The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Geno’s cure for a divided nation? ‘Do the right thing’ and vote
There will be no basketball practice Tuesday for the UConn women, and later they will gather at Geno Auriemma’s home for dinner.
This will not be the first presidential Election Day gathering. There was one unforgettable November night when another group of UConn players came together to watch Barack Obama elected the first Black president in our nation’s history.
“I still remember when Renee Montgomery, Tina (Charles), Maya (Moore), that crew being in my house in 2008,” Auriemma said. “That was pretty amazing.”
Obama stood in victory in front of 125,000 people in Chicago’s Grant Park that night and said, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
Twelve years ago. Seems like ages ago.
So here they were Thursday on a virtual Big East media day call. Big East Preseason Player of the Year Christyn Williams. Big East Preseason Freshman of the Year Paige Bueckers. Two national high school players of the year and their Hall of Fame coach with the record 11 national championships.
A 20-year-old Black woman from Arkansas. A 19-year-old blonde woman from Minnesota. A 66-year-old immigrant man from Montella, Italy.
America.
“I voted, definitely,” said Williams, who cast an absentee ballot. “It’s very important to me. My grandmother went doorstep to doorstep back in the day. I feel like it’s my duty.”
Williams, finding her voice as an activist, sent out a short video about Black Lives Matter on her social media accounts in the spring and it went viral. She has closely followed WNBA players who have taken a lead among professional athletes in the fight against social injustice.
“It has impacted me,” Williams said. “I want to be in the league one day. Just knowing they’re doing some of the same things I’m doing right now, I think that’s pretty cool.”
There are few things bigger in women’s sports than the Next UConn Star. Bueckers already has so many Instagram followers — nearly 600,000 — that Auriemma teasingly calls her Paige Kardashian. She is aware of the responsibility that comes with those numbers.
“(Voting) was really big for me,” said Bueckers, who also cast her ballot absentee. “I just turned 18 last year, so this is my first year. It’s really big to use my platform.”
With COVID-19, there haven’t been many chances for Geno and Kathy Auriemma to have the team over to their house. Election night is one. Attendance on Tuesday, the coach said, is not mandatory.
“It is an opportunity to make them feel part of the process,” Auriemma said. “Not just wake up the next morning and go, ‘ Wonder who won?’ ”
Yet this is far more than a civics lesson. Auriemma, who grew more emotional and spoke more powerfully about the division in our country as one question led to another, knows this. He is a student of history and he knows history is at hand. This would be a civility lesson, one America so badly needs.
“This one is fraught with a tremendous amount of intensity, anxiety,” Auriemma said. “There’s a lot of anger on both sides. There’s a lot of mistrust. There is a lot out there that generally isn’t attached to elections. This one has them all.
“They’ve all invested a piece of themselves into this and I want them to experience that feeling of what it’s like when you give yourself to something.”
Williams was born eight months before another Arkansan, Bill Clinton, left the White House. Bueckers was born 17 years after Walter Mondale won his home state of Minnesota and nothing else except the District of Columbia. Auriemma was born only nine years after fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was executed and hung upside down in 1945. Auriemma’s mom, Marciella, and her family hid in the mountains to escape the Nazis.
Auriemma talked about being the foreign kid in Norristown, Pennsylvania, one who couldn’t vote at 18 because he wasn’t yet a citizen. A young man who grew up through the turbulent ’ 60s and became a political science major, fascinated by the process of how governments work.
“Becoming a citizen,” Auriemma said. “And experiencing my mother becoming a citizen. Even though she can’t read and she can’t write, she’s a great American.
“And to be honest, I’ve never felt anything like I’m seeing and feeling in today’s world. Never. Not any time in my life have I been so disgusted with so much of what I see happening in the country.”
Auriemma took a deep breath. He wasn’t finished. Not even close.
“The pandemic is one of the least of our problems,” Auriemma said. “There is a cure for the pandemic. It’s out there. It’s coming. I’m not sure there’s a cure for some of the other stuff going on in this country. You can’t make a vaccine for some of the nonsense that has been going on. You can’t. There isn’t a vaccine for that. The only thing you have for that is your vote. That’s it.
“No one can inoculate you from the stuff that has been happening in this country. The things that are being said, the way people are treating each other. The most anger I’ve felt in my life about anything has been what’s going on in our world right now.”
He turned to a trip his team took to West Point a few years ago. Auriemma was taken with the part of the Cadet Prayer that reads “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.”
“We as coaches and teachers, we’re always trying to tell people, ‘Hey, listen try to do the right thing,’ ” he said. “We don’t always do it. Trust me. I’m as guilty as anybody. They’re talking about doing the hard right and not the easy wrong. Right now there’s a lot of easy wrong being done. Why? It’s just so easy to be angry, to be anti-humanity. It’s just so easy for people.
“I’ve never had the kind of arguments, the kind of discussions, the back and forth between really, really close friends where you just say to yourself, ‘Thank God, there is a bond there that’s greater than this country.’ I see it. Lifelong friends losing friendships over what’s going on right now. The most anger I’ve ever seen.
“Look, politicians lie — that’s par for the course,” Auriemma said. “You take a course in that when you decide to become a politician. How to be a tremendous liar. I’m not surprised, but man, never, never in my life have I seen anything like this. I feel for my grandkids. I really do.”
Never once did Auriemma say the words “Donald Trump.” Never once did he say “Joe Biden”. He didn’t have to; there is no need at this late date. The only answer to a nation divided, to the pain Auriemma expressed, can’t be put into words. Only with a vote.
“The easiest thing people do when they feel a crisis of conscience is they come up with slogans, they come up with catchy sayings,” Auriemma said. “They come up with logos. They come up with T-shirts. It seems like one giant Forrest Gump movie where, hey, let’s come up with an iconic saying. Whatever it is.
“OK, I did my part. I put up a sign on my lawn. That’s as good as ‘thoughts and prayers’ coming from Washington D.C. whenever some deranged person takes a gun and shoots a bunch of school kids. ‘Thoughts and prayers are with you. That sounds good. It’ll be in the headlines. But when it comes time for any meaningful reform, nah, I’m not going there.’
“The outward me shows you I support change in this county, but the inward me for a lot of people when I vote … nah, not really. If that wasn’t true, we wouldn’t need signs, Tshirts, catchy slogans. We wouldn’t need patches on our jerseys. All these things are great. Don’t get me wrong. But you know what they are? They’re symbols. Colin Kaepernick took a knee. How did that work out for him? Now everybody takes a knee. How’s that working out? How many white policemen did it stop (by) taking a knee? But it looked good.”
By now, Auriemma, the most famous and one of the most influential people in Connecticut, was almost spitting his words in disgust. He is a history buff who’ll go on about Caesar, Machiavelli, Napoleon, you name it, but he knew only actions matter now. He cut it short.
“No slogans, no buttons, no T-shirts,” Auriemma said. “Just show up Tuesday and do the right thing.”