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| The Legend of Whitburn County (standard:other, 15236 words) | |||
| Author: themaniac | Added: Sep 20 2000 | Views/Reads: 3802/2923 | Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes) |
| Two friends grow up in a small town, playing basketball and learning about life. | |||
Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story
It actually wasn't a bad situation, since Jared and I were playing
eighth-grade basketball for Plainview, and it gave me a "break-in"
period with Mary Lee. By the time the school year ended, I was
comfortable with my new step-mom, and actually looked forward to moving
in to the house full-time. Mary Lee's daughter, Luann, was amiable and
outgoing, and we grew close over the next few years.
My dad managed to get the farm sold the first week in September, exactly
three months after he got remarried. We had a big moving day, and Jared
helped me move my stuff in to his family's back bedroom, and then he
and his dad helped us move our stuff up to Whitburn. It was a beautiful
day, right in the middle of Indian Summer, and everything looked like
it was going to be all right.
Or so we thought.
Now, I'll admit that I didn't hear much about what was going on with the
Whitburn School District. I knew that they were building a second
campus, right next to the existing Whitburn High School building. And I
kinda knew that Thompsonville High was dwindling in numbers, but
Thompsonville had always been the smaller of the two county high
schools.
I'd only been staying with Jared's family for a few weeks when his dad
told me that there was a big school board meeting scheduled for the
first week in October. The board had a new chairman - Mark Petroski -
who had gone to Morgantown State University, the biggest college in the
state, for his Ph.D. in Education. He had all these ideas on how to
improve things, and finally, in the last round of School Board
elections, he had managed to get elected to the chair. The old school
board chairman, Christian Wilson, had died of a heart attack after
serving on the board for something like 40 years.
Everyone thought that the big school board meeting was going to be about
renaming the elementary school in Whitburn after Wilson. My mom had
been good friends with Mr. Wilson, and had even worked under him when
he was both school board chair and principal of Whitburn Elementary.
What actually happened was a shock. I watched it at Jared's house on the
cable access channel. Petroski opened the meeting by making a statement
that there were going to be some changes in how the school district was
going to operate. First, he said, he had found a way to pay for the
cost of the new addition to Whitburn High, and still have finances left
over to keep the district well in the black financially.
This was greeted by applause, since the district had always been close
to the financial edge for the last several years. When he explained how
he had done it, thought, the applause turned to shocked gasps.
"The District," he stated, "has entered into an agreement with the
Diocese of St. George's Catholic Church in Thompsonville, and with
Riverton Developments, to sell the buildings and land of Thompsonville
High School. The original main building of Thompsonville High will be
sold to St. George's, for the purpose of opening a Catholic School; the
newer building will be sold to Riverton Developments for the purpose of
building a retail and office center."
Then Petroski dropped the bombshell - "Since Whitburn High School will
have double the capacity for the next school year, all students grades
9 through 12 in Whitburn County will go to Whitburn High, starting the
next academic year."
"WHAT???" screamed Jared's dad at the TV set. Jared and I just exchanged
blank looks.
Petroski, oblivious of Jared's dad's ranting, presented the proposal to
the board. Then, one of the other members - I think he was the
financial officer - called for a vote on the proposal. There was a
massive outcry from those observing the meeting in Whitburn. The voice
vote on the issue, not surprisingly, was 5-4 in favor. All five votes
for the measure were from Whitburn-based board members; the other four
were from Thompsonville.
"So approved," Petroski gaveled on the table. "The proposal will be put
forth on the November ballot for final approval by the entire school
district."
And then, after all the noise had died down, did he announce that the
Whitburn Elementary School would be renamed for Wilson.
Jared's dad went ballistic. He started cursing left and right at
Petroski.
He had a good reason to curse. See, something I didn't tell you about
Jared - his last name is Thompson. His great-great-grandfather was the
man who Thompsonville is named for. His great-grandfather was the mayor
who built Thompsonville High School. And his uncle was the current
mayor of the city (his grandfather never went into politics - he was a
farmer whose land Jared and his parents lived on today).
When the phone rang, Jared knew instantly who it was. "Uncle Jerry," he
said without missing a beat as he grabbed his coat and a basketball. He
motioned for me to come with outside - he knew that we wouldn't want to
hear all the cursing and swearing.
Jared's dad and his uncle talked on the phone for a long time. I know
they were, because when we came back in, he was just hanging up the
phone.
"It's settled," his dad told Jared. "If this measure passes, you're
going to St. George's School."
I asked him if he knew whether or not the measure would pass.
"It'll pass," he said bluntly. "There's too many people in Whitburn who
would rather consolidate the entire school district instead of paying
to send half the county to a smaller high school." He sighed and shook
his head. "We'll talk about it more in the morning, Jared. Why don't
you and Billy get your homework done."
As the weeks went on, it was clear that Jared's dad was right. Too many
people in the northern part of the county wanted the cost reductions; a
poll by the Whitburn Intelligencer projected the measure to pass with a
60 percent approval. It wasn't quite that big. The measure was passed
by about 3,000 votes, with the approval only topping 9,000 votes.
But it was settled. Thompsonville High would no longer be a public high
school. Saint George's, which to that point had run a small elementary
school out of their parish hall, would actually have room to expand
their classes.
The change was going to affect a lot of things - most of all, the
Northern Lakes Athletic Conference. The conference was an eight-team
conglomerate of high schools from the four counties around Whitburn -
Woodfield (Woodfield and Newsburg), Shoreland (Shoreland and Oxford
Lakes), Chemequon, and Marshall. The Conference was aligned with the
state High School Athletic Association, which was strictly for the
public schools in the state. Private schools were in the
Inter-Scholastic Athletic Association.
In December, just as we were starting our eighth-grade basketball
season, the ISAA and HSAA came to an agreement to allow the Northern
Lakes Conference to keep St. George's as a member. It made sense, since
there was only one other private school in the five-county area - St.
Michael's in Woodfield, which was a good two hour drive away, and they
didn't have an athletic program. The ISAA announced that the new school
would only be allowed to play in their state tournament if they
qualified for the conference tournament. The HSAA, however, stated that
if St. George's qualified for the Northern Lakes Conference tournament,
they would not be allowed to play, since the winner of the tournament
automatically would advance to the HSAA state tournament.
Jared's dad still was insisting that he'd be going to St. George's. For
the first time since we were in first grade, we'd be going to separate
schools. At the end of the school year, I was going to move up to
Whitburn with my Dad and my step-sister Luann.
I was feeling sad about it, but Luann (who was two years older than me)
agreed to drive me down to see Jared on a regular basis. I found out
later that Luann actually had a crush on Jared's older brother, Jerry -
something that was confirmed when they got married after I graduated
from Whitburn.
Basketball was a pleasant distraction during this tumultuous time in my
life. It was basketball that had helped me through the pain of losing
my mom years ago, and it helped me again in this whole whirlwind of
changes. But there was something that I noticed as I played endless
one-on-ones with Jared - he was getting better and stronger and faster.
The year my mom died, I had a decided advantage on him in ability. I
could shoot; he couldn't. I could hit those outside jumpers, where he
was having trouble laying it in on me. He kept working, though. When
we played a pickup game with me and a few of my cousins before the
wedding, he put moves on me that were just incredible. He head faked,
drove, pulled up and put a little jumper right in, nothing but net. He
did a few other things to me, like nailing an outside 20-footer, even
hooking one right over me. Now, I knew he'd grown faster than me (he
was already 5-foot-11 when we entered eighth grade; I was only 5-4 on a
good day), but he finally realized that he could outmaneuver me. My
cousins were making comments, like, "Billy, I thought you were a better
player than this!" And "Jeez, Billy, where'd you find this guy, the
NBA?"
I didn't think much of that game until Jared, Jerry and I entered in
this three-on-three tournament down at Lakeside. Lakeside Tech was a
NCAA Division II school that was big for its basketball, and they were
sponsoring this tournament. The premise was that Jerry (who was going
to be a senior at the new St. George's High that year) was going down
to Lakeside Tech to check out the campus, since Jerry wasn't a bad
basketball player himself. Jerry also knew we'd be able to test
ourselves against other players throughout the state.
