Ben McKeown

“We Not Me”: How the Wakefield Girls Went 31-1

It’s hard for me to find the right words to describe the project that I just finished this morning. Working on it was intensely meaningful for me on a skyscraper’s worth of levels. I’ve made friends, made progress, learned about everything from photography to the importance of family. Truly, the production of “We Not Me” has been an experience of immeasurable significance for me. As a result, I’m quite excited to release the final product.

There is deep, undeniable importance in community. We are community. Be it the result of a relationship with just one person or with billions of others, there is hardly a way of escaping this fact. Even in complete solitude, we struggle many times to “live with ourselves,” which, it could be argued, is a form of community. And in order to operate in any way effectively, we must recognize and embrace our inevitable proximity. The best and most successful communities flourish because of this collective understanding. Ultimately, we each must also recognize at some point that our own success depends greatly on the success the group as a whole. If the group fails, we all fail individually.

I guess that one of the reasons that I love basketball is the fact that this concept is acutely evident in this arena. A basketball team must embrace the aforementioned philosophies wholeheartedly in order to succeed on any level. In high school - a place where the struggle to fit into the community is as intense as ever - this need to embrace community is even more obvious.

The girls basketball team at Wakefield High School has done just this. And they’ve done it in a way that is truly unique. I’ve covered a lot of sports, played for a lot of teams, and I’ve never seen it done quite so perfectly. Their familial approach to things is in a word, beautiful. Graciously, over the past month or so, they allowed me to follow them around with a camera and a minidisc recorder so that I could document this beauty.

To the girls… thank you so much. I’ll forever appreciate what you’ve taught me.

To everyone else… if you like what you see, please feel free to make a comment on the main story page at WRAL.com. Ultimately, if you’d like to see more of this kind of intense and in-depth storytelling, let them know. Personally, I think that it takes more than a few minutes with a person/group to really gather the truth. I’ve been able to extract immensely more in my month with the girls than I could’ve ever gotten in just a few minutes of questions/answers and photo-taking.

Along those lines, and on a more societal note, I think that our very own community needs more of this kind of journalism. We’ve gotten way too used to loud, obnoxious, 30 second “news” stories. There is rarely any value in these (non)information power-punches. Truth is inherently deep and difficult. The pursuit of the truth should be equally thus. If you agree, let them know.

Peace and family.

PS. Very special thanks to the following people: Nathan Clendenin, Dane Huffman, Anna McKeown, Kaitlin McKeown, and Danielle Blackburn. You all helped so much.