The Game of My Life: A True Story of Challenge, Triumph, and Growing Up Autistic

Pregame

JASON’S STORY

ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 15, 2006, in a high school gymnasium in a suburb of Rochester, New York, something remarkable happened: an autistic teenager named Jason McElwain took the court for the Greece Athena Trojans varsity basketball team. And he didn’t just take it—he grabbed it with both hands and made it his own.

That he was there at all, in uniform, was remarkable, considering that until he was three years old Jason McElwain refused to eat unless he was forced to do so. He didn’t speak until he was five. He spent most of his early childhood sitting beneath his parents’ dining room table, banging together two packs of Trident Bubble Gum, or alone in the corner of his special-needs classroom, disconnected from the other children. As a child, he was unable to maintain eye contact or respond to the most basic external stimuli. His body went rigid at the slightest touch. He often appeared to stare blankly across the room. His parents worried that they would never reach him, that Jason would remain closed off from the simple social interactions that moved the rest of the world.

Young Jason was prone to autistic outbursts and erratic behavior that included rocking back and forth, flapping his arms, and humming in a low moan. And yet through Jason’s fog of autism, he somehow formed a close bond with his brother, Josh. They would have been like twins, except for the profound differences in their personalities and affect, and yet over time, Jason’s parents began to notice that Jason would mimic his brother and follow in his footsteps—almost literally—as he was learning to walk. The relationship ran counter to an article Jason’s parents had read on autism, which suggested that autistic children might never experience such points of connection in a sibling relationship, while at the same time it seemed to confirm another article, which suggested that autistic children are often raised and primarily influenced by their healthy siblings.

Like many autistic children, Jason had his obsessive interests, and for the longest time he lived and breathed basketball. If he wasn’t playing it, he was watching it, or thinking about it, or following the accounts of his NBA heroes in the newspaper or on ESPN’s SportsCenter. He dribbled a ball, up and down the street, everywhere he went. He spent countless hours on his driveway court, playing knockout or H-O-R-S-E with Josh. Each Christmas, his mother would buy him a new basketball and say it was a present from Josh, and each Christmas Jason would tear the gift wrapping from his new basketball like he couldn’t wait to see what was inside. He was never disappointed.

That this determined young man could overcome his various disabilities to stand on a high school basketball court alongside some of the strongest players in the region was astonishing. But there was more to Jason’s story than a token appearance in a single game. The game took place on Senior Night, the last regular-season game on the Trojans’ schedule, and it was a long standing tradition at Greece Athena to honor graduating players just before the game. Their parents were on hand, snapping photos. Their mothers received flowers. Seniors who didn’t normally get a chance to start would find themselves in the starting lineup. Seniors who only played a little would play a little more. And a senior like Jason McElwain, who as team manager was charged with keeping his teammates focused during games and practices, would be allowed to dress in uniform as an honorary team member. It was a way to give something back to a kid who had given so much of himself to the team, who had missed out on so much as well.

Adding to the big deal was Coach Jim Johnson, who had taken Jason aside at the beginning of the season to promise him he would get to dress in uniform for the game. And if the moment presented itself, he said, he would get Jason into that final game. Underneath this goal, Coach Johnson made a wish: he hoped like hell his players would get Jason the ball for an open look and the kid would have a chance to score.

Jason McElwain was not physically disabled, but his development had been so substantially slowed by this disorder that to play in a meaningful high school basketball game was a pipe dream. He wasn’t big enough, quick enough, or strong enough to play in a program that could probably fill out a junior college roster with its starters. The former Syracuse All-American and 1996 first-round NBA draft pick John Wallace was a Greece Athena alum—his brother Rickey was on the 2004/05 and 2005/06 Trojans teams—so the caliber of ball ran high.

Alongside that pipe dream came another: the Greece Athena Trojans were battling for the Monroe County Division II championship. They were tied for second place with their rivals from Irondequoit High School, at 8 wins and 3 losses, one game behind division-leading Webster Thomas, at 9 and 2. To finish at the top of the standings was every coach’s goal, every player’s fantasy, every team manager’s obsession, and here it was within reach. In the world of Monroe County high school basketball, this was as good as it gets, while in the narrow, fixated world of Jason McElwain, this was all that mattered.

And so the game meant something to the Trojans’ graduating seniors and their families. It meant something to Coach Johnson and his returning players, who were determined to finish on top of the division standings, and to make a statement going into the postseason sectionals tournament that would cap the school season. It meant something to the Greece Athena community, which had long prided itself on its rich basketball tradition. And it meant the world to Jason McElwain. The chance to play. The chance at a division title. The chance at the sectionals. The chance to be like everyone else.

