There’s Always Next Year

Yep. I kept the score book from the tourney.
It was kind of a big deal.

With less than ten seconds left on the game clock, our team was down by one point. But we had the ball and enough time to get at least one shot off. I ran down the court as fast as my 18-year-old legs could carry me, then turned to look for the ball. Our point guard had dribbled the ball past half court and decided that he would take the final shot from well beyond the three-point line. The ball sailed through the air, we looked up, and held our breath. It fell way short... an air ball... and miraculously dropped right into my hands. I turned, there was the rim, so I tossed the ball up and it went right in. The buzzer sounded, and the game was over, 65-64.

We had just squeaked by Blackfoot Post 254, our first opponent in the Explorer Olympics, a multi-day summer league tournament that featured the best high school and Church players in southeast Idaho. And we were ecstatic. We had just stolen a game from basically the same team that had taken state during that year’s high school basketball season.

At the time I was working a night shift at a potato processing plant. And these “olympic” games ran all day. So I would get home from my shift, change into my basketball clothes, plop into the back of the Weaver’s brown van and drift in and out of sleep as we travelled the 45 miles from Roosevelt Street in American Falls to Blackfoot High School. Often waves of music from the cassette deck would splash in and then retreat from my dreams, usually Boston’s “Don’t Look Back” or Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Starting Something.”

The cycle repeated—trim potatoes, change into gym shorts, sleep in the van—another day, another game. In the semi-final, we played with more consistency and we pulled off a 57-45 win over a Pocatello team (basically the Highland high school squad), qualifying us for the championship.

Potatoes, gym clothes, nap in van. We played Unit 536 (Orofino) in the final game. We led by 6 to 8 points at each break but they made a big push at the end and we only won by 4 points in the end: 79-75. I had 20 points and only 2 fouls. It is rare that I score that many but all of our starters had double figures.

My lucky 80s wristband.

I can still picture the gym in Blackfoot where we celebrated, the weight of the “gold” medal around my neck, and the feeling of playing hard, leaving it all on the floor, and winning a championship. Not having been chosen to play high school ball, it was the closest I ever came to “taking state.” Well there was that one time when I was part of a choral quartet and we were awarded a superior but that was a subjective win… you couldn’t see the points on the scoreboard. Anyway, I digress.

Having won our region, we qualified to go back to the national playoffs. As I recall, that competition fell smack dab in the middle of potato harvest and most of our team could not be spared. As consolation, we played another qualifying team from Idaho and beat them by 10 points. That team went back east, made it to the championship, and lost to a New York team by 10 points… oh, what could have been. But there are worse things than having your season end on  a win… that kind of finish is so rare—63 of 64 teams in the NCAA tourney will be going home on a loss.

I keep looking to recapture that post-season feeling by recruiting a group to play BYU intramurals. But when the median age of our team is 47 and we are playing kids half our age, we usually fall out in round 2 or 3 of the tourney. Last night, it was a second round loss. But there’s always next year and the hope of ending the season on a win.

There’s always kickball this summer or maybe innertube water polo next winter… that BYU intramural championship t-shirt still eludes me. And if that doesn’t work, well, this is the year I will finally be old enough to qualify for the Huntsman World Senior Games. I hear they have some pretty competitive teams down in St. George each October.

If I listen real carefully I think I can hear a ball bouncing and soles squeaking on some hardwood right now... just sayin’.