Yes, and Charlie Bond was hit by a DRIVER, not a car.

Best wishes to Charlie Bond, who is familiar to anyone who walks downtown. He's recovering from being hit by a DRIVER, not a car, which is doubly interesting in that the local chain newspaper pays tribute to the man's legendary status as super basketball fan, without ever having once mentioned the Spring Street incident that sent him to the hospital.

I wonder what happened? Isn't that why we have newspapers in the first place? Maybe Bill should send hyper-content provider Tom May to either get the story, or proselytize. There's probably a third column slot in there somewhere.

No wonder there is a proliferation of chiropractors. You spend all your time shaking your head.

MORRIS: Every team needs a super fan like Charlie Bond, by Chris Morris (Tom May Every Day and Sunday)

... While sitting around last week recovering from a medical procedure, I found out that Charlie was hit by a car along Spring Street in New Albany. He suffered numerous injuries and was taken to University of Louisville Hospital. It will be a long recovery ...

 ... But just like there has never been another player like Romeo Langford, there will never be another fan like Charlie Bond. He has gained legendary status by just being Charlie. He lives for basketball season. He’s a true Bulldog.

To New Albany's Joe Dean, it was string music. For me, high school basketball was a mixed gym bag.

Sectional champs, 1978.

Last night, Floyd Central beat New Albany in boys basketball for the first time in 15 years, a span of time comprising 20 consecutive losses. There are hundreds of potentially interesting topics to be spun from this sporting news, but I like to pick my spots, which in this instance is the opportunity to recall my own underachieving career in high school basketball.

These lightly edited and updated thoughts have appeared at least twice here previously, most recently in March of 2014. They may not be particularly edifying, but at least they're honest.

---

ON THE AVENUES: String music?

It has been 39 years since my final basketball game as a member of Floyd Central’s varsity.

I'm occasionally reminded of this ancient factoid, like when a Facebook friend request came to me from my former coach, Joe Hinton. I duly accepted the request, and thought it very nice of him to ask. We didn’t always see eye to eye back in the day, but it’s been long, long ago.

One quite tumultuous time, we were on entirely different pages. It was late in the basketball season during my senior year, as my decidedly non-illustrious career was fast approaching a merciful conclusion. At a practice session just prior to the 1978 sectional, the coaching staff revealed the official tournament roster, and the list didn't include my name.

Granted, the omission was mostly deserved based on purely inconsistent performance, and yet I was annoyed at what I perceived as a slight, responding with a two-hour concentrated display of faux "go team" enthusiasm and contrived, vaudevillian, entirely mock "rah-rah."

This apparently was mistaken by the coaching staff for a death bed conversion to team spirit, if not genuine depth of feeling. The following day, I was reinstated to the roster. It never dawned on me to pursue a career in acting, or I might be portraying Josh Dallas’s father on television by now.

Happily, or so it seemed, I'd neglected reporting this turn of events to my father. Unhappily, his old friend (Hinton) already had done so, which may have been the devious intent from the beginning. The whole off-and-on scenario did little to improve matters on the home front.

As the late Gomer Pyle once said: “Surprise, surprise, surprise."

---

Almost 40 years later, I can't attribute truly coherent motives to my teenage ambivalence about sports, these ultimately meaningless games being just about the only form of communication between a father and his son. The father was an ex-Marine who had traded athletic opportunities for three years as a gunner on a Navy ship in World War II, and he was keen – perhaps overly so – to see his son succeed at basketball and baseball.

However, the son just wasn't wired for this kind of pressure, at least during those hormonally-charged years, and surely it is indicative of my fundamental disconnect that while I always enjoyed the essence of the games themselves and still do, my favorite book about sports was (and remains) Jim Bouton's Ball Four, which celebrated the timelessness of baseball while exposing the vacuous and inane nature of jock culture.

