Becoming Somebody

"Inside the lines of a basketball court, I became — well, Heather Hogan."

I couldn’t play catch by myself, so my dad installed a basketball goal in our driveway. He traveled a lot for work, most weekdays most of the time, and sometimes he lived in Florida and we lived in Georgia. He’d throw a softball with me in the yard for hours when he was home, always ending with the highest pop-fly he could launch into the sky, yelling, “This one’s for the championship of the world!” as the ball dropped back down through the tree branches and into my glove. I was only good at two things — sports and making my mother furious — so the basketball goal was a good way to keep me outside and away from her while doing something I loved.

I excelled at all sports, especially dodgeball, which was just a free and legal opportunity to hurl a ball at boys’ faces. By the time I was ten, I’d broken one boy’s nose, put one boy in a full arm cast, administered multiple black eyes, and left that trademark red waffle print on half the cheeks of half the boys in the fifth grade at Flowery Branch Elementary School. Jeepers H. Christmas, the noise that thing made when it smacked into their smug little bra-strap-snapping faces. Thwack-thump-riiiiiiiiing. My gym teacher, Coach Parker, told my parents I should perhaps join an organized sporting league that did not include boys. He’d tried this thing where he put out cones during dodgeball, and the cones were worth five people if you knocked one over, but I just kept on pummeling those guys with my superior athletic instincts.

And so my dad signed me up for basketball.

I was taller than all the other girls, faster than all the other girls (which I guess made sense because my legs were ten miles long, each), could jump higher than all the other girls, and my hand-eye coordination was actually kind of shocking for someone who can’t really even see out of her left eyeball. On the way home from my first practice, I asked my dad if basketball was what I’d been born to do. He laughed, said, “Yeah, maybe!”

I’d spent my whole life up until that point thinking I’d never really belong anywhere. I was already feeling gay without any words for it. I was some kind of neurodivergent that made other kids think I was a weirdo and made teachers think I was either Gifted or doomed eternally at academia. One of my teachers even flipped over my desk in a Hulked-out rage because she was so sick of looking at how messy it was.

But inside the lines of a basketball court, I became — well, Heather Hogan. Not a meek little cross-eyed, eye-patch-wearing, playground loner, head down on my desk because I didn’t know how to small talk with my classmates, skinned knees, dirty fingernails, straw-haired, sloppy handwriting boy-girl. Playing basketball made me feel solid and happy — truly happy — in a way I never had before. Every player and every parent on every team in the county learned my name. “Guard Heather Hogan!” “Don’t let Heather Hogan shoot!” “Get her, get her, it’s Heather Hogan!”

At elementary school summer camp, they moved me up to the middle school league. In middle school, the high school coach came to practice and told my dad I had a real chance to make the varsity team. And I did. The only freshman to receive that coveted Lady Spartans warm-up suit. The only freshman to be awarded a letter jacket. So many trophies my dad had to build new shelves in my bedroom. So many newspaper clippings they burst out of my scrapbook. All-County. All-Area. All-State. All-Star.

It didn’t matter that I remained terrible at school, that I never learned to dress like a normal girl, that I didn’t have a boyfriend, that my left eye was still crossed, that I was poorer than all my friends, that I still didn’t know how to socialize like a regular human being. People recognized me in the grocery store, high-fived me in line at the Curt’s Country Kitchen breakfast buffet, asked me to sign their programs at church. Basketball made me real. Basketball made me somebody. “At guard, number five, HEATHER HOOOOOOGAAAN.”

My senior year, in our home game against our biggest rival, the West Hall High School gym packed to bursting on all sides, I was set to become the second girl in my school’s history to score 1,000 career points. It was a big deal in 1997. The WNBA didn’t even exist yet.

I only needed 13 points to hit that monumental milestone that night, and I could score 13 points with my eyes closed.

Only, I didn’t.

Ten years of nonstop basketball. Thousands of hours of practice. Playing in my driveway in the Georgia summer heat until I’d sweated through half a dozen cut-off t-shirts. Playing in my driveway in the middle of winter when it was so iced over I had to beat every made shot out of the net with a broom. Spring camps. Summer camps. Getting kicked off the cross-country team after being the first girl in my school’s history to go to state because I couldn’t stay out of the gym. My whole life leading up to that iconic moment.

And, boy oh boy, did I ever choke.

When it was clear I wasn’t going to get the points I needed, I wanted to get off the court as fast as possible for the first time in my life. I wanted the wood floor to crack, the earth to open up and swallow me whole. I had never failed so spectacularly, and in front of so many people, in all my life. I was so close to melting down, I could feel my face burning fruit punch red, and my eye sockets cramping with the tears that were ready to burst free. With a minute left, one of my teammates got hacked on a shot, and both teams lined up at the free throw line. We were going to lose. The gym had gone from explosive excitement to a quiet murmur.

My dad missed a lot of my young life, but he never missed one of my high school basketball games. That night, as I stood on my spot outside the lane, waiting for my teammate to shoot her free throws, I saw my dad — in the middle of the top row on the home side bleachers — stand up. He shook out his shoulders, adjusted his khaki pants, smiled at me. And then he started to clap. A thousand people in that gym, all sitting, all knowing how hard I’d failed, and there was my dad, on his feet, clapping and clapping and clapping to beat the band, just for me, all for me.

I got my 1,000th point the next week, at a game way up in the mountains with about 15 people watching. My coach gave me the ball and a plaque at the next home game. They made a special announcement before we tipped off.

I broke more records, made all the awards lists again that year, fielded recruitment letters from several schools, and signed a basketball scholarship to a private Christian college while wearing a Tennessee Lady Vols orange dress in the school library on a gorgeous spring day surrounded by all my teachers and friends and family.

I’ve loved women’s basketball more than anything else, my entire life. Playing it really did form the foundation of who I am. It is always with me. When my neurosurgeon told me a couple of years ago that I’d probably only ever regain 50% strength in my left arm and shoulder after my spinal surgery, the thing that made me cry was the realization that my left-handed lay-up would never be the same — despite the fact that I haven’t shot a left-handed lay-up in a basketball game in 20 years.

The memories blur and mingle these days, but if I close my eyes, I can see my dad, the only one standing in my high school gym, surrounded by a sea of Southern judgment, clapping his whole heart out. I failed, and he was proud anyway, because he loved me, because he was my dad. I was always Heather Hogan to him.

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I’m thinking about this today because of this Hershey’s spot my wife edited for the Winter Olympics. It was released yesterday and I wanted to share it with you. She’ll want me to say “‘The Real Gold’ for Hershey’s and The Martin Agency, directed by the amazing Aqsa + John X. Great people and creative collaborators the whole way through.” It takes a lot of talented people to make something like this, but I just want to say how proud I am of her, specifically, because she’s the one I get to see working around the clock, with her whole heart, to craft this magic. I’ll never know what it’s like to be a truly elite athlete, but I do know what it’s like when your dad loves you whether or not you ever win a single thing.

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