I played basketball in middle school grades six through eight for All Saints Catholic school in Broken Arrow. We had no basketball gym which limited our progress.
I was tall and a pretty good player, not great but pretty good. Our team was so bad that every year we were either last in the league or second to last, the other worst team in the league being Marquette.
I did notice a correlation between how nice a school’s gym was, or whether or not they had a gym, and how well they played. The very last game of the eighth grade season came down to us two teams playing yet again competing for who would not place last in the league.
It was the fourth quarter, with less than thirty seconds left on the clock. Marquette was ahead by two points, at our end of the court, me top of the lane guarding their point guard. He was so cocky they would win he was laughing and distracted. He was actually a very rich kid from a very prominent political family in Tulsa. My father was a simple, unknown postman and my mother a stay at home mother.
With probably fifteen seconds left, I stole the ball from him, took it down the court scoring two points getting fouled, seconds left on the clock. I went to the free throw line and noticed a man I didn’t know standing off to the side smiling, shaking his head, giving me a look of admiration.
I looked back at the basketball goal and made a free throw shot winning the game. I looked back at that man and he was ecstatic. Our family end friends went wild. We did not finish last, our own little victory, and my own personal victory.
And a victory over arrogance and unsportsmanlike conduct. A victory over evil. A victory for the good. It was glorious. I remember thinking while guarding that guy, before I took the ball from him, that I wasn’t going to let him disrespect us in the last moment of the game, of the season, and of our middle school basketball career.
And I didn’t.
We actually went on to be friends and teammates for the Catholic high school wrestling team, on occasion my dad and I giving him a ride home to his mansion in my dad’s old used car.
A glorious memory and formative time in my life.