Jared and I were the youngest kids in that tournament. The bracket we
were in was open to anyone 14-18 who lived in the state, and there were
some kids who played for the best teams in the HSAA. We took them all
on, and kept winning and winning and winning. Finally, we went up
against the only other undefeated team in the bracket, a threesome from
Riverton (the largest city in the state) with two players from Riverton
North and a kid who was the only other kid close to our age - Mitch
Jordan. The two older kids would end up going to Morgan State
University (the NCAA Division I powerhouse in the state). In that game,
though, we just demolished them. They kept waiting for Jared to dish
the ball off to Jerry inside, leaving him wide open at the three-point
arc. He nailed about three treys before they started getting in his
face. Then he just started dishing it to me and to Jerry, and pretty
soon we were up by about a dozen. We won the game, then defeated the
winner of the consolation bracket game to take the tournament title.
One of the organizers was the head coach of the Lakeside Tech
basketball team, and he asked Jared how old he was. When he told him he
was only 14, the coach's eyes popped open wide.
"Kid, keep your grades up," he told him. "You keep playing like that,
and we'll definitely find you a place at Lakeside Tech."
Jerry told me later that while he was talking to the coach about
possibly coming to LTU, he kept saying, "That brother of yours could
start for me right now. That's how good he is."
My freshman year at Whitburn was interesting, to say the least. Some of
the classrooms in the new building hadn't been completely finished when
we started school in late August, so I had some of my classes in the
cafeteria. They sectioned off parts of the cafeteria with these
cubicle-type walls, and you'd hear one class talking about algebra and
equations while another class was talking about the Punic Wars - and
yet another class was listening to a French-speaking lesson from a
videotape. It was distracting, to say the least.
Making the basketball team looked like it was going to be hard sailing -
there were at least thirty kids there for the tryouts in late October.
Whitburn, however, had lost five seniors to graduation, and two of the
junior players from last year were academically ineligible after
flunking two classes last year. That left the head coach, Roger Mason
with one senior, one junior and four sophomores with a total number of
seven games played between all of them. The JV was even worse - all of
the players on the team had been freshmen, and they went 0-14 on the
season. Half of the JV from last year weren't coming back (some of them
because they just couldn't, or didn't want to, play). So there we all
were, thirty guys wanting to take 13 spots on the JV and varsity
roster.
Half of the players were from Thompsonville, who had maybe one decent
player and a lot of so-so players. Thompsonville hadn't played in the
Northern Lakes tournament in over a decade, and last year had only two
wins on the season - one against a non-conference team from Oxford
Falls, and the other against Whitburn.
During the tryouts, I made a good impression on the coach by nailing a
few treys and doing some quality driving down the lane. I even tried to
dish a few passes out for shots, but the guys on the receiving end
either dropped the ball or missed the jumpers. At the end of the
tryout, he rattled off the names of 15 guys who would be back for
varsity practice on Friday. I was on that list.
I was so excited, I talked about it all the way home with Luann. She was
happy for me, and so were dad and Mary Lee. After dinner, I called up
Jared and told him the news. He wasn't as happy, though.
"You remember we thought Coach Halvorsen was going to stay on as the
coach here at Thom... Saint George's?" he told me over the phone.
"Well, turns out Halvorsen only stayed on to collect his pension. The
team's going to be coached by some guy named MacGwire. He's got a
policy that says no underclassmen will play on the varsity team."
MacGwire, apparently, didn't know his head from his posterior region.
Jared tried his best to show off his talents during the drills, but
after MacGwire laid down his policy about underclassmen before even
starting the tryouts, Jared's heart wasn't exactly in it.
"He didn't want me to come back for practice, but he only had 21 kids
there, besides me," he told me. He told me that I had to improve my
game if I wanted to play. Improve my play! This guy never saw me play,
dammit! He doesn't know crap about anything. I asked him if he'd seen
any of the YMCA 8th grade league games in Thompsonville - he didn't
even realize there was a YMCA league!
Jared and I had played in the YMCA boys 8th grade league. There was no
state-wide association for elementary school basketball, so we had to
play in the Thompsonville YMCA league. Jared had just torn things up on
occasion - I seem to recall a 50-point night once - and Halvorsen had
seen it and liked what he saw in Jared.
We found out later that Halvorsen was forced out as coach at the new
Saint George's for one very significant reason - he wasn't Catholic.
Shaun MacGwire was not only Catholic, but he was a Notre Dame graduate,
with a Masters Degree in Coaching. He probably was looking to
eventually take on a coaching job at St. Mary's Immaculate University
in Riverton, if their coach (Roger Mayers) ever retired. He didn't have
time for a kid's league in a podunk town.
Jared was so caught up in his furor over MacGwire that he never did ask
me how I did in my tryouts. It's a good thing; he probably would have
never spoken to me again if he had found out just then.
I managed to stick with the Whitburn varsity as a freshman, but I didn't
really get into a whole lot of games. The varsity had gone 10-10 the
year before, but we were going to be lucky if we won four games this
year. We won two non-conference games, one with Oxford Falls and
another with Washura. Washura had a two-hour bus trip, and were
physically wiped when we whipped them, 85-14. Unfortunately, it was
something they wouldn't forget when they beat us at their fieldhouse
the next week... and the next six games we played against them...). We
hit the conference schedule, and couldn't buy a win. MacGwire refused
to schedule Whitburn until March, for some slightly irrational reason,
so we played everyone else in the Northern Lakes conference - and lost.
By the time we faced the St. George's varsity, we were 2-16, and in
last place in the conference.
As the year went on, Jared talked about how MacGwire constantly ranted
about life in Thompsonville. He didn't like the IGA store, he didn't
like Marty's Hardware - he didn't even like the Hardee's downtown. His
poor attitude showed in the amount of time he spent with the JV team -
which was next to nothing. He let his basketball manager run JV
practice in the small gym of St. George's while he ran the varsity
practice in the Fieldhouse.
This wasn't so bad - the manager, Jerry White, was a buddy of Jared's,
and Jared essentially ran the practice. Those nine guys started a
little slow, but pretty soon they had an 8-4 record in conference
games. The varsity was at 4-14.
The stage was set for the county championship - which was about all it
was going to be for, since both schools were out of the running for the
fourth spot in the conference tourney. Whitburn went to Thompsonville
for their first game against Saint George's - and I was the starting
point guard. Coach Mason liked how I'd come off the bench and shoot the
bombs, and our regular point guard was hurting with an ankle injury.
It was strange to go into the Saint George's Fieldhouse. Where they used
to have the "Fightin' Tigers" logo of Thompsonville on the wall, the
sign now said "Crusaders".
I wish I could say that I had a great night, scoring left and right, and
we went on to beat Saint George's. But that night, the 2nd of March,
was the worst night I ever had in organized basketball. I took a shot
from the perimeter with a defender trying to block the jumper, and when
I turned to go back up court, our legs got tangled and I went down in a
heap. I ended up twisting my ankle, having to go to Thompsonville
Medical Center to get it checked out.
Jared, meanwhile, had lit up our JV with a 42-point game, as the
Crusader JV beat them, 56-24. He went along with me and my parents when
I had to go to the hospital. After they put a soft cast around the
ankle to immobilize it, we heard that St. George's had won, 58-42. To
that point, I'd been averaging about 17 points a game, so it didn't
take too much to figure out that things might have been different if I
had been there - and I said so to my parents.
Jared, of course, took the air out of my balloon when he heard that -
"Yeah, but if I was playing for Saint Georgies, I woulda scored 30 more
and we'd have beaten you 88-59."
The ride home was quiet after that.
The season ended three days later when the Crusaders came up to Whitburn
and pulled a repeat performance, winning this time 60-43. As time went
on over the spring and summer, the memories of that painful night would
diminish - mostly because of a friend of Luann's who set Jared and me
up on a date for the Spring Formal.
Their names were Katie and Tamara Williamson. They were twins. Katie was
a smart, serious type; "Tam" was a flighty, spur-of-the-moment type.
Tamara was my date that night, and Katie was Jared's - but by the time
the night was through, it was apparent as to who liked whom.
I was drawn to Katie right away. She was able to talk about things from
state history to national politics to whether or not professional
sports athletes made too much money. We hit it off after Tamara went to
talk to her gobs of cheerleader friends at Whitburn, and Jared went
with her to talk to the jocks he knew that were with the gobs of
cheerleader friends. Jared wasn't exactly shy about showing his
appreciation for Tamara, either.
About halfway through the night, the two of them went off to the ladies'
room to "powder their noses." Jared and I discussed how much we liked
each other's date, and we made a decision - we were going to switch,
right there. Just like changing defenses, from the zone to a
man-to-man.
What we didn't know at the time was that the girls had made the same
decision in the restroom. When they came back, they told us that they
were switching dates. Jared and I looked at each other, and we didn't
exactly argue.
That night was the start of a great relationship. We spent most of the
rest of our high school days with each other, the four of us as some
wandering band of basketball crazy, fun loving kids. It was one of
those relationships that would last a lifetime - and it would,
eventually. I don't think I'm giving away the ending to the story when
I say I married Katie and Jared Tamara later on.
Our sophomore year was a good one. The highlight of the year was when
Jared and the St. George's JV basketball squad arrived in Woodfield for
a game in the middle of December, expecting to play a JV game. Instead,
they saw the Woodfield varsity squad coming out onto the court.
Apparently, MacGwire had scheduled the St. George's Varsity to play
down in Riverton against St. Mary's Prep, assuming that the game
against Woodfield would be for the JV teams. The Woodfield coach didn't
understand that to be the case, and told Jared and the kids that the
varsity game would be forfeited if they couldn't get a team there.
Jared called down to Riverton, but couldn't get a hold of MacGwire. He
suddenly had a thought - he asked Woodfield's coach, Rod Maryland, if
he knew of any ISAA rules against playing two games against two teams
on the same night. Apparently, there wasn't, and Jared talked to the
guys on the JV team: "Let's play them both. What the heck."
So, without a coach, and with only a manager and team statistician to
oversee the team, the St. George's JV took on both the Varsity and JV
squads of the defending conference champion Woodfield Eagles. The JV
game was shortened to only 16 minutes by agreement, so the St. George's
team could rest between games. The St. George's squad won, 40-24, in
the reduced time. Jared scored 32 of the 40, and it was the JV's fourth
win on the season.
Then, they came out for the varsity game. Tam told me about it later,
since she came to pick him up after what she thought would be his only
game of the night. The Crusaders won the opening tip, and from there on
out it was all Jared. Jared started hitting threes like no one's
business, and they played a tenacious defense that held Woodfield to a
mere eight points in the first period. Jared had 12 points in the first
period, but Woodfield would double-team him in the second period. The
Eagles scored twice to take a 13-12 lead halfway through the second
period.
Jared called a time-out. The team went to the bench, and Jared told his
teammates to screen him for a shot at a three - but "take your time,"
he told them. The Crusaders went out and did just that. He waited for
the screen, they got a mismatch with about 10 seconds to go, and then
he lofted up a perfect 20-footer that swished through. Woodfield tried
to get a quick basket, but their last-second shot of the half missed,
and the Crusaders had the one-point lead at the half.
St. George's got the ball on the alternating possession rule at the
beginning of the second half. They never turned it over. The Crusaders
did launch "two or three shots," according to Jared, but they came down
with the rebound and worked it over again. Jared took a last second
shot, got fouled going up for score, and went to the line to shoot two.
He calmly sank both to give the Crusaders a 17-13 lead.
The Eagles got the ball at the start of the fourth period. They ran the
ball down, and Miguel Gonzalez, their star forward, hit a trey to pull
them within one. On the next trip down for the Crusaders, as soon as
Jared touched the ball they cleared out, setting Gonzalez on the low
post trying to funnel Jared in to him. Jared faked as if he would drive
the lane, pulled up and shot a three from the top of the key to make it
20-16. Gonzalez drove in on Jared on the next possession, took a shot
that missed but drew the foul. Amazingly, it was St. George's first
foul of the entire game. Gonzalez sank both free throws to pull the
Eagles within two.
The Woodfield coach decided at this point that he had enough. He yelled,
"PRESS!" to his team as the Crusaders in-bounded the ball. They did,
and picked up four straight fouls against Jared, putting them on the
edge of the bonus. Jared then in-bounded to teammate Chris Smith, who
had the ball stripped from him and taken in for an easy lay-up. Tie
game at 20 with under three minutes left.
Jared called for another time-out. He told his teammates to try to clear
out, he was going to drive it, see if he could get the basket and the
foul, and then they could try to play for the last shot. He got the
in-bounds from Smith, and the rest of the team dutifully cleared out.
He drove down the lane, got hacked on the arm as he went up - and the
ball still went in. He went to the line and calmly sank the bonus.
Woodfield responded by marching the ball down court, giving the ball to
Gonzalez on a perfect screen, and sank a trey to tie the game again at
23, with just under two minutes to go.
Jared walked the ball down the court, thought for a second and surprised
everyone when he drove in, took the shot and scored to take a 25-23
lead - with a minute and a half to go.
His teammates were screaming, "What the hell are you doing?" (I can
imagine some of the priests taking in the game weren't too happy with
that, but it was the truth). Then, they watched as Jared then stepped
right in front of Gonzalez as he walked the ball down, making him fall
down. Second personal, second team foul. Before they could in-bound the
ball, he called another time-out.
"Foul them," he said. "We've got 85 seconds and three fouls to give.
Don't let them near the basket. If they get to the line, we get the
ball and the last shot."
He was prophetic. Smith got nailed twice reaching in on the ball holder.
Point guard Terry Martin then got called for a foul trying to knock
the ball loose. All of it done within twenty seconds. On the in-bound,
Gonzalez took the ball, and with Jared guarding him, drove to the
basket. Jared got knocked down, and the ball went out of bounds, but he
was called for the foul. (Tam insisted to me when she told me about the
game, "It was a complete charge on Gonzalez's part!") Gonzalez sank
both free throws to tie the game with fifty seconds to go.
They didn't press this time, and Jared walked the ball up to the time
line. He dribbled around, handed the ball to Smith - who handed it
right back to him and shook his head, "uh-uh." Gonzalez was on him,
preventing the pass. He walked around to the top of the key, stopped,
and handed it off to Smith again. Smith came around, dribbled once and
gave it right back to him. The seconds ticked away: 15, 14, 13, 12...
Time running down, he set up. He eased back into Gonzalez, trying to get
him to commit. Gonzalez didn't bite. Then Jared faked to his left, so
solidly that Gonzalez followed, but then backed up beyond the
three-point arc and let loose with a perfect jumper that drained the
net. 28-25 with two seconds to go.
Woodfield tried to call time-out before the horn sounded, but the ref
signaled the game was over. Final score: Jared 28, Woodfield 25.
The manager took a photo of the shot Jared made, and it made the front
page of the Thompsonville Times. Hernandez was practically on all fours
and way out of position to try to stop Jared from driving. And all 28
points scored were by way of Jared.
MacGwire was not happy when he learned of the game. The Crusader Varsity
squad had been soundly defeated at the hands of St. Mary's Prep, 53-26.
He subsequently suspended Jared for two games - instead of taking
notice that Jared's totals added to the Varsity totals would have meant
a win against St. Mary's.
The ISAA made things worse for MacGwire, ruling that St. George's would
have to cancel a non-conference home game to meet the scheduling
requirements of no more than 20 regular season games.
That, however, wasn't the ultimate insult to MacGwire. At the next game,
against Oxford Lakes at Thompsonville, none of the JV players showed up
for the game. Chris Smith's father gave MacGwire a note, signed by the
entire team: If Jared doesn't play, we don't play. Down at the bottom,
beneath the signatures, was an equation: 26 + 28 = WIN.
MacGwire responded in his typical manner: after a verbal tirade of epic
proportions, he told Mr. Smith that his son and the rest of the team
were suspended for two games. Mr. Smith then told MacGwire to "go to
Hell and stay there." Chris transferred to Whitburn the next day.
It got really bad during the game when some of the sophomore
cheerleaders (some who were friends with Tami) started putting together
"We Want Jared!" signs. The first time they pulled the signs out (after
Oxford Lakes' varsity team went up 12-3 after the first period),
MacGwire saw the sign, went out to the cheerleader who was holding it
and tore it out of her hands. The students booed him unmercifully, and
that was when the chanting started.
"We want Jared! We want Jared! WE WANT JARED!"
The chanting went on for the rest of the game - and for the rest of the
season. It got even louder in the first game back for the JV, when
Jared took an alley-oop pass from Davey Wilson on the first shot of the
game and slammed it through - something unheard of in a JV game. The
score was 21-0 by the end of the first period.
The game almost didn't go off, though. In the locker room before the
game, there was a near-mutiny when MacGwire announced who was going to
start - and Jared wasn't on the list. The starting forward, Davey
Wilson, started to take his uniform off. "If Jared's not starting, I'm
not playing," he told MacGwire. MacGwire then took the next guy off the
bench and told him he was starting. Same reaction. This kept going
until only one player other than Jared was left - George Kryzniki, a
slightly chubby kid who had a jumper and not much else. "Don't even
think about it" was all he had to say to coach. It would have been
Kryzniki's first start ever - and he turned it down. MacGwire then
threatened another team-wide suspension, when Jared pulled out the ISAA
rulebook to the part about forfeits.
"Any school forfeiting three consecutive games for non-injury or
non-academic reasons shall be subject to an audit by the Association,
with a mandatory suspension of the school's program in that sport for a
minimum of two seasons," he read. He then looked up at MacGwire, smiled
briefly and put the book down.
MacGwire stomped out of the locker room into his office.
At the end of the season, it had become painfully obvious that MacGwire
had become an out-of-control maniac when it came to coaching. The
school principal, Father Michael Parrish, decided only to relieve
MacGwire of his duties as athletic director. The St. George's long-time
football coach, Dante Gerrold, re-took the job.
Word of how badly MacGwire handled kids got around, though, and not a
single returning player wanted to play for him their senior year.
MacGwire had a total of 10 players - including Jared. Apparently, he
tried to convince Gerrold that he could have a JV and a Varsity team.
It was some cockamamie scheme that would have the three froshes and the
two sophs play JV, while all five juniors would play varsity. He'd take
two guys from the team not playing and put them on the bench. Gerrold
talked him out of it, and gently suggested that he simply take the 10
players he had and play them all on the varsity squad. Marshall wasn't
fielding a JV team that year, either, so there wouldn't be a scheduling
problem.
Now, I know what you're thinking - the ISAA rule above stated
"scheduled" games. If no JV games were ever scheduled, the rule
wouldn't apply. The ISAA ruled as much on the subject, and St. George's
started the season with its first varsity team to include
underclassmen. Considering that St. George's had only played two
seasons, of course, this wasn't much of an accomplishment.
The response by the team was to roll out to six straight wins, the last
being the opening game of an eight-team invitational down in Riverton.
They then lost the semifinal against Riverton Tech, and got whomped in
the consolation game by Riverton North. Mitch Jordan of North just
embarrassed Jared, pumping in 42 of North's 60 points and holding Jared
to only a dozen.
When they came home, it got worse - Jared pulled a leg muscle against
Woodfield early in the game, and sat out the rest of the game and the
next one against Oxford Lakes. St. George's lost both of those games.
When Jared came back, they ran off a seven game streak, never winning a
single game by less than a dozen. Jared racked up five 40-point games,
and never scored fewer than 31 in any of the seven games.
I was up-close and personal for the last win. All this time that Jared
had been going through his soap opera at St. G's, I was having a
half-way-decent career at Whitburn. The team had been mediocre in my
freshman and sophomore years, but with all the turmoil at St. George's,
we were starting to get the pick of the basketball crop in Whitburn
County. Where the best players in the county tended to split between
the two schools, now most of them were ending up with Whitburn. All of
them, that is, except for Jared.
Anyway, the Crusaders wandered into our fieldhouse with us leading the
conference by a game over Woodfield and St. George's. It looked like
we'd be able to keep up - we were tied after the first period, and down
by only two at the half.
Jared, however, caught fire in the second half, and they just ran away
and hid from us. Jared came within a point of setting a Thompsonville /
St. George's record for scoring with 49 points against us, but MacGwire
took him out of the game with a minute to go and the Crusaders up by
18.
MacGwire said immediately after the game to the radio announcer on WHIT
that it wasn't because of any grudge or anything, it was just because
he didn't want Jared to get hurt, with key games against the top four
teams in the conference coming up over the next week. Jared didn't
argue, however - and he got a standing ovation from the fans when he
sat down. Everyone in Whitburn County knew about Jared Thompson.
What happened after the game I heard from three different sources: both
of the individuals involved, and from Katie. From what each of them
told me, I pieced together that this is pretty much what happened:
Before the game, Jared and Tam got into an extended discussion (read:
argument) about who was going to win the game. Tam told Jared that
"Billy and Whitburn are gonna kick your butt." Jared, being the type of
person that he is, responded with, "Wanna bet?"
And that was what started the whole thing. I noticed when we were
leaving the court at the half, Tam had made a pantomime in the general
direction of Jared that looked like she was driving a car. It turns out
that that was what Jared's side of the bet was: If Whitburn won, he
would have to drive Katie all over the place for the next week. And
Katie was a very active girl.
That was incentive alone, according to Jared, to step it up a notch.
Turns out, however, that wasn't the real incentive. Jared and Tam had
been getting hot and heavy in recent days, which I already knew.
Apparently, Jared bet her that if St. George's won, she'd have to "put
out" for him.
That night.
Katie filled me in on the details after that: The new Whitburn Athletic
Center has a strange setup, since the old Fieldhouse was originally
North of the current Fieldhouse. The locker rooms used to be where the
new pool is located. From what I understand, during construction they
decided not to connect the building where the pool was being built with
the Fieldhouse construction. After the foundation was laid, it was
realized that there was a 10 foot wide gap between the wall where the
pool construction ended and the Fieldhouse began. This wouldn't have
been a problem, if the locker rooms weren't supposed to be connected.
To remedy this, they built a hallway between the two buildings, ending
at pool maintenance room. The problem didn't become apparent until the
interior was finished - to get from the showers connected to the pool
to the locker rooms, you had to walk across this hallway.
To complicate matters, the bathrooms were closest to the hallway, with
the coaches' offices on the side closest to the lobby of the
fieldhouse, which was on the East side of the building.
Apparently, Tam got up and left when we were down by 20 with four
minutes to go. She had planned to celebrate Whitburn's win with some
sparkling grape juice with Jared - as he drove her home. She switched
to plan B. The only way you could look into the sauna/jacuzzi area was
from the Natatorium. The door to the hall separating the showers and
the lockers (known to Whitburn students as "Streaker's Alley") was
easily double locked. No one was in the weight room after the game,
since it wasn't open on weekends, so the likelihood of anyone seeing or
surprising them was practically nil.
She sneaked into the Visitor's lockers, found Jared's locker and left a
note to meet her by the pool entrance by the jacuzzi. He found the
note, took a brief shower, and sneaked out into the pool area. He found
Tam in the sauna, wearing nothing more than a smile and holding a glass
of sparkling grape juice.
Without going into the gory details (which none of the three parties
cared to share), suffice to say Jared took advantage of the situation.
The two of them had sex in the jacuzzi, right then and there. (Now, I
know what you're thinking - no, Jared told me he did use a condom.)
What's amazing is that no one noticed that Jared was missing. He had
his change of clothes back by the showers, but it didn't look like he
wasn't in the shower room. Afterwards, Jared rushed back to the shower
room, hurried, got dressed and innocently met a slightly disheveled
Tamara in the lobby.
Looking back on the whole thing, they essentially got away with one.
They consummated their relationship, and no one was the wiser. It
wasn't until Katie told me about it on our date on Monday night - the
first day of spring break - that my wonder as to why Tam seemed to
smell of chlorine water made sense.
Katie and I had a long talk that night, too. We decided that we should
wait until we were married to have sex. We weren't ready for the
possible "side effects" of sex - namely, kids and pregnancy. We did
have a good kiss-and-hold session, though; then we headed back to
Katie's house, where we were going to meet up with Jared and Tam.
What we didn't know was that everything was going to be turned upside
down the moment they walked in the door.
I guess I should explain my remark about "Streaker's Alley." It came
about when, in my freshman year, the first gal saw the first guy come
out of the shower with nothing on but a towel. It gradually evolved
from that into attempts by the girls to grab the towels off the guys as
they left the showers. Some of the gals were convinced that the guys
really weren't naked under the towels, and one or two of them tried to
prove it. The first time, the guy had on underwear. The second guy
didn't, and the gal chased him all the way into the guys' locker room.
That was when it evolved into gals "cutting through" the guys' showers
en route to the girls' lockers. It got to be a sort of initiation rite
for the girls - especially for the cheerleaders.
The teachers tried to stop it, but then they devised new ways of
"sneaking and streaking," as they say. Apparently, it was Tam who did
the ultimate "streak": she ran through the guys' showers, then through
the guys' lockers (away from the offices) and then out the door. Tam,
of course, never was the bashful type. Katie always contends this was
how Tam ended up as captain of the squad; Tam downplays it as
"coincidence."