Bouton spoke directly to me, fervently and personally. I fancied myself a thinker, not a sweat hog. I'd have gladly settled for "thinker and lover, not a fighter," except that I hadn't been able to convince any girls of my credentials, and in truth, doubted whether any such talent existed.

So, it came back to me and my brain, together against the world. It should suffice to say that locker rooms were mind-free zones, and brains in sports were the object of lingering suspicion unless one happened to be an otherwise semi-literate point guard who could remember the plays and run the offense.

There I was, kicked off the senior-dominated basketball team and then placed back on it, contemplating yet again how it came to be that we were such persistent underachievers as a squad, utterly failing to capitalize on the rosy potential predicated by all observers, including my still simmering dad … and understanding, as I always had, that it all owed to a lack of cohesion.

In other words, too few of us liked each other off the court, and this distaste had a way of being glaringly obvious on the court, to Joe Hinton's fuming dismay.

Our sectional draw was a breeze. We were lumped into a bracket with smaller rural schools as a result of one or the other cynical maneuverings common to the political byways of the purportedly pristine Indiana state sport of basketball, which naturally had much more to do with smoky hotel room maneuvers at the national political party conventions of the 1920's than the farmyard ideal preferred by so many fans.

The cheering section probably knew better, but worshipped all the same.

We won the sectional and advanced to play Scottsburg in the Saturday morning game at the Seymour Regional the following week. The Warriors, from a school far smaller than ours, had nonetheless soundly thrashed us at home a few weeks earlier.

In today's parlance, Floyd Central had "match-up" problems with Scottsburg, which is to say that they had one of their finest teams ever; though not demonstrably better at every position, the Warriors played as a team, something we couldn't match.

I knew there would be little playing time for me, and at that point, it no longer mattered. Amid much hoopla and a special pep rally, we boarded the bus on Friday afternoon for the 40-minute drive, an early evening shoot-around, a buffet meal and an overnight stay at the Days Inn.

At this juncture, two worlds were set to collide.

While some of my best high school friends were athletes, only a few of them were on the basketball team. I mostly ran in different circles, and at various times, yes, there was beer involved, though seldom if ever during the basketball season. Ambivalence aside, I tried to play it straight as often as possible.

But for the Saturday regional festivities, a few of my heartier-partying friends had reserved a room at the very same hotel where the team was staying – only my buddies called it the Daze Inn, and planned to treat it accordingly.

---

Floyd Central unceremoniously exited the tournament in the morning session, and Scottsburg advanced to meet Clarksville in the evening finale. I'd like to remember that in defeat, we came together as a team and grasped an eternal cliched truth or three, but from my perspective, all I felt was pervasive relief that finally, at long last, the ordeal was over.

There was a post-game chat and showers, and we returned to the hotel to eat and waste a dilatory afternoon playing euchre before riding back to the gym on the bus and watching the championship game, which was to be our last solemn obligation as a dysfunctional unit.

You've probably already guessed what happened next.

I promptly stole away from the ennui, and by the time the bus exited the Daze Inn parking lot several hours later, I was completely and blissfully smashed.

The bathtub in the party room was filled with canned beer and ice, and a story already was making the rounds as to how the designated underage beer buyer with his older brother's ID had run into a few of our teachers at the exact same package store and exchanged earnest pleasantries with them at the checkout counter.

Me? I was just happy to shed the weight of expectations and get myself dazed, even if remaining as clueless as always with respect to how the future would play out, although perhaps my vocational path forward in the beer and brewing business already was being plotted amid the plodding.

Eventually one of the assistant coaches dressed me down outside in the hotel courtyard when he saw that I held a smoldering Swisher Sweet in my hand. Did I really want to be kicked off the bus and suspended for smoking?

No, not at all, and I snubbed it out, because I'd already decided that my final act of courageous defiance against The Man (which one, exactly?) would be to drink a beer on the team bus in route to the evening championship game, and this I proceeded to do -- already crazily intoxicated, strategically seated all the way in the rear, a Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull artfully hidden in my gym bag, top popped discretely, and chugged quickly before hiding the empty again for the post-game ride home with my parents.

I'm neither proud nor ashamed of these recollections.

I did what I could with what I had at the time, and if awarded a time-travel "do over," probably I'd have worked harder at sports -- not for anyone else’s satisfaction, but for my own.

In retrospect, my work ethic was there all along, if latent and inchoate; it took a while for it to emerge fully formed, later in life. So be it. In truth, the thing I miss most about high school is singing in choir, not playing ball. I didn't know it then, but I know it now.

I'm forever hopeful that in the cosmic scheme of things, the ability to learn from one's youthful angst and missteps is what matters most. If not, I may be in serious trouble.

To this year's high school basketball players, my best wishes. If you're lucky, you'll forget all about it very, very soon.

Billy Reed on New Albany's Romeo Langford.

Goebbels grins broadly from his desk in Hell. 

With the Indiana class basketball (see below) tournament about to begin, it's the perfect time of year to recall my checkered career of clubhouse lawyering, otherwise known as "my time in high school hoops."

ON THE AVENUES: String music?

However, the son just wasn't wired for that kind of pressure, at least during those hormonally-charged years, and surely it is indicative of my fundamental disconnect that while I always enjoyed the games themselves and still do, my favorite book about sports was (and is) Jim Bouton's "Ball Four," which celebrated baseball while exposing the vacuous and inane nature of jock culture.

Bouton directly spoke to me, fervently and personally. I fancied myself a thinker, not a sweathog. I'd have gladly settled for "lover, not a fighter," except that I hadn't been able to convince girls of my credentials in the former, and in truth, doubted whether any such talent existed, and so it came back to me and my brain against the world.

So, while I'm fond of reminding New Albanians that it would be wonderful if they paid closer attention to matters of genuine significance, like the decisions made by local government, I much admire Billy Reed as a writer, and therefore when he says Romeo is in the house, I can accede with grace.

It's all about the words, and not the distractions. Reed is laudatory, and also provides the necessary context. That's what great writers do.

Billy Reed: Romeo, oh Romeo, legend in the making, where will you go from New Albany? (Northern Kentucky Tribune)

... But on this night, special electricity crackled through the 4,500-seat gym, where fans sat cheek-to-cheek on the hard bleachers and the overflow spilled over into the aisles the fire marshal be damned. It was an eclectic crowd of old-timers and kids, but they were bound by something more than just a rivalry game.

Romeo was in the house.

That would be Romeo Langford, the 6-foot-5 New Albany High junior who already is approaching legendary status in a state steeped in basketball folklore and history. One recruiting guru has described him as “Damon Bailey with more athleticism.”

Reed also makes a point worth repeating. Hoosiers had a golden goose, and shot it dead.

The main thing that will keep Langford from reaching Bailey’s legendary status has nothing to do with his game. It’s the fact that a lot of mystique was lost in 1998, when the state went from an all-comers state tournament to four divisions. This, in effect, sent Cinderella into retirement.

As a sophomore last season, for example, Langford led New Albany to the state 4-A championship. That’s nice, but it’s not the same as being the ONLY state champion. As we learned from the movie Hoosiers, the essence of high school ball in Indiana was the enduring dream of a small rural school coming to the big city and becoming champs of the whole state.

Do something fast, or else he'll start drawing up plays.

Nixon's tricks not in Redskins' playbook, by Jennifer Allen (ESPN)

Finally, a basketball coach says something interesting.

I haven't cared much for the topic of high school basketball for about as long as the period since Floyd Central's last sectional title, which came when the Berlin Wall still stood.

The announcement itself was about to pass unnoticed ...

Floyd Central names Todd Sturgeon boys basketball coach, by Justin Sokeland (Courier-Journal)

Floyd Central hired former college coach Todd Sturgeon as its new boys’ basketball coach during Friday’s meeting of the New Albany-Floyd County Schools board of trustees.

 ... but I kept reading, and despite the cliche-ridden utterances commonly emitted by the basketball coaching profession, guess what? Two very interesting observations were forthcoming.

(Sturgeon) also wants his team to mirror the discipline and toughness of college teams such as Virginia, Wisconsin and Butler.

“Those are the teams that reflect what I would like to put on the floor,” Sturgeon said. “We have an outstanding academic school, so I would like to think we would play a team reflective of that, that we will play intelligent basketball and also tough basketball.

“My biggest focus is changing the mentality. I think we need to practice more and play fewer games. We have an AAU culture in American basketball right now that Floyd Central, in particular, has suffered from. We just have to roll up our sleeves and get to work, concentrate on getting better today. If we get better at the fundamental things, we’ll see large improvements in the win-loss columns.”

Sturgeon's incoming analysis yields an under-utilized asset (intelligence) and posits a plausible fix: Combine intelligence with attention to a culture change of stressing fundamentals.

For the first time in a quarter-century, my curiosity is piqued.

Can someone please remind me to pay attention this fall?

Lieberman is guided elsewhere following another disastrous FCHS campaign.

According to the News and Tribune, "The Mark Lieberman era at Floyd Central High School has come to an end after one season."

It is noted that in his one season at FCHS, Lieberman "guided" his team to a 5-18 record. I always enjoy the use of this word in such a context, given that ...

v. guid·ed, guid·ing, guides
v.tr.
1. To serve as a guide for; conduct.
2. To direct the course of; steer: guide a ship through a channel.
3. To exert control or influence over.
4. To supervise the training or education of.

I'd prefer writing it this way: "Lieberman presided over a 5-18 record."

Apart from the unsightly blemish on the departing coach's record, it gets even worse for hill people with this stunner:

The Highlanders have not won the Hoosier Hills Conference title and a sectional championship since 1989.

Dude: A quarter-century?

I'll freely admit to caring very little about high school sports, especially since class basketball poisoned the well, but as a product of the 1960s- and 70s-era FCHS basketball program, it gets a little embarrassing to acknowledge this Pittsburgh Pirates-level streak of futility even after the numerous valid qualifications and extenuating explanations are duly read into the historical record.

Duly read, duly noted. Back to apathy. Ciao.

ON THE AVENUES: String music?

ON THE AVENUES: String music?

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It has been 36 years since my final basketball game as a member of Floyd Central’s varsity.

I was reminded of this ancient factoid in the rear view mirror because a Facebook friend request recently came to me from my former coach, Joe Hinton. I duly accepted the request, and thought it nice of him to ask. We didn’t always see eye to eye back in the day, but it’s been long, long ago.

One quite tumultuous time, when we were on entirely different pages was late in the basketball season during my senior year, as a decidedly non-illustrious career was fast approaching a merciful conclusion. At a practice session just prior to the 1978 sectional, the coaching staff revealed the official tournament roster, and the list didn't include my name.

Granted, the omission was mostly deserved based on pure performance, and yet I was annoyed at the slight, responding with a two-hour concentrated display of faux "go team" enthusiasm and contrived, entirely mock rah-rah, which apparently was mistaken for a death bed conversion, if not genuine depth of feeling, resulting in my reinstatement to the roster the following day.

It never dawned on me to pursue a career in acting, or I might be portraying Josh Dallas’s father on television by now.

Happily, or so it seemed, I'd neglected reporting this turn of events to my father. Unhappily, his friend (Hinton) had already done so, which may have been the devious intent from the beginning, and the whole off-and-on scenario did little to improve matters on the home front. As Gomer Pyle once said: “Surprise, surprise, surprise."

---

Three and a half decades later, I can't attribute truly coherent motives to my teenaged ambivalence about sports, these largely meaningless games being about the only form of communication between a father and his son. The father was an ex-Marine who had traded athletic opportunities for three years as a gunner on a Navy ship in World War II and was keen – perhaps overly so – to see his son succeed at basketball and baseball.