For the seventeen years leading up to this one night, Jason McElwain wasn’t looking to stand out so much as to fit in. He was thinking big, but he wasn’t thinking about winning championships. All he wanted, really, was to be in the running, to be going through the same motions as the other kids his age, to be a part of something that was bigger than himself. He could not articulate these things, but that didn’t make them any less meaningful. And yet what he couldn’t say he could somehow accomplish. He had gotten past a childhood diagnosis of severe autism to where he could function at a moderate level. He could get himself to and from school, follow directions, interact appropriately with his teachers and peers, and focus on simple tasks at hand. He could let himself into an empty house at the end of his school day and complete a few simple chores before his mother came home from work. He could read at about the fourth-grade level. He wasn’t mainstreamed in any kind of traditional sense, but he took gym and sometimes music with the other kids, beginning in elementary school. By his senior year of high school, he took shop and auto mechanics at Greece Athena as well.

Most important, he had friends. Sure, he was sometimes the object of various taunts and pranks. Once, a few of the players tried to stuff him into a gym locker, but that wasn’t so bad, Jason said. Another time, they hid his jacket and some of his things, but the guys were just kidding around. On still another occasion, they encouraged him to hide beneath the bottom bench step of the gymnasium bleachers, so that they could close him up inside. They did this as a joke, with Jason happy to be included in the prank, but then they turned off the lights to the gym and allowed Jason to think he had been abandoned there, stuck in the folds of the wooden bleachers.

Gradually, Jason learned to distinguish the good-natured teasing from the cruelty and fit himself into the elaborate social network of Greece Athena High School. He went from being a tag along kid whose constant presence was grudgingly accepted by his older brother’s friends to someone able to pursue appropriate social relationships on his own. He went from being the butt of these school-yard jokes to being in on them. At the end of his senior year, he had over a hundred numbers stored in his cell phone directory—about a hundred more than his mother could have imagined.

Along the way, his interest in sports had continued. As a freshman, he went out for the cross-country team, with the stipulation that the coach would make sure there was someone to help him tie his shoes before practices and meets. As a five-foot six-inch sophomore, he tried out for the junior varsity basketball team, and when he didn’t make the cut the coach asked him to stay on as team manager. His mother pushed hard for this. She actually called the coach and told him what it would mean. She didn’t care that Jason wouldn’t play in a single game. She just wanted him to feel a part of something that was important to him, to have something to look forward to at the end of each school day, to find an outlet for his obsession.

Jason thrived in this role. He took his job as team manager seriously. He dressed in shorts and sneakers for practice and wore a shirt and tie for games. He collected rebounds during free throw drills. He helped run the clock. He filled the team water bottles before each game, and passed out towels to players as they came off the court for a breather. He even got into a game. This was a surprise. It was the last game of the season, the junior varsity version of Senior Night. Coach Jeff Amoroso had handed him a uniform the night before. The coach had told Jason he would try to let him play, but Debbie McElwain warned her son not to get his hopes up. She hated to see him disappointed, but Coach Amoroso kept his word. With just under two minutes to go in the game and his team up 48–35 against Irondequoit, Jason McElwain crossed from the bench to the scorer’s table. The Greece Athena gymnasium was starting to fill for the varsity game that would follow, and the crowd went a little crazy when Jason stepped onto the floor. He was such a joyful, animated, outgoing presence at games, cheering on his teammates, that he was impossible to miss. He was almost like the team mascot. Everybody wanted to see him do well.

A collection of thirty or so students sat in a special cheering section in the corner of the gym, beneath a banner marked The 6th Man, and they led the crowd in a rhythmic chant: J-Mac! Clap, clap. J-Mac! Clap, clap. It was a nickname borrowed from Syracuse University’s Gerry McNamara, who was known to die-hard college hoops fans throughout upstate New York as G-Mac. Coach Johnson pinned the name on Jason one afternoon at a summer basketball clinic. He figured if Syracuse could have a G-Mac, Greece could have a J-Mac. Soon Jason was calling himself J-Mac as well. He did this without the bluster of professional athletes, like Allen Iverson, who referred to themselves by their nicknames (I am the Answer!), but with the charm and innocence of a kid who was merely thrilled to have a nickname.

With about forty seconds left on the clock, Jason took the ball at the top of the key. He was the smallest kid on the court, his uniform about two sizes too big, and yet you looked on and just knew Jason would attempt a three. That’s one of the things about autism. Those who suffer from it are typically fearless, and unable to anticipate any downside to any action, and that certainly described Jason McElwain on the basketball court. There was a swagger to his movement, a confidence that came from picturing himself in just this spot, over and over in his head. He was Gerry McNamara, Kobe Bryant, and John Wallace all rolled into one. A lot of kids, you put them out there in that kind of situation, they’d be too timid to take the ball to the basket or attempt an outside shot, but not Jason. He’d lived this moment in his driveway, so there was every reason to be confident. There was no downside. The first time he touched the ball, he dished it off to a teammate, but he followed his pass and called for the ball. As soon as he got it back, he fired up a three-point shot. It fell short of the rim, but the defender had brushed up against Jason as he was releasing the ball and was called for a foul.

