Down-Tempo Game

Its game time. Its an important one……a district final. The victor moves on to a substate game. Are you ready for this? Are you nervous? Or, have you checked your emotions at the gym door? I tried, but was not totally successful. Why do we invest so much feeling in a silly basketball game? Where did people spend their emotions in the old days, before spectator sports became popular?

The opposing team's center is a Goliath.......6’8” tall! Our tallest player is 6'3". My son---our team’s designated center jumper---is 6’0”, with his shoes on. Can you guess who got the tip? Duh.

My son’s alter ego, Sir Fouls-A-Lot, made an encore appearance at tonight’s game, after an absence of several weeks. Earlier in the season, Sir F-A-L had the dubious honor of ranking 6th in Iowa in number of fouls committed. Fortunately, his statistics fell as the season wore on. But, not tonight…..nearly every time he guarded Goliath, he was whistled for a foul.

Here sits my son, next to the scorers’ table, waiting to re-enter the game after pondering his fouling fate on the bench for awhile:

My teenage niece went with me to the game. She seemed overly-willing to accompany her old auntie to this event. Hm-m……does that seem rather suspicious? Maybe she wanted to check out the boys from our school. Hm-m. (Seems like only yesterday she and my son were toddlers and I caught him pouring sand over her head in our backyard sandbox. Where did the time go?)

We arrived at the game early enough to have our choice of seating. We sat right next to the court, on the first row of bleachers……the first time all season. It provided a great floor-level view, making us feel almost like part of the game. Whoa……watch out for the ball coming your way, on occasion! The worst thing, however, was that we were sitting amongst a group of people who tend to yell at the referees alot. I don’t care much for that……it makes me cringe.

Oh, yeah……and by the way……WE LOST…….27-21. Yeah, a really tense, low-scoring affair. That’s what our coach likes to do do…..slow the game way down. Its a strategy which is sometimes successful, but not tonight, though we came close. The game was back and forth tied until the last 3 minutes of the 4th quarter. Actually, our defense did a superb job of keeping the ball away from Goliath most of the time.

After the game, I happened to walk by the opposing coach as he was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter who was scribbling on a pad of paper. I heard the coach say: “The game was not played in the up-tempo style that we were hoping for.” Ha…..they didn’t control the game’s tempo……our team did. So, by that standard……maybe we won……in a way.

Sigh. Now the basketball season is over. The community will now go through basketball withdrawal, trying to find other avenues for socialization. Ho-hum. Sigh some more. I will just blog on.

Turn the volume way up on this video to get a feel for the atmosphere in the gym near the end of the game: