In my time on the beat I've seen players headed to Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Cal and Notre Dame, as well as some of the top uncommitted players in the area. I've covered some really close and intense games, and was even able to write about Evanston-New Trier without my allegiances pouring into my story. The experience has been very educational, and I think I've improved my writing a lot, especially filing stories on tight deadlines.
The experience has also been quite hilarious at times. This isn't much of a surprise. These are 16, 17 and 18 year-old kids who have a lot of pressure on them and take the game of basketball very seriously, but at the same time, want to enjoy themselves. So here, for your enjoyment, are just some of the things I've seen on the high school basketball beat:
- It's a custom at basketball games for the cheerleaders to have a little competition of their own. One team's cheerleaders will do a routine, then their opponents will try to match or top that. The act is great for the fans of the respective schools to support their team, getting the entire crowd into a frenzy. At the Evanston-Waukegan game I covered, the custom almost resulted in a fight. Halfway through the fourth quarter, with the Bulldogs holding a three point lead, the sold-out gym was going nuts. One team took a timeout, and one of the ETHS cheerleaders began to do backflips. Flip after flip after flip, and by the time the TO was over, she had gone the entire length of the floor, all 94 feet. When she wound up on the other baseline, directly in front of the Waukegan cheerleaders (and the media table, where I was sitting), the Evanston girl spread her arms out and yelled "What now!" The orange-and-blue clad crowd was going nuts, the PA system was banging some type of hip-hop, and the Waukegan cheerleaders wanted to respond. But the game was about to resume. That didn't stop one girl. She had to be restrained by one of her teammates from either fighting the Evanston cheerer or attempting to do the backflip feat of her own.
- I covered the quarterfinals - all four games - of the Chicago Public League girls tournament. None of the contests were very competitive, but this assignment was noteworthy for two reasons: 1- It was held at Attack Athletics, which is the gym that Pres. Obama balled at on election day last November. It's owned and run by Tim Grover, who I got to meet and talk with a little bit. (Google the name if you don't know why that's really exciting.) 2- This was the song that they used for player introductions for all four games. You couldn't measure how wide my smile was every time this was played.
- At Maine South, I sat in the bleachers because they didn't have a press table. No big deal, that's fairly common in high school gyms. When halftime came, I stood to stretch my legs and must have caught the attention of the two 11-year olds sitting an aisle next to me. They asked if I was writing about the game, and if so, for what newspaper. I told them the Sun-Times and wrote down my name, and they each said they would check the next days paper for it. That's cool. Then they asked me which team I was rooting for. I tried explaining that I didn't care who won, only that it was an interesting game that ended fairly quickly. This didn't satisfy them. I repeated that I didn't have a preference between the schools, especially because I'd attended Evanston, a conference rivals to both squads. Finally one of the kids informed me his older brother was the shooting guard for Maine South. My response was that I hope your bro has a great game and that I can write about him for the paper. This put a smile on their faces and stopped the Q&A. (The guard wound up not playing very well and not earning a mention in the article.)
- Other tight songs that I hadn't heard for a good 10 years before I began covering high school hoops: Hit Em High (heard at Lake Forest), Gettin Jiggy With It (heard at Glenbrook North) and Breathe, Stretch, Shake (OK, that's only been like five years, but still funny. Heard at New Trier).
- My #1 best story: It was the boys Public League playoffs, with the No. 3 team in the area, Foreman, versus the high school that produced Kevin Garrnett and Ronnie Fields, Farragut. The fourth quarter had just started, and the game was physical. Whistles about once-a-minute physical. (For those of you who don't know, winning the Public League Title is equally, if not more important, to city schools than winning the state title is. Schools would rather be the best in Chicago than best in all of Illinois.) So a Formean player grabs a rebound, is bumped by a Farragut player, and the Foreman player responds with a shove. Whistle blows, but the kids are still in each other's faces. Benches storm the court, refs and coaches try to break it up, even plenty of fans ran out into the middle of the action. I seriously thought there was going to be a European hooligan-esque brawl right in the middle of this gym on Chicago's Northwest side. Chicago Public School reps are on the microphone, telling people to get off the court or there could be a forfeit. Then out of nowhere, the only kid wearing a basketball uniform that wasn't in the middle of the fight walks right by me. His right arm is in a cast and obviously isn't able to play. This kid is walking at a normal pace, unlike everybody else who sprinted onto the court. And also unlike everybody else, this kid is holding with his left hand a folding chair, likely the very chair he'd been sitting on for the past hour on the bench. I had no clue if he was going to pull a Young Buck on somebody or if he just wanted to sit closer to the action. All I know is this kid looked as calm as can be, walking into the middle of a brawl with one arm in a cast and the other holding a chair. I couldn't help but crack up after seeing that. (Nobody got hurt, nobody got ejected and the game resumed after like three minutes. I never got to find out what the chair kid was going to do, because the fight was broken up by the time he made it to the scene.)
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