Hoop Dreams: a Life in Pursuit of Excellence

Hoop Dreams is one of my absolutely favorite films of all times. The first time I finished watching it, I just kind of stared at the screen for a while, taking it what I had just seen. The film tells the story of two boys from inner city Chicago who dream of making it to the NBA. First, of course, they have to make it through the ups and downs of high school. The film takes you through a roller coaster of emotions, showcasing the hardships, both on and off the court, that the boys have to face--a 90 minute commute to school, drug addiction, and poverty, just to name a few. Like I said, after I finished watching the movie, I thought about what I had seen: two boys working their asses off to play basketball and, hopefully, find success.

Immediately after this short period of reflection, I googled what had become of William Gates and Arthur Agee. Neither made it into the NBA, but both of their Wikipedia pages gave good hope that both men were doing well in life. Gates graduated from Marquette University and became a real-estate agent and senior pastor at a church. Agee received a basketball scholarship and graduated from Arkansas State University. He then made a clothing line and started the Arthur Agee foundation (named after his late father) which encourages kids to see their parents, and not sports athletes, as their heroes.

Heather L. Reid questions what the point of athletics is and what winning actually is. While I found that all to be interesting, she mentioned something that I found to be a lot more though provoking.

"The definition of winning in sport is clear and quantitatively measurable — unlike "winning" in other areas of life, such as love or happiness, where success is not so easily measured." 

The lives of both Arthur and William were tumultuous at more than one point. Despite the fact that Arthur worked hard to remain at St. Joseph's, his mother could not pay for tuition and he had to change schools. Despite the fact that William was having a great season and pushing himself hard, he injured his knee, severely affecting his game play. It is quite evident that life can be incredibly unfair sometimes. Like Reid said, you can't measure your successes and failures in life. It is impossible to say that you've either lost or won. Despite how hard you "practice" or prepare yourself in life, something bad can happen and ruin everything. Interestingly enough, the motto of Arthur's clothing line is "Control Your Destiny". Of course, it is possible to work hard and prepare as best as you can for whatever life may bring, but this is only to a certain extent. 

Sports can be seen as a controlled, quantifiable version of life. In her essay, Reid uses the Aristotelian concept of arete to defend the importance of sports. While many people might believe the "point" of sports is to win, Reid believes that engagement in athletics adds to one's virtue. By constantly working to improve oneself in the sports arena through virtues such as habit, courage, and strength, an individual is promoting his or her overall excellence. These virtues are not just applicable on the court, of course, but are completely applicable to every day life. This is kind of obvious, of course. The difference between life and sports is that sports has a defined set of rules and a clear measure for winning and losing. 

Reid makes it clear why everyone loves a winner: 

"victory requires a knowledge of oneself that is rare and difficult to achieve as well as the discipline to maximize individual potential without stopping short of or overstepping one's limits. The recognition of ones' limitations must be tempered by a realistic yet ambitious drive toward maximum performance, this is a balancing act central to all forms of human excellence that can be learned through sport."

Clearly, the skills that one learns as an athlete can and should add to his or her overall virtue, or being. Arthur and William, while at many points in their life dealt with struggle and hardship, clearly found success within themselves. Just because they didn't make it to the NBA or win every game they played in does not mean that they are not winners. The sheer fact that they are progressing, moving forward in life, and generally being "virtuous" individuals shows that they are truly winners--both on and off the court. 

Virtue in High School Sports

Every synopsis of the documentary Hoop Dreams is about the same: the film follows two African American boys, from equally rough neighborhoods, as they pursue their dreams of becoming professional basketball players. However, while following these two young men, William Gates and Arthur Agee, real issues of race and social class begin to take a central role. Both boys are accepted to the prestigious St. Joseph's High School, which has a nationally renowned basketball program. Gates makes the varsity team as a starter, Agee makes the freshman team. Both of them try to rise to the academic challenges of their new school, and both of them are on scholarship. However, when their scholarships are in jeopardy at the end of the year, William is lucky enough to have caught the eye of a wealthy St. Joseph alum who offers to pay for his schooling. Arthur does not receive any offers, and despite his family's best efforts, has to transfer to public school - what appears to be a major blow to his dreams of being a basketball star.

The film continues to develop in this way as we watch both William and Arthur deal with very real issues while holding onto their dreams. In Heather L. Reid's essay "Sport, Education, and the Meaning of Victory,"she makes claim that the value of sports in education has not changed since Ancient Greece - sports are still about developing an individual's virtue, or aretê, as the Ancient Greeks would say. She defines aretê with 4 virtues: self-knowledge, courage, discipline, and justice, and states that the role of sports in education is to help students attain these characteristics. My middle school softball coach might take solace in the fact that although we didn't win a single game in 3 whole years, we were some of the most self-knowledgable, courageous, disciplined, and just 8th graders in the league - we just had no hand-eye coordination.

However, she believes that it's okay for winning to be the goal of high school sports, so long as the primary aim is aretê. Reid states, "Schools subscribing to this philosophy may still hire and fire coaches based on their ability to win, but should only do so to the extent that such wins are manifestations of the winning virtues the coach is actually instilling in his or her athletes." 

It's evident in Hoop Dreams that for St. Joseph's basketball program, winning and aretê are one in the same. When William first joins the varsity squad, his coach explicitly tells him that his goal isn't just to make him into a great basketball player, but a well-rounded and virtuous human being, and it's obvious by the way the St. Joseph's team sat in complete silence on their bus to an away game that they're exceedingly disciplined. But this aretê comes at face value, as seen in the injustices of Arthur's dropped scholarship, and in the way William's coach later exploits his talents. Arthur's parents are both heartbroken and outraged when they discover that their son will be unable to attend St. Joseph's for another year. The coaches didn't think Arthur was developing as a basketball player, so his scholarship was retracted. Though of course no one from St. Joseph's comes out and says this, Arthur's parents and us, the viewers, understand that this is the case - a pretty unjust thing for a program that's supposedly built around virtue to do. 

William runs into trouble when he suffers a knee injury and his grades begin to slip. Once the star player, William receives very little support during this time when he is of no use to the team. Both his knee and his status eventually recover, but his coach's lack of virtue becomes evident once again as he begins to put William on a pedestal for the rest of the team. We see that during one practice where the coach didn't think the players were working hard enough, he asks William, in front of the whole team, if he thinks they're giving their best efforts, and tells the team to do what William does. This blatant favoritism is hardly in alignment with justice, but since William is the top-scoring player, he receives special treatment. 

Reid's assertion that the true goal of school sports remains developing aretê is clearly not the case in Hoop Dreams as Arthur and William are merely disposable depending on their athletic success. Reid states that, "schools are in the business of making better people, and their use of athletics for profit rather than education would amount to egregious exploitation of the very people they profess to serve."  This quotations seems much more appropriate to the story of Hoop Dreams. While sports certainly serve a purpose, if all school sport programs function the way St. Joseph's did, that purpose is not aretê.