However, the son just wasn't wired for that kind of pressure, at least during those hormonally-charged years, and surely it is indicative of my fundamental disconnect that while I always enjoyed the games themselves and still do, my favorite book about sports was (and is) Jim Bouton's "Ball Four," which celebrated baseball while exposing the vacuous and inane nature of jock culture.

Bouton directly spoke to me, fervently and personally. I fancied myself a thinker, not a sweathog. I'd have gladly settled for "lover, not a fighter," except that I hadn't been able to convince girls of my credentials in the former, and in truth, doubted whether any such talent existed, and so it came back to me and my brain against the world.

It should suffice to say that locker rooms were mind-free zones, and brains in sports were the object of lingering suspicion unless one happened to be an otherwise illiterate point guard who could remember the plays and run the offense.

There I was, off the senior-dominated basketball team and then back on it, contemplating yet again how it came to be that we were such persistent underachievers, utterly failing to capitalize on the potential predicated by all observers, including my still simmering dad … and understanding, as I always had, that it all owed to a lack of cohesion. In other words, too few of us liked each other, and this distaste had a way of being glaringly obvious on the court, to Joe Hinton's fuming dismay.

Our sectional draw was a breeze. We were lumped into a bracket with smaller rural schools as a result of one or the other cynical maneuverings common to the political byways of the purportedly pristine Indiana state sport of basketball, which naturally had much more to do with smoky hotel rooms at the national party conventions of the 1920's than the farmyard ideal preferred by so many fans.

They probably knew better, but worshipped just the same.

We won the sectional and advanced to play Scottsburg in the Saturday morning game at the Seymour Regional the following week. The Warriors, from a school far smaller than ours, had nonetheless soundly thrashed us at home a few weeks earlier. In today's parlance, Floyd Central had "match-up" problems with Scottsburg, which is to say that they had one of their finest teams ever, one better than ours at almost every position.

I knew there would be little playing time for me, and at that point, it no longer mattered. Amid much hoopla and a special pep rally, we boarded the bus on Friday afternoon for the 40-minute drive, an early evening shoot-around, a buffet meal and an overnight stay at the Days Inn.

At this juncture, two worlds were about to collide. While some of my best high school friends were athletes, only a couple of them were on the basketball team. I ran in different circles, and at various times, yes, there was beer involved, though seldom if ever during the basketball season. Ambivalence aside, I tried to play it straight as often as possible. But for the Saturday regional festivities, a few of my heartier partying friends had reserved a room at the very same hotel where the team was staying – only my buddies called it the Daze Inn, and planned to treat it accordingly.

---

Unsurprisingly, Floyd Central exited the tournament in the morning session, and Scottsburg advanced to meet Clarksville in the evening finale. I'd like to remember that in defeat, the team came together and grasped an eternal truth or three, but from my perspective, all I felt was pervasive relief that finally, at long last, it was over. There was a post-game chat and showers, and we returned to the hotel to eat and waste a dilatory afternoon playing euchre before riding back to the gym on the bus and watching the championship game, which was to be our last solemn obligation as a dysfunctional unit.

I promptly stole away, and by the time the bus exited the Daze Inn parking lot several hours later, I was blissfully smashed. The bathtub in the party room was filled with canned beer and ice, and a story already was making the rounds as to how the designated underage beer buyer had run into a few of our teachers at the exact same package store and exchanged pleasantries with them at the counter.

I was just happy to shed the weight of expectations and get myself altered, even if clueless as always with respect to how the future would play out.

Eventually one of the assistant coaches dressed me down outside in the courtyard when he saw that I had a smoldering Swisher Sweet in my hand. Did I really want to be kicked off the bus and suspended for smoking?

