The other fighting Irish

“Pass the ball to Sean! PASS THE BALL TO SEAN!”

The year was 2011 – my eighth grade winter. We were in the final minutes of one of the last basketball games of the season, and Coach was counting on me. Well, sorta.

I should probably mention that my team was already in the lead by around thirty points, and that Coach was only relying on me in the sense that he wanted everyone to score before the season ended. I may not have been leading scorer, but that doesn’t change the fact that my “pest” defense was debatably the most successful in the league (Instructions: Flair arms wildly/perpetually. Repeat).

Suffice it to say, before I came to Notre Dame, I could barely shoot a 3-pointer. Even ball handling was a nightmare, and if you don’t believe me, I know about twenty of my friends who would be more than happy to recount the tales of my unsuccessful athletic endeavors. You can imagine my reaction when I arrived on campus to find out that playing basketball was all anyone ever wanted to do.

I guess this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise – Notre Dame hosts the world’s largest 5 on 5 outdoor basketball tournament every year, sometimes accumulating over 750 teams. The campus’s two gyms, “the Rock” and “Rolf’s,” have a total of 5 basketball courts that are continually filled to the (b)rim, whether for pickup games or match-ups between dorm teams.

My dorm alone has five teams for the campus league this year, with an average of eleven players on each team – that ends up being nearly 40 percent of the dorm.

Basketball at Notre Dame is a social network – the games act a series of speed dates that introduce you to new faces from different dorms and programs, and the group you play with is often among the first friends you make on campus.

Whether you’re wearing Hyperdunks or Asics, are 210 pounds or 120, everyone is involved and there’s no saying who the winner will be. Notre Dame may be a football school on the varsity level, but the students’ hearts lie on the court, not the field.

Yet in the spring of 2013, Notre Dame announced “Campus Crossroads,” a series of construction projects which planned to contribute 400 million dollars’ worth of additions to Notre Dame Stadium for classroom, vocational, and student-oriented spaces. The main purpose of this project is to turn the stadium into the center of campus – coincidentally, allowing for more revenue by way of the space that will soon exist for new restaurants and merchandising shops.

It was revealed shortly after that the new student spaces would include an athletic center, and that the varsity basketball teams would be moving into one of the existing student gyms, Rolf’s. Students, knowing how aware the administration is of basketball’s presence on campus, excitedly prepared for news regarding the number of courts the new facility would have – after all, they would be losing three courts when the basketball team switched over.

Would it be three, like Rolf’s had? Four, given how crowded the courts get after class? Hold on, this is Notre Dame – maybe even five?

No. One court.

Students were and are devastated at this. 40 percent less basketball courts on campus means 40 percent less days spent playing pickup with your dorm-mates, and 40 percent less memories made on the hardwood floors of Notre Dame’s gyms.

Less tense moments followed by victorious screams, less friends coming to cheer you on and watch you do what you love, and a community less unified by a pastime nearly all of them enjoy.

If you expected this story to end with a nice tie-in about how my new exposure to basketball has turned me into a better shooter, handler, and all-around athlete, I’m sorry. That’s not quite true, and it’s the opposite of the point I’m trying to make.

Basketball at Notre Dame is what it is because of the fervor and camaraderie that surrounds it, not the talent of its participants.

The University of Notre Dame is nationally and globally known for its emphases on community, unity, and family – these are values they claim to integrate into campus culture through both residential life and instruction.

Maybe it’s time they put their $400 million where their mouth is.