I was 43, and I thought the only way I'm going to push myself to do something bigger is to come up with a ridiculous goal. That's when I came up with the idea to enter a dunk contest. – Andy Nicholson
Andy Nicholson laughs at the reference, but then, without shame, he embraces it.
“I can relate to Uncle Rico really well,” said the 45-year-old father of three whose obsession with dunking has haunted him from junior high to middle age. “I am Uncle Rico in a lot of ways. It’s funny but pretty accurate.”
Uncle Rico is the fictional, has-been high school football quarterback in the movie “Napoleon Dynamite.” The pathetic but endearing character is constantly regaling his nephews with stories of his athletic prowess and speculation about what his life might have offered if “coach would have put me in fourth quarter, we’d have been state champions, no doubt. No doubt in my mind. You better believe things would have been different.”
Uncle Rico, to be blunt, is living in a past that never really existed.
And while Nicholson admits to having more than a few Uncle Rico moments, he sees it more as a commitment to a dream than an unhealthy obsession.
A dream dashed
“This is an obsession that started a long time go,” he said laughing. “I remember ordering my first ‘jump training program’ the summer before eighth grade.”
He paid $30 for the mail order kit that included a big yellow chart that he was to hang in his room so he could chart his progress. He did 10 exercises every day without fail.
“Whether it was the program, or the fact that I was just growing, I did improve,” he said. “I was jumping higher at the end of those 10 weeks.”
Nicholson said his attempts to dunk made him the butt of a lot of jokes.
“I got teased about it,” he said. “I still get teased about it.”
Instead of letting the taunting deter him, he allowed it to fuel him — then and now. “I’m still that guy holding up the pick-up game because I’m trying to dunk,” he said. “The next game is ready, but I’m trying to dunk — one more time.”
But he waxes almost poetically about the freedom and power one feels with the ability to dunk.
“It’s a huge rush of adrenaline,” Nicholson said.
“It’s that feeling of power, like I’m a beast. … And at my age, people say I’m lying, that there is no way at my age, that I must use camera tricks. They don’t believe it’s real. It’s a huge adrenaline rush and emotion.”
It is a victory over gravity that only a small percentage of people ever realize.
“Dunking is special,” said his high school teammate Vince Leigh. “I still remember the first day I ever dunked. It was Jan. 10, 1989. I was 15 years old. … I would celebrate that anniversary every year. The dunk is special.”
The same year Leigh managed his first dunk, Nicholson decided that he was going to dunk in one of his high school games. There was some debate among him and his friends whether his one-handed dunk on an outdoor court was legitimate. To settle any arguments, he formulated a plan to dunk during one of his Missouri high school games.
“I thought, tonight is going to be the night I dunk in a game,” he said laughing at the memory.
His attempt came on a fast break that he created with a steal.
He missed badly. His coach was furious, and he was humiliated.
“I got in trouble for it,” he said. “Our high school was nationally ranked, and our coach was the high school version of Bobby Knight. … Our games were standing-room only. Everybody saw it.”
It is a moment that has haunted him so consistently, he admits it was part of his decision to resurrect the dream on the eve of his 40th birthday.
Never too late
“It’s something that was always there,” he said. “I never really lost the passion for it, but I didn’t play college basketball, and then I got married, started having kids, and life.” At 39 he was recovering from a knee injury, and the thought of turning 40 without realizing the dream of throwing down a dunk that was viewed as legitimate gnawed at him.
He bought another jump-improvement program, and in about four months, he was able to dunk.
“I really wanted to dunk with two hands, but I couldn’t get past the one-handed dunk,” he said. He tracked his progress, was dedicated to training, and never let anything or anyone dissuade him from the possibility that a middle-aged, 5-foot-11 white guy could throw down with both hands.
After five years of training, “I finally got it, this two-handed dunk,” he said. “But I wasn’t satisfied with it.”
About 18 months ago, he decided he needed to find a way to relive that demoralizing moment in 1989.
“I was 43, and I thought the only way I’m going to push myself to do something bigger is to come up with a ridiculous goal,” he said. “”That’s when I came up with the idea to enter a dunk contest.” He found one at FitCon, a fitness expo and weekend of athletic competitions each April, and submitted his video and application.
He and three others were chosen to participate, and not only did he re-dedicated himself to a training program, he decided to make a documentary about his second chance.
“Go back to 1989, the last time I tried dunking in front of a huge group of people,” he said. “It was a huge bomb. I was kind of the guy in the movie, the guy who dropped the ball and his life is ruined.” That game was the third of the season, and he was fighting for a starting spot on the state’s best team.
“If I dunked that basketball would that have changed things for me?” he said. “You just get so much respect if you can dunk. What would have happened if I’d made it? Would I have lost my starting spot? Would I have gotten scholarship offers?”
Not everybody gets a second chance to rewrite a dream, he said. The FitCon Dunk Contest was his opportunity to prove to himself — and the world — that he could dunk under pressure on a legitimate rim.
“It was like this is my redemption.”
Lessons learned
Nicholson’s documentary, which is available on YouTube, chronicles his journey, including interviews with his high school teammates about that fateful game in 1989 and his general fascination with dunking.
It starts out as an attempt to chronicle — and to some degree explain — the desire to fulfill a childhood dream. But somewhere along the way it shifts from chasing an obscure goal to winning a battle against self-doubt to which most of us can relate.
We all struggle with the limits of our bodies and our minds. So where does commitment and faith become obsession? I think each dreamer has to make that call him or herself. Nicholson’s decision to set the loftiest goal he can is inspiring, regardless of what he’s trying to achieve. It takes a lot of courage to risk failure — especially on a stage surrounded by critics.
The movie “Over the Hill Dunker” will be shown Saturday, March 4, at 12:30 p.m. as part of the LDS Film Festival, and there will be a question and answer session after the showing.
Nicholson isn’t sure if he’ll ever compete in a dunk contest again, but he said the experience has been both cathartic and educational.
“This has helped me get over it,” he said referencing his high school experience. “It’s been redemptive. I felt like I’d given everything for my basketball dreams. As a team we killed it; individually, I fell so short. It hurt so bad. When you want something so bad, and you give everything, it’s painful. This helped me feel better about what happened. It feels like the universe has made things right for me.”
Since releasing the movie, he said he’s received hundreds of messages of support and congratulations.
“People saying, ‘I’d given up on my athletic dreams, but now I’m going for it,’” he said. “It’s really a story that anyone who has a dream can relate to. … Like what’s that thing in your life that you haven’t done? For me, it was a dunk contest at 44, 5-11, but I did it. It’s absurd, but I did it.”