Jason stepped to the line for the first of three free throws. The Greece Athena crowd was silent as Jason attempted his first foul shot. It was as if every player, every coach, every student, every parent…every janitor in that gymnasium was caught wishing the same thing: that Jason McElwain would somehow make a free throw. Just one. That’s all anyone dared ask of this moment. Anyone, that is, except Josh McElwain, who firmly believed his brother would hit all three. Josh had seen Jason take enough free throws to know the kid was money on the line. Josh closed his eyes and imagined how the crowd might react if his brother sank three in a row. It could happen, he thought. It really, really could happen.

Here again, Jason McElwain was fearless, like he’d been shooting free throws in front of a crowd his entire life. He went into the routine he had practiced for as long as he could remember—on his driveway court, in the mirror, in his dreams. He spun the ball on the dribble. He bounced the ball a few times more. He drew a deep breath. He bent his knees, and allowed himself the slightest jump as he released the ball high. And then he rattled the rim and scored the first point of his high school basketball career.

People began banging on the bleachers. Jason stood at the line and guessed this was what thunder sounded like, up close. The 6th Man section resumed its rhythmic chant: J-Mac! Clap, clap. J-Mac! Clap, clap. All around the gym, people were smiling, cheering, clapping. Even the opposing players were caught up in it.

The referee passed the ball back to Jason, and once again the gym quieted. Once again, Jason stepped calmly to the free throw line, drew his deep breath, spun his dribble, bounced the ball, bent his knees, and shot. Once again, Jason sent the ball through the hoop. This time it was a clean swish. This time the cheering was louder still.

J-Mac! Clap, clap. J-Mac! Clap, clap.

He hit the third shot too, another swish, and now there was pandemonium in the Greece Athena stands. Anyway, it was as close to pandemonium as the crowd could muster. There were only about one hundred people in the stands, but they made noise like one thousand.

J-Mac! Clap, clap. J-Mac! Clap, clap.

The game had been out of reach when McElwain came in, but now it wasn’t about the game. Now it was about Jason McElwain and the unlikely storybook ending he had written to the junior varsity season. And he wasn’t done just yet. He meant to put an exclamation point on things, attempting a second three-pointer the next time down the court, but the ball hit the front of the rim as the final buzzer sounded. Still, it was a defining moment, and Jason would talk about this game every day for the next two years. He would think about it constantly. He would go over it in his mind, or with his father, or with his brother. He would eat the same pregame meal—ravioli, green beans, chicken noodle soup, and a cup of milk—before every varsity game the following season. He would watch the tape from that final junior varsity game. He would go through the same pregame routines. The memory of the game became more than a highlight reel, more than a proud moment. It was Jason’s obsession for the game of basketball squared and turned inside out. It was Jason’s sense of self, burned onto two minutes of VHS tape that he would now have to watch before every significant moment in his life.

It was life itself.

Autism is a developmental disorder that generally appears in childhood, typically in children under three years of age. The disorder is characterized by a marked impairment in social interaction (including but not limited to an aversion to being touched, avoidance of eye contact, and an inability to judge appropriate social behavior), and delayed development of communication skills, and is often accompanied by obsessive thinking and repetitive actions, such as tapping against a table.

Debbie and David McElwain had never even heard the term autism when Jason was diagnosed at age two and a half, but they did not question the diagnosis. In the backs of their minds, in the place where their worst fears went to hide, they expected as much. The symptoms matched their child almost as if they had been written specifically about Jason. Debbie had been convinced there was something wrong ever since Jason was a couple months old, but she and her husband had been torn between thinking something was off with Jason and that he was merely slow to develop. Now, at last, they had a name for what was different about Jason: autism.

Immediately, the McElwains set about reading as much as they could about the disorder so that they would be better positioned to advocate for Jason’s care. Debbie especially became fairly expert in the treatments and facilities that were available at the time. There wasn’t much, but she was determined to defy the doctors’ prognoses and help her son to live an active, healthy, involved life. Anyway, she was determined to try.

There is no known cure for autism, Debbie McElwain learned, which means an individual cannot grow out of a childhood diagnosis of autism, although symptoms may lessen as a child develops, receives treatment, and learns to control socially inappropriate behavior. For reasons researchers have been unable to explain, the disorder is four times more prevalent in males than in females, and overall incidence of autism is consistent across all racial, ethnic, and social lines, meaning it can touch any family, anywhere, at any time. But Debbie cared only that the disorder had touched her family, at this time. The numbers and trends would not apply to Jason, she determined. The map they’d been handed would not be the map of their experience. What ever it took, Debbie McElwain would help her son beat the long odds against him, in what ever ways she could. Together, they would become the exceptions to the unwritten rules.

By the end of Jason McElwain’s final year at Greece Athena, he was a senior in name only. Privately, his parents worried he would never achieve his