I had a friend ask me why I’d write an essay about the sport of basketball at this time of the year? Now that we’re into early summer, the sport of basketball is probably the last thing most people would be thinking about at this time of the year. Two main reasons. 1. I’ve turned into a huge Denver Nuggets (NBA pro team) fan, and now that they’re in the season finals, and with that in mind-why not write an essay about the sport? 2. The inspiration for this essay hit me while preparing breakfast two days ago. Writing inspiration nails me at the most unusual times and in the most bizarre places. This is one of those examples.

Word Count: 953

You Really

Suck at This Sport…

I like to watch the sport of professional basketball. Catching a big game off the TV is one of the best ways I can think of to relieve this persistent thing we call boredom. I don’t really like watching college basketball (Bracket-ology, what’s that?) and that’s probably because I got tired of rooting for a pathetic CU-Boulder team during my college years.

Here’s the really bizarre thing. I enjoy watching the sport and rooting for my preferred NBA team, but god forbid if you actually see me picking up a basketball. This is all because of one thing. In the early, and mid-1970s Silverton High School was atrociously BAD at the sport. When I finished my pathetic attempts at mastering the activity in late winter of 1977, I told myself I’d never pick up a basketball again. For the benefit of popular culture and society in general, I’ve pretty much stuck to that particular promise.

After all these years, two incidents stick out clearly in my mind. Starting in the early 70s, American culture began its inevitable, (and long awaited), shift towards a more inclusive society in terms of opening sporting activities up to women. Silverton was no exception to this rule, and the first high school girls’ basketball teams started at that time. Silverton high school wasn’t very good at the sport. Ridgway High was. So good that their girls’ team made it to the state tournament a number of times in the 1970s.

They also had a coach who gave new meaning to the term, “Obsessively-Committed” to an activity. Not only did the guy want his girls’ team to win their competitions, but I’m speculating that some sort of traumatic childhood experience forced him to hold onto the philosophy of humiliating your opponent. Sort of like the philosophy of the Conan The Barbarian character when he said. “You must destroy your enemy. Hear the crying and lamentations of their women.”

The first girls’ game of the season in November of 1976 did indeed involve lots of crying due to the fact that the SHS (Silverton High School) girls experienced defeat of epic proportions, 8I-6. I do not embellish this statistic in case all you sports-fans out there are wondering. Exclusively because my primary source for this information is one of my sisters, who got subbed into that exact game her freshman year halfway into the 2^nd quarter, experiencing a mini victory soon after that too. The Ridgway coach told his charges to execute a full-court press from the very beginning of the game, and when my sister came in, she managed to dribble the ball past the half-court circle. Thus, resulting in one of those special moments that make life worth living for most of us.

Then another mini victory happened soon after that when another good friend of mine managed to score the first 2 of what ended up being 6 total points SHS scored. Life is truly amazing, ain’t it?

Now that we’ve had forty-nine years to contemplate these events, we can only hope that there’s an especially sadistic spot in Hell for the Ridgway high school girls’ basketball coach of the 1970s. Is he still alive? You won’t find my sister trying to get to the bottom of this mystery.

The second reason I’m anti-basketball (except for watching the pros…) has to do with my own ignominious career in the sport. My second year into a career of ineptitude, the Silverton High School boys team played Mancos. Their coach wasn’t quite as bad as the Ridgway mentor, and only abused his opponents on an occasional basis and under special circumstances. One of those was a game where the Silverton Miners kept things close and we found ourselves down only 96-51 with three minutes left in a game. The standard protocol at the time was for opposing coaches to walk to the center of the floor after a contest and shake hands in an act of good sportsmanship. When the time-out was called, our coach speculated that Mancos was planning to score 100 points on us, and told our boys to go into a stall when we got the ball. This we did, and the final score of the match was a nail-biter, 98-54. The Mancos coach was so annoyed with our stall tactic that he refused to march to the center of the court to shake hands with the Silverton mentor. Life is so unfair, ain’t it?

Now I’m not totally anti-team sport. In fact, just last week I attended the local kickball contest. Only acted as the match referee though. Nobody asked me why I did this, assuming that I’m getting too old for this sort of thing. This is in fact happening to me as I’m made fully aware of this age phenomenon thing every morning when I wake up and look in the mirror. Now you know the real reason why I don’t participate in team sports…