News of the shattered backboard traveled fast, from Roanoke Rapids, N.C., to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where Stephen Woofter was deployed with the Army in 2011.
Woofter had received a message to call his wife, Monica. She informed him that their son, Stephen Vassor, had gone all Darryl Dawkins at the local high school, pulling down the rim with a slam dunk. Glass and blood littered the gym floor.
She was not amused.
Stephen Woofter, a math teacher who had left Vassor a key to the gym before he was deployed, tried to sound concerned. When he put down the phone, though, he relayed the news to his colleagues.