Basketball free throws as a metaphor for life and success?
“Of course,” Jon Kline said.
“You’re out there, all by yourself. And you have to earn it. No one’s going to do it for you.”
He’s talking about the Morgantown Elks Lodge 411 Hoop Shoot, which happens 10 a.m. Saturday in the SteppingStones gym at Mylan Park.
That’s the competition where youngsters aged 8-13 stand at the foul line, in hopes of sinking 25 shots — one by one, one right after the other.
Or, as many as they can, at least.
Registration for the Morgantown shoot is easy, Kline said. Just show up at SteppingStones on Saturday morning.
“We’ll get going around 10:15 or 10:20,” he said, “once we get everyone signed up.”
Kline is the current Exalted Ruler of the local lodge and director of the competition, which is in its 51st year, nationally.
Just like, say, NCAA’s March Madness, those with the best percentage in the paint advance through the bracket.
Winners get their names on the wall of an exalted venue: The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield, Mass.
West Virginia is no stranger to that rarified air.
In recent years, a competitor from Morgantown made it to the final rounds, Kline said.
Last year, in the national finals at Chicago’s Wintrust Arena, Morgan Miehle, of Wheeling, netted 25 in a row to take the big title in her division.
That it was the 50th year for the national event made the feat even more epic, Kline said.
“Twenty-five in a row,” the local director said. “That’s not easy for anyone.”
But not impossible, he said.
“Kids get in the zone,” he said, “and they’ll just start sinking free throws.”
Seven in a row.
Eight in a row.
Even 25 in a row — nothing but net.
“You get that muscle memory and that rhythm going,” the director said.
“And when we start out, kids get five practice shots, so that takes some of the pressure off going in.”
Grit with it
He likes that it’s all discipline, self-direction … and grit, he said.
And yes, “grit” is an official term and philosophy that the national Elks organization co-opted several years ago as the motivating philosophy behind its Hoop Shoot.
Angela Duckworth, a psychologist who began her professional life as a management consultant and then an educator, came up with the concept when she was the classroom, teaching math to seventh-graders.
Her most successful students, she said, weren’t necessarily governed by IQ.
So-called “smart kids” would struggle in her class, she said.
And the ones who didn’t have cerebral numbers at that level — ones who also identified themselves as not being “math people” — were still making better marks.
As a psychologist, she went national with grit, watching cadets at West Point, rookie teachers in tough, inner-city schools and sales and marketing professionals in hyper-competitive fields.
Who would drop out? Who would resign? Who would get fired?
It wasn’t the aforementioned IQ or intelligence or good looks, said Duckworth, who mapped it all out in a recent TED talk.
Success, she said, all came to that occasionally elusive factor of grit.
“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals,” the classroom teacher and psychologist told her audience during that talk.
“Grit is having stamina,” she continued.
“Grit is sticking with your future: Day in and day out, not just for week, not just for the month, but for years.”
Grit is good, too, Kline said.
Especially, he said, when it goes with being immortalized in the Naismith hall.
“We want our Hoop Shoot to be an automatic part of the phys. ed. curriculum in Monongalia County Schools,” the tournament director said.
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