The Magical Quest of Coach Quinn Curry

                                                           

                      

By Harry Cummins

     From his commanding position these days at the end of the Multnomah Lions bench, 26-year-old Associate Head Coach Quinn Curry has found a front row seat on the shimmering edges of a dream.

     Basketball has always been the catalyst to Curry's twisting odyssey, transporting him from the hardscrabble streets of west Chicago to a master's degree in management and leadership from Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon.

     Once Curry's own playing career at Multnomah concluded, which he modestly characterizes as "being a good teammate," his observable talent in skill development and statistical analysis landed him a job as assistant coach under then head coach Curt Bickley, who had earlier recruited him as a 5'9"guard.

     When newly appointed coach Tayo Gem took control of the Lions last season, Curry was soon elevated to the title of Associate Head Coach. "After just a few conversations with Quinn, I quickly realized that this guy had the vibe of a future coach as he knew so much more about the game of basketball than just being an operations guy," says Gem, himself a former NCAA D-2 player and fellow Masters scholar. 

     Together, Gem and Curry have quietly coerced this malleable edition of the once mediocre Lions to a robust 10-3 start to the 2024-25 season and a coveted spot in the upper regions of the NAIA's rugged Cascade Collegiate Conference. It has also catapulted Curry closer to his own holy grail, the discovery of basketball "magic."  

     "You always hear stories about those special teams from way back that were able to bring together a diverse group of undervalued players that were able to create magic because of how connected they were," says Curry. "This is my passion, to try to get as close to making magic as possible."

    Such transcendent destinations are not easily reached, concedes Curry, but can often be aided thru tried- and- true measurements.  "There first needs to be an honest attitude about what needs to be improved," says Curry.  

    "Statistics often tell a coach where a player could improve. A different way to drive home this lesson while also creating connectively is to show a player how he can improve individually in specific categories that will most benefit the team" 

     Curry claims Multnomah seeks first to enlist the person rather than the player in their recruiting efforts. "I think listening to them talk about the game is huge. What a person loves about the game is important to me," says Curry.

     "Do they play for status or to be cool? Or do they love being a part of a team? What is it that draws them into the game itself?"

     Married to his wife Lydia last year, they share a home with two cats, Tallulah and Ezra. Quinn Curry has long maintained a fidelity to this Bible based Oregon school thru a series of changes in its leadership, the latest when Multnomah was purchased last year by Jessup University in California.

    "I am grateful to Multnomah, and especially to Curt and Tayo, for giving me the opportunity to pursue my passion of coaching, relates Quinn.

     Selflessness, professes Curry, is a huge part of living a satisfying life. 

      "What, then, is more rewarding than giving yourself to a group and perhaps seeing that group pull out something truly unforgettable."

   

  Spoken like a true magician.

        

     

     

     

     

                                    

Remembering The Death Of A Dear Friend

 

The Sunshine Boys, Spring Training 1989 - Robert Brustad (right) along with this author
and the late Commissioner of Major League Baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti

By Harry Cummins

     A few years ago I lost a close friend to metastatic cancer.

     Dr. Robert Brustad, age 69, left behind a wife,Vone, and a teenage son "JJ".  Not incidentally, Bob also left behind the game of baseball.

     Baseball ultimately couldn't save my friend from an end that awaits us all, but it became a comforting companion to his well-spent life and especially to his final agonizing year of chemotherapy. Our final conversations would always leave space at the end for the saving grace and hopeful expectancy of another baseball season, another season in the sun to share. We both knew we were talking about far more than a game.

     Baseball may not be a road to God, but it can become a clear pathway to a deeply shared, collective love between persons.  One of the things that lets us know we are never traveling alone. 

     This, then, is the supreme message my friend's life left behind. The sacrificial hit that transcends seasons and sends us all "home."

     Love one another!

hcummins@aol.com

     

     

Happy Mother's Day To All!

 

An Adolescent's Affecting Story Recalled

 

"When I think about it now, it wasn't too bad, after all.

Worst things happened in 1958. In actual fact, I am a specialist when it comes to feeling compassion. I still can't forget that terrible story about Laika, the poor Eskimo dog in Sputnik 2, who was so brave while there was still some food left inside the rocket.

But what happened after that? Did she starve to death?

Just think of that!!

From My Life As A Dog

Remembering the Distinctive Voice of Paul Auster

 

From New York Trilogy-1985

"Every life is inexplicable, I keep telling myself.

No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling.

To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge .... none of that tells us very much."

Paul Auster [1947-2024] 

Reflections From The Shoreline - Bird Rock 1950

 

By Harry Cummins

     When I was 7 years old, I lived with my mother in blissful Bird Rock By-the Sea.

     My life then, the part I now choose to remember, consisted of collecting ladybugs in aerated canning jars filled with blades of grass. In the afternoons my mother and I would walk the short, steep hill cascading to the sea where she would sun herself on a smooth rock, her watchful eyes always fixed on me near the shoreline.

     In the 73 years that have passed, my mother has died. Our clapboard beach cottage was sacrificed long ago to Southern California sprawl. I, in the name of becoming settled, have wandered from one address to another.

     Reflecting on all this, from shores many times washed over, I can still trace where prevailing stability first began. Glancing back up the beach at my mother, my anchor, daydreaming on her rock, I could safely sense the rush of a wider world lapping at my tiny feet.

     In those moments, then and now, life was simply everything I saw and imagined. I guessed the same was true for my mother there on her rock of refuge.

     Bird Rock, it turned out, was a moveable fortress.

A Brief Dissertation On The Nature Of Decline

 

                                        

By Harry Cummins

         

      "So we do not lose heart; though our outer self is wasting away"    - 2 Corinthians 4:16

      "Behold, I am doing a new thing: now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it"?  -Isaiah 43:19

     My recent go-round with modern medicine has sent my mind spinning on the health of our world these days, not to mention my own well-being. What does it mean when a once-sturdy life or society suffers a measured collapse with advancing age?  Is individual illness merely a reflection of the wider unraveling proliferating in our collective culture?

      Bereft of answers to these grandiose questions, some considerations still remain.

     Not every illness we confront, personal or societal, abates or reverses itself. Therefore, we need a new set of observations to challenge our thinking about healing and what constitutes true restoration.  In this process we need each other's unique voices of experience. We need to hear them for their remarkable ability to balance self with reality, hope with acceptance, fear with affirmation. We need to hear them, especially, for their ability to establish a concomitant connection with one another.

     To reconstitute ourselves, as individuals and as a society, in the midst of illness and attack, is to help one another make the attempt to go on...is to bear our histories and infirmities with the highest of human credentials.

     Our old stories are ripe for retelling... but in transformative new ways.  We need words with the capacity to turn memories into steadfast hope in the midst of repeated, cumulative loss.  

    Given the urgency of our age, I might suggest this should be an overriding agenda as antidote to our collective affliction.