This blog is about me. It is my best basketball moment. The accent is on “moment”.
It was 1956 and I was a junior in high school. Yep, I was on the basketball team. In fact I was on two basketball teams that year. I would play in the first of two games every game night. I played Junior Varsity as a starting forward and then in the second game on Varsity as a guard. I guess the idea was to give me lots of playing time!
This is about the junior varsity game of 1956-1957 season played at Kohler, Wisconsin. The Kohler team was loaded with talent and within a couple years would win one (maybe two) Class C State Basketball Championships. Kohler had a very small gym and it was packed.
My dad was always my biggest fan. He was also a pain in the ass because there was something he felt I should be doing better. For some reason he didn’t get to the game until the JV game was over.
The JV game was close. We got within the final minute and we were down by 3 points and we had the ball. I don’t remember all the details but we scored with 4 seconds left on the clock. We were now behind by one point.
Our coach was Warner Finke (friends knew him as Soup) called time out. Our plan was to pressure Kohler with our defense to try and prevent Kohler from inbounding the ball from under our basket. Yeah, right. If we could force an error or steal the ball, we needed to get a quick shot or the game was over. The score was 37-36 in favor of Kohler.
My assignment was to play in front of their guard as they tried to inbound the ball. I must have done a pretty good job because there was a great deal of confusion by the Kohler player trying to throw the ball into play. Wouldn’t you know that I played the defense perfectly (for a change) and managed to “out jump” their guard for the ball and I had a clean steal. The clock was starting to run. The crowd was going nuts with “shoot, shoot, shoot”! I remember everything being in slow motion like you see in the movies. I had intercepted in the corner of the court and was facing the basket from the side. I took several steps towards the basket and took a long jump shot over their defender. The clock went off while the ball was in the air. I do remember the screaming crowd. The shot was pure. It ripped the net never touching the rim. Plymouth wins. Plymouth wins. Plymouth wins. The final score was 38-37.
It couldn’t have been scripted any better. It was the shot every kid dreams of. Steal the ball, shoot, win. Yes!
Now the crowd was really nuts. I remember being mobbed by other players and fans came out of the stands. Does it get any better?
Then I realized that we had another game to play. This was the JV game. We still had the Varsity game to play and I was on that team too. I have to admit that I had trouble focusing on the Varsity game and we ultimately got trounced because we had a Varsity team that sucked. I remember our Varsity coach (Dave Sauer) telling me to keep shooting hoping some of the magic from the first game would rub off. Alas, it didn’t.
But you can’t take that final shot to win the game away from me. It is vivid in my memory. It is like yesterday. In my dreams the ball always goes in the basket. It always rips the net.
It is ironic that it is one of the few games that my dad did not make on time. He missed a special moment. I’d have loved to see his face when he got to the game and they told him Chuckie won the game at the buzzer. That might have been more interesting “the shot”.
It was the perfect ending. It was the perfect shot. It is the perfect moment!
Love,
Dad