Anyway, the same night that Katie and I were talking about life, Jared
was at basketball practice. (St. George's wasn't on Spring Break that
week.) Tam was going to meet him after practice to pick him up, then we
were going to meet at her house to watch some videos. Jared was his
usual "last guy in the gym" self, shooting baskets and working on his
jumper. Coach MacGwire, his assistant and the team manager were the
only ones still left in the building.
What happened next would change the lives of a lot of people. When Tam
pulled up, she saw coach MacGwire leaving the building. ("I saw him get
in his car and drive away," she told me later.) She wandered inside,
catching the manager as he was leaving. He told her that Jared was
still in the locker room. She then asked him if the girls' lockers were
open, since she needed to use the bathroom.
While she went into the girls' lockers to use the bathroom, Jared was
emerging from the showers next door in the boys' lockers. As he went
into the showers, Jared said that he saw MacGwire leave as he went into
the showers, but noticed that the light was still on in the coach's
office. He assumed that the assistant coach was still in there, which
he was.
Tam noticed that the locker room was laid out where the coaches couldn't
see if someone was coming in without directly looking at the door. That
was when she decided she was going to sneak in the locker room door,
"to see if Jared was almost ready to go," was her official explanation.
The unofficial explanation, according to Katie, was that "she wanted to
give him a blow-job right by his locker." Either way, Katie sneaked in
without being seen by the assistant coach, and found Jared's locker.
She nearly scared the crap out of him by grabbing him from behind.
Meanwhile, the assistant coach is in the office, jamming away to the
radio, completely oblivious to everything and obviously unaware that he
is the only person over the age of 21 in the entire building.
Jared and Tam both contend that they did nothing just then, but there's
just barely enough of a gap in all the stories that something could
have happened. Jared contends they argued over why the hell she came in
there. Tam says that Jared told her to lay off, he had to finish
getting dressed and then let the coach know he was leaving.
They both sneaked back to the entrance of the locker room (after he had
finished dressing). He told her to get out before coach MacGwire came
back in. Tam protested, telling him that MacGwire was gone, she had
seen him pulling away in his car several minutes before. They both saw
that the assistant coach was still listening to the radio and not
paying attention to the locker room.
He then urged her towards the door, telling her, "Get out before
somebody catches you in here."
Which was the exact moment that MacGwire came through the door. Tam
turned around and was face-to-face with MacGwire.
They all looked at each other.
There was a long moment of silence. Even the music stopped. That was
because the assistant coach had chosen that exact moment to come out of
the office.
"Get out of here, NOW!" MacGwire boiled. Jared and Tam raced out the
building, not even pausing to stop and listen as MacGwire continued to
rant. "You're HISTORY! You're GONE, THOMPSON! OFF THE TEAM, OUT THE
DOOR, NEVER GOING TO SET FOOT IN THIS BUILDING AGAIN!"
Jared was expelled from St. George's the next morning, on the "moral
turpitude" clause in the student conduct code book.
It probably isn't a big surprise that St. George's basketball team went
into a nose dive after that, losing their last three games of the
season and then promptly losing to St. Michael's in the first round of
the ISAA tournament. What was worse was that this was St. Michael's
first year with a basketball program.
Whitburn didn't fare any better. Woodfield tore us apart the next day,
just as all the accusations and finger pointing started. Jared was in
the stands for our game, watching his best friend and his soon-to-be
schoolmates (since he immediately transferred after the expulsion) get
whipped by the Eagles.
It was the last year of the four-team tournament for the conference
championship, too. Back in January, they announced that six out of the
seven HSAA teams in the Northern Lakes Conference would make the
conference tournament the next season. We all suspected that the change
was made to appease some ultra-liberal in Morgantown who wanted as many
teams to be eligible for the state tournament as possible - "to improve
the self-esteem of the players."
This season, however, Woodfield walked to the conference title by
winning their last three games. Then, they won the conference tourney
by beating Newsburg (who beat us, 76-53 in the semis), and advanced to
the HSAA final four. There, they ran up against Morgantown West, which
was a basketball factory. They had at least one guy go to the
McDonald's All-American All-Star Game three years in a row. Just a few
years before, they had an alumni end up with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks.
That is how good they are. They tore apart Woodfield the way the USA
Dream Team took apart Olympic opponents. Some weren't even as kind to
compare it to that; references in the Morgantown State Journal
mentioned that the Eagles "seemed to use the defensive schemes of the
Washington Generals."
Meanwhile, as you could guess, Jared was in a massive funk. He
transferred to Whitburn for two very important reasons: a.) the state
laws regarding school attendance stated that expulsion from private
schools made attendance at a public school mandatory; and b.) he had to
do it quickly or he would lose any hope of ever playing again. The HSAA
and ISAA had rules about transferring from school to school, and in
Jared's case, he would have to sit out one whole calendar year. The
one-year rule didn't apply if the move was voluntary (as in Chris
Smith's case, which meant he only had to sit out the rest of the school
year). Nor did it apply if the parents moved into the district (as in
Davey Wilson's case, when his parents moved to Whitburn from
Thompsonville - he was eligible to play for us the moment he stepped
through the door).
That summer, me, Chris and Jared went to Riverton for another 3-on-3
tournament sponsored by Riverton State University, which had just
become a lower-tier Division I NCAA school. We lost in the winner's
bracket finals to Mitch Jordan and two other members of the Riverton
North squad. Then, we beat the winning team from the loser's bracket,
and turned around and beat Jordan's threesome by a pair.
Only problem was, in the winner's bracket game, Jared and Jordan had
banged together going up for a rebound, and Jared twisted his ankle. He
gamely kept playing, but by the time we played our fourth game of the
day, he couldn't do much more than do the old "toreador" style of
defense (you know, "OLE!" as the offensive player goes by you).
Jared insisted that if they had just one more day, let the ankle rest,
then take them on, we could have won. This was a point well taken,
since he was fine when we finally got home the next day.
There was one last bit of justice that was served out of the expulsion
incident. Jared's younger sister, Jenny, still went to St. George's, so
Jared's dad and his Uncle Jerry (who was a trial lawyer) brought
negligence charges against MacGwire. It turned out that MacGwire not
only left his assistant in charge while there was an underage student
still in the building, but he also had no intent on returning. Had he
not stopped at the local KwikMart and discovered that he didn't have
his wallet, he wouldn't have come back to the school at all. (That was
why the assistant coach had stepped out of the office as MacGwire came
in - to hand him his wallet.) The charges stuck, and he was given the
pink slip as a teacher and as a coach at St. G's. Gerrold took over as
the interim basketball coach. He would resign as AD and coach within a
year.
The hearings that led to MacGwire's dismissal included testimony from
Tami and Jared. When both acknowledged that nothing improper happened
when Tami went into the locker room, the people of Whitburn County
believed them. Sympathy for Jared rose even as he finished out the year
at Whitburn. Some of the local businessmen who were members of the
Panther Pride Booster Club tried unsuccessfully to convince the HSAA to
rescind the "one-year rule" for transfer students.
Interestingly, MacGwire managed to get an assistant coaching position at
St. Mary's Immaculate University in Riverton. When Coach Mayers finally
retired, however, MacGwire didn't get the nod as the head coach. That
honor went to - you guessed it - Coach Roger Halvorsen.
Each year, the Panther Pride Booster Club paints a schedule for the
boys' and girls' interscholastic teams, and hangs them outside the
fieldhouse at the beginning of the new sports season. The schedule for
boys' basketball was apparently altered one night, and the date
"February 27" was circled in red paint. That was the game against St.
George's - but everyone knew that it was really the day that Jared came
back. And that was the date we were all waiting for.
The wait would be a long one for both Jared and me. At the first home
game of the season, I went up for a rebound and came down wrong on my
ankle. I knew the second I landed on it that I'd broken it. It hurt
like hell, and I had to be carried off the court to the hospital. Jared
came down from the stands to help me to the cart, and even went with me
and my dad to the hospital.
The break was bad enough where I wasn't going to be playing ball for a
couple of months. It didn't help that Chris came down with - are you
ready for this? - the measles while I was gone, and Davey couldn't take
up the slack by himself. We rattled off five straight losses, then
managed to win the first game of our holiday tournament against St.
