I don’t miss high school basketball season that much. At least that’s what I tell myself for two-thirds of the year.
Missing high school basketball would also mean missing winter, and I don’t miss winter. If I lived in some tropical locale, I would miss winter for precisely 12 hours, from 6 p.m. Christmas Eve to 6 p.m. Christmas Day. So why would I waste any of my diminishing brain power between April and November missing winter or anything to do with it?
But I do miss high school basketball.
I always realize after the fact, about five seconds after the first jump ball of the season, it occurs to me that there has indeed, been a void in my life.
Not a big one, mind you. Not the kind of void losing a loved one would leave, certainly. Not the same kind of void the NFL leaves as soon as I realize all that stands between me and that dreadful abyss I call “FebruMarch” is the Pro Bowl. But a void, nonetheless.
Of course, high school hoops is about the only thing that gets me through FebruMarch, and that is why I am always glad to see it tip off again. The start of the regular season reminds me that basketball will keep me from falling into a irreversible gloom while trudging through the brown snow/slush on my way to and from the office, shivering through the early mornings before the furnace kicks in and sniffling through the inevitable cold and bird flu season.
Basketball reminds me there is still hope and beauty to be found in the deepest, darkest winters. Every time someone breaks a press with a touch pass, every time someone in the high post spots a teammate going back door, every time a 5-foot-6 point guard drives the paint and throws one up-and-in over a 6-foot-8 center, my heart does its own little fist pump because good basketball is one of the few reasons outside of enjoying my family that my brain will release any endorphins during the winter.
Truthfully, the basketball isn’t always great here in Maine. I’ve seen many a clunker in my time, and if you’ve followed high school basketball here for more than a year, you have too. Those are the days and nights when I’m content to spend my time with the people involved in the sport. They are easily the nicest, funniest and most passionate people I deal with in my line of work.
Basketball is the best high school season of all. It builds for two months, then reaches its crescendo at just the right time, during February break, when everyone who cares goes to Augusta or Bangor or Portland and everyone who doesn’t goes to Florida. Football season reaches its crescendo at the conference championships. Sorry pigskin fans, it’s a fact. Baseball reaches its zenith around the time everybody would rather be at the beach. And hockey has too many 12-to-1 games to be taken seriously.
Basketball is a lot more than a past-time. It’s a reason to leave the house when there’s nothing else but germs and black ice waiting for you. It gives you excitement without having to risk life and limb hurtling yourself down a mountain. It gives you camaraderie without having to freeze your butt off sitting around a hole in the ice with a bunch of b-s-ers and a 12-pack under your arm.
Basketball is resisting my urge to smack somebody in the back of the head the next time I hear them yell “Hey ref, call it both ways.”
Basketball is me doing a spit take anytime someone sees me at a game with my clipboard and asks me if I’m a scout.
Basketball is the optimism that I feel for our future when I see students actually paying attention to the action on the court instead of gossiping in the bleachers.
Basketball is the chill that goes up my spine when I see a kid make a game-winning shot at the Augusta Civic Center and realize that he’s just made a memory that will stay with him for the rest of his life.
Basketball is underway at a gym near me and you.
Winter, on the other hand, is still 10 days away.
Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. He can be reached by e-mail at rwhitehouse@sunjournal.com
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