Coach K Is Back! Our Favorite Picture of Brett Kavanaugh Since Hellish Hearings
Back when his nomination was first announced by the Trump administration, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh made a certified dad joke about his volunteer work coaching his daughter’s school basketball team.
“For the past seven years, I have coached my daughters’ basketball teams,” Kavanaugh said. “The girls on the team call me Coach K.”
The joke, of course, was that nobody would confuse him with the real “Coach K,” Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Over the course of his hearings, however, Coach K became one of two of competing narratives: Those who would avouch Kavanaugh as being a devoted family man who had been responsible since his youth and those who accused him of being an out-of-control party animal and sexual abuser who was trying to wallpaper over his past. In the end, at least in the Senate and among conservatives, the former narrative won.
And, on Thanksgiving weekend, Coach K returned in a major way.
Brett Kavanaugh sighting at my son’s basketball tourney at DeMatha HS. #kavanaughsighting pic.twitter.com/2rcVPF7LWV
— Bremante Bryant (@Bremante) November 26, 2018
According to The Washington Post, Kavanaugh was able to help his younger daughter’s team reach the finals in a Washington-area Turkey Shootout.
As the WaPo pointed out, “Kavanaugh has quietly returned to some rhythms of the life he led before his confirmation, when he was a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington. He has resumed serving meals to the homeless at Catholic Charities and is also back on the basketball sidelines.”
That’s also included coaching his daughter’s basketball teams — something that Kavanaugh had said during his testimony he might not be able to return to.
“I love coaching more than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life,” Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee in his response to Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations.
“But thanks to what some of you on this side of the committee have unleashed,” he continued, referring to the Democrats, “I may never be able to coach again.”
“Joe Sego, who organized the Turkey Shootout tournament in Hyattsville, Md., last weekend, said he never doubted Kavanaugh’s reemergence on the basketball court, even with heightened concerns about the justice’s schedule and security — and the possibility of public protests,” The Post reported.
“I was very concerned when the confirmation hearings were going on that we could run into some issues,” Sego told the WaPo. “But I figured since a little bit of time had gone on and things had kind of settled down, that it would be okay — and it was. There was no issue whatsoever.”
Yes, things have settled down. It’s almost as if the unquenchable outrage we saw mere weeks ago — where elected officials were hounded relentlessly — was some sort of stunt calculated to extract the maximum of outrage from one side of the voting public. I may just be cynical here.
Regardless, despite a bit of additional security, it was like the Coach K of old.
“I love helping the girls grow into confident players,” Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his first round of testimony when his players were seated behind him.
“I know that confidence on the basketball court translates into confidence in other aspects of life.”
And, even though Kavanaugh’s Blessed Sacrament team lost to Holy Redeemer of Kensington, Maryland in the finals, that was hardly the important part — for Kavanaugh, it was the young women he was coaching and the parents who entrusted him to do so.
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