Michael's when Chris came back. Unfortunately, after the game Davey
came down with the flu, and we promptly lost to Shoreland in the
championship round. After two more losses, I was finally able to walk
without a cane or a soft cast on my foot. I went out and got high-tops
that had a Velcro strap across the top, to protect the ankle from
further injury. In the first game back, I scored 25 and Davey and Chris
scored 21 each, and we whipped up on Marshall at their gym, 87-53. The
next game, we all scored over 20 again and beat Chemequon by 22.
Everyone at school was hyped up. Even though we were 4-9, we still had
seven games left, and four of them were at home.
The only problem was that the next game was against the team that had
won the state title two years ago, Riverton Tech. They'd lost three in
a row to Riverton North and Washura West, and were ready to take out
their frustrations on us.
It was bad from the opening tip. Chris went up to take the jump, and the
other center, Willie Green, just plucked the ball out of the air. Two
seconds later, he fired a pass to forward Marty Williamson, an all-HSAA
team member the previous season, who went up and laid it in. He then
promptly stole the in-bounds and laid it in again. We managed to get
the ball to half court, but then Williamson swiped it away from Chris
and went down for another uncontested lay-in. I called for the
no-dribble play, where we pass it up the court and try to set up a shot
on the perimeter. We got three clean passes, actually caught them
slightly out of position, and I fired a shot from behind the
three-point line. Trouble is, Green timed his leap and swatted the ball
down as it went up. The ball caromed off my good leg and shot into the
stands. I went down like a shot. The ref didn't buy it, but my leg was
hurting. Turned out that he just bruised it, but I was on the bench for
the rest of the game with an ice pack on my leg. They took the ball
down the court and scored again, and the rout was on. Tech ended up
shutting us out in the first half - yes, that's right, the entire first
half - by the score of 36-0. We actually made a few baskets on their
second stringers, but we never got within more than 40 points of them.
The final score was 62-12. All 12 of our points came after halfway
through the third period.
We didn't recover from that game. Woodfield promptly beat us at home
that Saturday, and three days later we lost to Newsburg at Newsburg. On
February 23, with four games to go in the season, Woodfield beat us
again to put us squarely in last place in the conference. Marshall, who
was having just as bad a season as we were, actually beat Newsburg at
Newsburg to put us one game down for the final spot in the conference
tournament.
When we got back to the locker room, there was a note on the blackboard
by the coaches' office: "MANDATORY PRACTICE MONDAY, 11:00 PM." We all
knew what it was about.
The practice was on the first day of Spring Break, but no one seemed to
care much about being on vacation. We don't usually have many people at
practice, but when word got around about the 11 o'clock practice, a lot
of the more supportive students showed up beforehand - along with Tam
and the varsity cheerleading squad. We ran through some drills, but
everyone knew that the real reason why we were there so late was in the
old Boys' Gym of Whitburn High School. He was playing intramural
basketball on a Monday night, keeping himself in shape. Katie was
assigned by Coach Mason to keep tabs on him that night. While we were
going through the drills, we kept sneaking looks at the clock on the
one end of the fieldhouse to see what time it was. Everyone was getting
antsy, and just about five minutes before midnight, Coach Mason got out
his cell phone and called over to the gym.
He blew the whistle on practice, and called all the players over. He
told us that he wanted to show us something. He took out a duffel bag,
unzipped it and pulled out a brand-new Whitburn jersey. It had the
number 12 on it. We all knew who it was for.
"There's this kid who wants to play for us," he told us. "I want to know
if we should let him play on our team or not. We have room on our team
roster, so none of you have to demote to the JV for him to play." A
smile came upon his lips. "Anyone have any objections?" We all started
shaking our heads vigorously. "Then it's settled. He'll be coming over
to join us any minute."
Tam had already stationed herself over by the door of the fieldhouse,
looking up the hallway by the pool towards the main school. "He's
coming!" she shouted out. Just then, the school bell rang to indicate
it was now midnight. Jared came strolling into the fieldhouse,
arm-in-arm with Katie and Tami.
The kids let out a long cheer, then chanted, "Jared! Jared! JARED!"
Mason quieted them down for a moment, and then turned to Jared to hand
him his new uniform.
"Here you go, Mr. Thompson, you're on the team." Another spontaneous
eruption from the students. Mason quieted them down again. "Now, as it
is, you're an hour late for practice. So after you go in there and
change, you've got free throws to do." Jared shook his head as the kids
in the stands cheered him out the door.
For the next five minutes, the entire assembly started the chant, "WE
are WHIT-burn!" with the staccato claps. Jared emerged from the locker
room with his fresh uni's and a great big smile on his face. Mason blew
the whistle before the crowd could start up again.
"Thompson! Go up to that line and give me 10 free-throws." Mason had a
team policy that, if you were late for practice, you would have to step
up to the line and sink 10 free-throws. If you missed any of them
before you sank the 10, that was how many laps you had to run around
the court to make up for it. I remember one kid who missed 20 shots and
only made five of the free throws. After he made the fifth one, coach
just told him to go run laps until he told him to stop. The kid
collapsed from exhaustion after about 15 laps. He quit the team the
next day.
Jared knew full well about this policy, and didn't flinch at all.
Instead, he calmly went to the line and proceeded to sink one
free-throw after another. One after one, they went in like clockwork.
He hit five in a row, then six, then seven, then eight. The ninth one
bounced off the back of the rim, bounced straight in the air, and went
swish right into the basket. Everyone had stopped to watch him do this.
He then bounced the ball a couple of times, looked up, let out a
breath, and sank the last free-throw. The crowd erupted as the ball hit
the floor. The entire team went over to mob him.
Mason was still in charge of the practice, however. He was smiling like
the Cheshire Cat, but he was still in charge. "Scrimmage!" he shouted
out. "Jared, you're with White." Half of the guys went over to the
bench and grabbed red vests and slipped them over their jerseys. It
wasn't surprising that Davey, Chris and me were on the White team with
Jared. Jared admitted he was a little tired from playing intramural
ball that night, but he was energized when he saw all the students
waiting for him in the fieldhouse. And Jared put on a show for them.
Chris and I just kept feeding him passes, and he kept shooting away and
made basket after basket. His "D" was tenacious, and when he swiped the
ball away from sophomore guard Jason Wiemer, he took the ball down the
court, launched himself and slammed the ball home with a two-hander. I
knew he could do it, but it was the force with which he did it that
energized the crowd.
At that point, Mason knew he was beat. He whistled practice over, and
told everyone to be there tomorrow night for the game against St.
George's.
The electricity in the air was intense at the Fieldhouse. Everyone knew
this was it, the return of the Jared Thompson. And he did not
disappoint. He rattled off 12 points in the first period, and we
dominated against his old school, 94-28. He went for a team-high 42
points, and even Gerrold came up to shake his hand after the game. The
win put us back in a tie for the last tournament spot, but we'd have to
win our last home game of the year to clinch the tiebreaker. We beat
Marshall in our previous meeting, and if we lost to them, they would
have the tiebreaker of most recent win. That didn't happen. Jared had
another 40 points - in the first half. He sat out for the entire second
half as we registered our first ever 100-point game in school history,
107-53. Davey and Chris each had 20 points, and I added 18. We didn't
even score in the last three minutes of the game, we were that far
ahead. Coach Mason put everyone in, and even Wiemer (who had warmed the
bench most of the season) managed to hit a trey for the 100th point of
the game.
The last game at St. George's was a tough one. Some of the people in
Thompsonville were still upset over Jared's tryst, and the students
even tried rattling him when he was introduced by throwing condoms out
onto the floor. Jared's response was to break the school record that he
never got a chance to break at St. George's - he scored 51 points to
lead the Panthers over the Crusaders, 98-58. Chris scored 20 behind
Jared, and actually claimed the scoring title away from Davey for the
season. He knew, however, who the real scoring leader of this team was.
Jared felt vindicated after the game when Gerrold told a reporter for
WHIT that "Thompson is probably the greatest player ever to play in
this fieldhouse. Bar none."
The last win vaulted us into the tournament as the sixth seed. We would
have to go up against #3 Oxford Lakes in the quarterfinals, as the top
two teams got a bye in the first round. The Lakers didn't have a chance
against us, and we beat them soundly behind Jared's 38 and my 24. Two
days later, we would play Woodfield in the semifinal game at Woodfield
Athletic Center, immediately after the other semifinal between Newsburg
and Shoreland. Newsburg handily defeated Shoreland, and we went into
hostile territory against the Woodfield Eagles.