No, not at all, and I snubbed it out, because I'd already decided that my final act of courageous defiance against The Man (which one?) would be to drink a beer on the team bus in route to the evening game, and this I proceeded to do, already crazily intoxicated, strategically seated all the way in the rear, a Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull artfully hidden in my gym bag, top popped discretely, and chugged quickly before being hidden again for the ride home with my parents afterward.

I'm neither ashamed nor proud of these recollections. I did what I could with what I had at the time, and if I had to do it over, I'd have worked harder at sports than I did -- not for anyone else’s satisfaction, but for my own. Seems that the work ethic actually was there all along, though latent; it just came later in life, and so be it.

In truth, the thing I miss most about high school is singing in choir, not playing ball. I didn't know it then, but I know it now. I'm hoping that in the cosmic scheme of things, that's all that matters. If it isn't, I may be in trouble.

To this year's basketball players, in a tournament or out, and whether in high school or college: If you're lucky, you'll forget all about it very, very soon.

(The preceding was posted at NAC in 2008 and later appeared as a newspaper column in truncated form. This is the revised, full-length version)

Today's Tribune column: "Not quite string music."

I hesitated before writing this searing confessional for fear that another anonymous troglodyte would call me "beer belly."

BAYLOR: Not quite string music.

Sports? You want me to write about sports? I can do that. Although the value of winning an Indiana high school basketball championship has been rendered moot by the class system, itself a foreign imposition of egalitarian mediocrity that “fixed” what wasn’t broken, tournaments are under way. Some folks care. I’m not one of them.

String music?

The great March blizzard of 2008 forced the postponement of today's IHSAA boys' high school basketball regional tournament at Seymour. New Albany's undefeated Bulldogs must now wait until Monday to resume their pursuit of a championship, albeit one largely rendered moot by the continued existence of class basketball, which put an end to whatever merits the sport of high school basketball still had prior to the institution of egalitarian mediocrity a decade or more ago.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of my final regional basketball appearance as a member of the Floyd Central varsity in 1978. Another reminder of this long-forgotten (and forgettable) occurrence came earlier this week, when the New Albany Tribune profiled former FCHS head coach Joe Hinton, who won a sectional title with Paoli last weekend. Joe's pushing 70, but still in the thick of it, and doing what he knows and loves. More power to him, even if we didn't always see eye to eye back in the day.

One such tumultuous time when we were on entirely different pages was late in the basketball season my senior year, as a decidedly non-illustrious career was fast approaching a merciful conclusion. At a practice session just prior to the 1978 sectional, the coaching staff revealed the official tournament roster, and the list didn't include my name.

Granted, the omission was fully deserved based on pure performance, and yet I was annoyed at the slight, responding with a two-hour concentrated display of faux "go team" enthusiasm and contrived, entirely mock rah-rah, which somehow was mistaken for genuine depth of feeling, resulting in my reinstatement to the roster the following day.

Happily, or so it seemed, I'd neglected reporting this turn of events to my father. Unhappily, his friend and my coach had already done so, which may have been the intent from the beginning, and the whole off-and-on scenario did little to improve matters on the home front. As Gomer Pyle said often at the time, "surprise, surprise, surprise."

Thinking back on it from the vantage point of three decades, I can't attribute truly coherent motives to my teenaged ambivalence about sports, these games being about the only form of communication between a father and his son. The father was an ex-Marine who had traded athletic opportunities for three years as a gunner on a Navy ship in World War II and was keen – perhaps overly so – to see his son succeed at basketball and baseball.

However, the son just wasn't wired for that kind of pressure, at least during those hormonally-charged years, and surely it is indicative of the fundamental disconnect that while I always enjoyed the games themselves and still do, as a precocious reader, my favorite book about sports was Jim Bouton's "Ball Four," which celebrated baseball while exposing the vacuous and inane nature of jock culture.

