing positive feelings for each other as people as well as basketball players. Those initial feelings of respect and affection carried though into my other interactions in and beyond sports, including many years of mentoring and street ministry.

I went on to make the All-City team in high school, played college ball under the legendary Pete Newell at Cal, and continued playing competitively into my 50s.  I was the first varsity coach at Skyline High School, then for 37 years at the University of California taught elementary through advanced classes to over 5000 students.  When Harmon gym was dismantled and converted into a modern facility, a reporter from the Oakland Tribune wrote that I had taught basketball to more people in that beloved old gymnasium than anyone else.  I was truly blessed to have been able to share my love for this game with so many people.