Whitburn hadn't beaten Woodfield in basketball in about a decade at that
point. But Jared, Chris and Davey all had played Woodfield, and told
Coach Mason that the way they beat them years ago could work again. He
agreed, and emphasized to everyone on the team to let Jared and the St.
George transfers to dictate the tempo of the game.
What he didn't expect was how slow that tempo would be. Woodfield was
stubborn on not letting us get inside for any shots, and they were
guarding close to deny the trey. We won the opening tip-off, but
couldn't work it inside for the entire first period. Davey and Chris
took a couple of shots, but they missed and either Jared or I grabbed
the rebound and shot it back out to reset the play. The last shot of
the period we took missed, and the score was still tied at nothing
after eight minutes of play.
The Woodfield fans weren't too happy about our stalling, but Eagles'
coach Rod Maryland was getting more and more upset at his charges.
Neither team had any fouls, so Jared just suggested, "Let's let them
get into foul trouble. Maryland's gonna try to press us, we just draw
fouls and then kill them with free throws."
We went out to start the second period with Woodfield getting the ball
on the alternating possession rule. They took the ball down the court,
set up for a three on the outside with a screen that left Jose Gonzalez
(Miguel's brother) wide open. He put the shot up - and missed. Jared
came down with the rebound, and tried to wait for the Eagles to clear
out defensively. Instead, three of the Woodfield players surrounded
Jared and reached in. The ref blew the whistle for the foul, and moved
the ball to mid-court. Davey got the ball, wedged it in past the
Woodfield defender to Jared, who turned around and whack! Another foul.
Jared shot a look at the Woodfield bench at Coach Maryland. Then he
glanced over to Coach Mason, who just motioned with his hands to settle
down.
Jared looked at me, pointed to the sideline with two fingers, and
nodded. I knew exactly what he wanted to do. He slipped back to the
opposite sideline, waited, then slashed to the basket and leaped. I
launched the perfect alley-oop pass to the basket, and he grabbed it
and slammed it down. The Whitburn fans went wild.
The Eagles tried to in-bound, and Jared went right after the ball
carrier. He got whistled for the foul, and this time it was Woodfield's
turn to get the ball from center court. The pass was tipped in the air
by Davey, but the Eagles recovered the ball. They didn't rush things,
taking a page from our book. However, after two attempts at screening
out for a three and missing, Gonzalez had enough. The third time, he
took the screen and drove towards the baseline and shot. The ball
banked in off the glass, and Woodfield was on the board. We'd managed
to keep them scoreless for nearly 12 minutes, though. Jared took the
in-bound pass from Davey and was immediately set upon by two Eagle
defenders. Another foul, another possession at half-court. Davey tossed
the in-bound pass to me this time, and I went to pass to Jared.
Gonzalez took off and intercepted it, ran down the court and went in
for the uncontested lay-up.
Except for one thing - he missed the lay-up. The ball went clanging off
the back of the rim and back into my waiting hands. I grabbed the ball,
turned and fired a baseball pass to Jared. Gonzalez was scrambling to
get back to our side of the court, but I picked him up. Jared drove the
lane, shot and drew the foul - as the ball drained the net.
Jared calmly went to the line and sank the free throw to make it 5-2
with less than four minutes left in the half. Woodfield went down the
court, worked it in and Gonzalez sent up a 15-foot jumper to pull the
Eagles within one.
Predictably, the Eagles fouled us on the in-bound pass for the fifth
team foul. That was the last foul they had to give. We got the ball at
mid-court again, and Davey set up the rotation to Jared. Jared backed
the ball in, and we set up to stall. They went back into a 2-3 zone,
and tried to keep us from launching a three. Jared was patient. He knew
that we still had the one point lead. We did the stop-and-handoff play
a few times, getting the clock down to about a minute to go. The
Woodfield fans were booing us unmercifully.
Then, suddenly, with about 45 seconds to go, Maryland yelled out,
"Amoebae!" Suddenly, every Woodfield player pulled back from their
position towards the middle. Jared looked at me for a second, set up
and fired a three from the top of key. The ball swooshed through the
net, and we were up 8-4. On the in-bound play, Davey went after the
ball and hacked the Eagle player. Second team foul. We pressed them on
the in-bounds, and Woodfield Junior Tim Waterson had to call a time-out
before the five-second rule was called.
There were 39 seconds left on the clock. Coach Mason just said one thing
in our huddle - "Zone." We broke the huddle and went back out on the
court. We laid off the in-bound pass, set back in the zone, and kept
them away from the basket. They worked it around, tried to set up for a
clear-out, but couldn't do it. As the seconds ticked down, Gonzalez
tried a last-second drive to the basket, but got called for the charge
on Davey. It was the Eagles' sixth team foul, and we were in the bonus
with five seconds left. What was worse for Woodfield was that it was
Gonzalez's third personal foul.
Davey went down to the free throw line, and sank both free-throws to
make it 10-4. Waterson lobbed a pass down court to Gonzalez, who took a
last-second off-balance shot that bounced wildly off the backboard at
the buzzer.
We got the ball back for the third period, and it was more of the same.
They had five fresh fouls to use, and they used them quickly. All five
of their starters had at least two fouls three minutes into the third
period. And we still hadn't taken a shot in the half. After the fifth
foul, Maryland called time-out, then put three of his bench players out
on the floor. Jared smiled when he saw these three guys. So did Davey
and Chris. I looked at Jared, sort of puzzled. He mouthed to me,
"Jay-Vee!" and put up three fingers and two fingers. It suddenly dawned
on me - these were the JV guys he and St. George's JV had beaten badly
two years ago. Jared made some hand signals to Davey and Chris, and
Chris in-bounded the ball to Jared. Chris immediately switched over to
the opposite side, where Davey had been. Both took their defenders with
them, and Jared drove the crease that opened up. Easy lay-in, 12-4.
Maryland started pointing around like a madman. Waterson in-bounded to
one of the "JV" players, and Jared just slapped the ball cleanly out of
his hands and turned and laid the ball in. 14-4. We all came up,
following Jared's lead, and pressed the Whitburn bench players as hard
as we could. I got in the face of one of them, and got called for the
reach. We kept pressing on the in-bounds play at half-court, and one of
the bench players, a tall skinny kid, dribbled the ball off his foot
and out of bounds. We took over possession, and brought the ball in
uncontested. I gave the ball to Jared, and he dribbled around over to
the right. Davey then came up, got the ball from Jared, and executed
the perfect give-and-go. Jared laid it in to put us up by a dozen.
That was it for Maryland. He put Gonzalez back in, along with their
Senior point guard, Gary Kriesz. That didn't help them much. They
couldn't work it in, and Gonzalez got frustrated and tried to elbow his
way in to the basket. The ref called the foul, and the recipient,
Chris, went to the line. He sank both to put us up, 18-4. Maryland sent
in the rest of his starters (Marty Mathews and Abdul Muhammad), but we
were ready for them. We dropped back, and Jared even struck a "bring it
on" pose, beckoning the ball carrier to come down the court. They
worked it around, launched a three and finally scored their first
points of the half.
We had confidence on our side, though. Davey brought the ball up the
court with purpose, then passed it over to Chris. Chris dribbled,
worked it in a bit, then passed it to me. I worked it around to Mike
Martino, our "big man" in the middle. He made a perfect pass to Jared
in the clear, who let loose with a trey - and made it. 21-7, Panthers.
They scored once more, and Jared sank another trey before the period
was over, making it 24-9 through three periods.
Woodfield got the ball on the alternating possession rule to start the
period. Waterson made the in-bound pass to Gonzalez, who took it up the
court. And that was when things blew up for Woodfield. Gonzalez went up
for the shot and was called for a rather obvious elbow to the face of
Mike. The ball went in, and when the ref waved off the basket, Gonzalez
went absolutely freaking nuts. Mike was on the floor, holding his nose,
while Maryland was trying to restrain Gonzalez. After a while, the ref
had enough and slapped the "T" for technical on Gonzalez. It was his
sixth, so he was gone, regardless. Two assistant coaches had to nearly
drag Gonzalez off to the locker rooms. Coach Mason called a time out,
and our trainer and some EMT's from Woodfield Rescue Services worked on
Martino. Mike got up, with blood droplets on his jersey, and managed to
walk dazedly back to the bench. The EMT's walked him over to the side
door where the ambulance was waiting, and they took him to the
hospital.