Bouton spoke to me, fervently and personally. I fancied myself a thinker, not a sweathog. I'd have gladly settled for "lover, not a fighter," except that I hadn't been able to convince the girls of my credentials in the former, and in truth, doubted whether any such talent existed, and so it came back to my brain and I against the world. Suffice to say that according to the flavor of the time, locker rooms were mind-free zones, and brains in sports were the object of suspicion unless one happened to be an otherwise illiterate point guard who could remember the plays and run the offense.

There I was, off the senior-dominated basketball team and then back on it, contemplating yet again how it came to be that we were such underachievers, utterly failing to capitalize on the potential predicated by all observers, including my still simmering dad … and understanding, as I always had, that it all owed to a lack of cohesion. In other words, too few of us liked each other, and this distaste had a way of being glaringly obvious on the court, to Joe Hinton's fuming dismay.

Our sectional draw was a breeze. We were lumped into a bracket with smaller rural schools as a result of one or the other cynical maneuverings common to the political byways of the purportedly pristine Indiana state sport of basketball, which naturally had much more to do with smoky hotel rooms at the national party conventions of the 1920's than the farmyard ideal preferred by so many fans. They probably knew better, but worshipped just the same.

We won the sectional and advanced to play Scottsburg in the Saturday morning game at the Seymour Regional the following week. The Warriors, from a school far smaller than ours, had nonetheless soundly thrashed us at home a few weeks earlier. In today's parlance, Floyd Central had "match-up" problems with Scottsburg, which is to say that they had one of their finest teams ever, and was better than we were at almost every position. I knew there would be little playing time for me, and at that point, it really no longer mattered. Amid much hoopla and a special pep rally, we boarded the bus on Friday afternoon for the 40-minute drive, an early evening shoot-around, a buffet meal and an overnight stay at the Days Inn.

At this juncture, two worlds were about to collide. While some of my best high school friends were athletes, only a couple of them were on the basketball team. I ran in different circles, and at various times, there was beer involved, though seldom if ever during the basketball season; ambivalence aside, I tried to play it straight as often as possible. But for the Saturday regional festivities, a few of my heartier partying friends had reserved a room at the very same hotel where the team was staying – only my buddies called it the Daze Inn, and planned to treat it accordingly.

Unsurprisingly, Floyd Central exited the tournament in the morning session, and Scottsburg advanced to meet Clarksville in the evening finale. I'd like to remember that in defeat, the team came together and grasped an eternal truth or three, but from my perspective, all I felt was relief that it was over. There was a post-game chat and showers, and we returned to the hotel to eat and waste an afternoon before riding back to the gym on the bus and watching the championship game, which was to be our last obligation as a dysfunctional unit.

By the time the bus exited the Daze Inn parking lot several hours later, I was blissfully smashed. The bathtub in the party room was filled with canned beer and ice, and the story already was making the rounds as to how the designated underage beer buyer had run into a few of our teachers at the exact same package store and exchanged pleasantries with them. I was just happy to shed the weight of expectations, though clueless as to how the future would play out.

Eventually one of the assistant coaches dressed me down outside in the courtyard when he saw that I had a smoldering Swisher Sweet in my hand.

Did I really want to be kicked off the bus and suspended for smoking?

No, not at all, because I'd already decided that my final act of courageous defiance against The Man would be to drink a beer on the team bus in route to the evening game, and this I proceeded to do, crazily intoxicated, strategically seated all the way in back, a Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull artfully hidden in my gym bag, top popped discretely, and chugged quickly before being hidden again for the ride home with my parents afterward.

I'm neither ashamed nor proud of these recollections. I did what I could with what I had at the time, and if I had to do it over, I'd have worked harder at sports than I did -- not for anyone else, but for me. Seems that the work ethic came later in life, and so be it. In truth, the thing I miss most about high school is singing in choir, not playing ball. I didn't know it then, but I know it now.

I'm hoping that in the cosmic scheme of things, that's all that matters. If it isn't, I may be in trouble. Good luck to all the players in this year's tournament.

If you're lucky, you'll forget all about it very, very soon.