The rest of the game wasn't pretty. Jared took all four free throws for
Mike, and sank all four to make it 28-9. We exchanged possessions and
baskets, and when the buzzer sounded, the final was 42-21. Jared had 30
points, he dished off four assists in the final period to get Chris,
Davey and me all up to four points each.
The best thing was, we were heading for the conference finals against
Newsburg.
The finals were a dénouement (that's one of those big words I got from
Katie) for us, of sorts. We came out gunning against Newsburg, and won
it handily, 56-38. Jared didn't play the last six minutes, since we
were up by 18. We were awarded the conference trophy, cut down the nets
and had a healthy post-game celebration over at Jared's place. Best
thing of all was that Mike's broken nose was healing properly. He'd be
ready to play in the State Tournament (even though we started calling
him "Jason" for his protective mask).
Then we found out who we'd be playing in the first round of the tourney:
Lakeside Washington. They were undefeated on the season, a perfect 24-0
on the season. They also hadn't lost a single game by less than eight
points all season. We were ranked as the number eight seed in the
tournament, and thus drew the number one seed in the first round.
Unlike the ISAA Tournament, the HSAA didn't re-seed pairings after each
round. Instead, the winner of 1 vs. 8 played the winner of 4 vs. 5,
while the winner of 2 vs. 7 played the winner of 3 vs. 6.
Lakeside had a lot of decent players, but the scary guy was Conrad
Horton. He was already an All-American player, and he had a scholarship
to go to North Carolina to play for Dean Smith. Horton was the one who
just dazzled everyone. When we went down to Morgantown for the
tournament, the State Journal listed him as one of the top three
players in the state. The other two were Morgantown West's Barry Thomas
and Jared's old foe, Riverton North's Mitch Jordan. Not a word was said
about Jared.
The tempo of the game was set from the opening tip. We got the ball, and
Jared took the ball in. Horton guarded Jared closely, but didn't really
see him as much of a threat. Jared gave him a head-fake, juked and
drove and sank the lay-in. Horton took the ball down the court, and did
the exact same thing. This went on for most of the rest of the game:
the rest of us touching the ball momentarily, then Jared and Horton
going into their game of one-on-one. The score was tied at 16 after
one, then 24 after two, then 40 after three. All of the points came
from the two of them.
Before the fourth quarter, Jared pulled me, Chris and Davey aside. "I
don't know if he's got much of a supporting cast," he told us. "I'm
going to try to work the ball to you guys, then clear him out. See if
you can get around the others."
Washington took the in-bound for the fourth quarter. Horton brought it
down, and instead of finding Jared on him, I was guarding him. He
half-sneered at me, and promptly drove the basket. Jared planted
himself at the side, and Horton didn't see him. Wham! The two of them
went crashing into the Whitburn cheerleaders behind the basket. Tami
managed to catch Jared, but Horton went barreling into the post of the
basket. He stepped back, woozy for a moment, then turned around to see
the ref pointing at him.
He then walked over to the bench, apparently groggy from the encounter
with Jared. The coach hastily called a time out, then grabbed Horton by
the shoulder to try to ask him why he was leaving the game. That was
when he passed out, right into the arms of his coach.
After that, we lit up the rest of the Washington squad. We ran off a
dozen unanswered points before Washington could even realize what
happened. They managed to get Horton back to his senses, but he didn't
have the same effect when he went back in. He managed to get off a
jumper to get back within 10 points, but then we went on another tear.
We scored 10 more unanswered points, without Jared taking a single
shot. After we took a 62-42 lead, Jared signaled for time and took
himself out of the game. Horton seemed to think it was going to be his
time to take the game over, but Chris, Davey and me put on a clinic,
scoring another dozen points. The final score was 74-44. Horton had
scored all 44 of his team's points. Jared also scored 44 - but it was
the rest of us who beat Lakeside Washington.
Afterwards, it was discovered that Horton had a mild concussion from the
collision with the basket, and couldn't concentrate for the rest of the
game. The concussion was what eventually led to him losing his
scholarship at UNC. He apparently developed double vision, and couldn't
tell which basket to shoot at.
Morgantown West had won their quarterfinal game against Marbury Central,
and it looked like it was another case of one great player (Barry
Thomas) and 11 other guys. Jared tested that theory early instead of
late in this contest, and it became painfully obvious that Thomas was
the only offense Morgantown West had. Though the partisan crowds at MSU
Fieldhouse were vocal, Thomas couldn't shake Jared's tenacious defense.
He limited Thomas to only 12 first half points, while we lit up the
rest of the West squad for 24. Jared was working so hard at containing
Thomas that midway through the third period, he only had 10 points.
Thomas, however, was stuck at a dozen, and would get only four more.
The rest of the West squad only had four points, while Chris, Davey and
me poured it on. With a minute to go, we were up 50-24. Coach Mason sat
all of us down and put in the reserves. The reserves promptly scored
four times in the last minute to give us a 58-24 win. Jason Wiemer
scored twice, including the last bucket on a steal of - amazingly -
Barry Thomas.
We went nuts when the horn sounded. We were going to be the first
Whitburn High team to play for the state title in basketball in school
history. What's more, we were going to be going up against Riverton
North - and Jared had a scored to settle with Mitch Jordan.
The joy of victory wasn't going to last long, though.
The Morgantown State Journal was the first to publish the information
about Jared's "expulsion" from St. George's. They even found out that
Tami was "still" on the Whitburn cheerleading squad. They had the photo
of when Jared had fallen into the crowd after colliding with Horton,
and noted that "the girl who was apparently involved in the incident
causing his expulsion was the one who caught him."
As soon as Jared heard about this, he gave a copy of the Journal to his
Uncle Jerry. Mr. Thompson proceeded to call up the paper and inform
them that they were being sued in Whitburn County court for libel
against a minor.
The revival of the whole incident turned a time that should have been
special into one of anger. Phone calls to Tami and Katie's house were
coming from various papers who wanted to confirm the story. Some TV
reporters, including this Geraldo Rivera-like creature from Riverton's
WRTN-TV who tried to "ambush" Tami as she was leaving for Morgantown
for the championship.
Jared and I managed to find a few quiet moments in our hotel room in
Morgantown. Coach Mason and my dad had arranged that we'd be alone,
away from the throngs of reporters and other people who wanted to grill
Jared.
We talked for a long time. He told me that he was going to propose to
Tami at the graduation ceremony in June. I laughed. "How romantic," I
told him. "After all of this grief."
"Hey, why not," he told me. "She's stuck with me through this, the rest
of our lives should be a cinch."
I started this whole story by saying that things just happened the way
they did, and that I never planned for things to wind up the way they
did. Well, I never planned that we'd be in the state finals. I didn't
plan that we'd win it on a last-second buzzer-beater shot over Riverton
North.
I didn't even plan on taking that shot.
I also didn't plan on Jared not being on the court with me when I took
the shot. Jared had fouled out of the game moments before, which led to
Riverton taking the lead with four seconds left. Jordan had contained
Jared pretty well, but Jared had taken Mitch off his game at the same
time. The game was close, and when Davey lobbed the pass down the court
to me, I just tried to get a clear shot away.
It went in.
I still have that photo today, showing me lofting the ball towards the
hoop, looking for all the world like Greg Louganis about to do a
jack-knife dive for double difficulty.
I remember landing on the floor, seeing the ball go in, raising my arms
in triumph, and being mauled by the entire team. I remember having one
of the nets draped around my neck like a scarf, and squeezing Jared
hard while our pep band kept playing the school song.
All these years later, the framed photo of the team around the trophy
hangs in my office. The kids look at the photo, and usually make some
comment about how goofy I looked. But then, when they step outside the
PhysEd office and the boys' locker room and look at the Whitburn High
School trophy case, they see the State Boys' Basketball Championship
trophy sitting there, large as ever.
And I can tell they are really in awe.
A voice behind me brings me back down to earth:
"Ah, Mertzen, I'd have made that shot if Jordan hadn't been in my
jockstrap all day."
And I turn to laugh at the snide remark of my boss, the head coach at
Whitburn High School.
"Yeah, Jared, but don't forget that I took that shot - and made it."
"Bet you a soda I can take you in one-on one," he says. I laugh again.
"You're on." And we both jog into the fieldhouse for another game of
impromptu hoops.
Just like old times. Just like it's always been.
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