The love of tourney time

I like high school basketball tournament time similar to the way my dog likes the crinkle of a Dunkin’ Donuts bag; no matter what’s inside, it’s all good. I don’t know squat about the teams, I think dribbling is what happens when I fall asleep with my mouth open, and the only basketball shot I can consistently sink is backwards over my head with both hands. In my family, my wife is the b-ball star and could beat me one-on-one while in late labor with one hand attached to an IV pole. Here’s what I love about hoops tourney time.

It’s full of the energy of players for the game, of families for their player, and of towns for their teams. There are bands blaring school songs at each other, and every game is charged by the excitement that anything can happen. If you could attach a power grid to all that energy we could tell the oil companies to take their outrageous profits and go pound sand.

At some point in almost every game someone plays “We Will Rock You” over the loudspeaker and the whole place starts a foot-stomping, bleacher-rocking singalong that catches everyone up in it so completely little old ladies are joining in as though they have been singing that song all their lives.

The way even a basketball lame-brain like me can spot a long shot at the hoop that has “swish” written all over it from the second it leaves the shooter’s hands. How do we know? Is it the perfect appearance of the arc? Or is it that we knew it was in because the player knew it was in for three points the instant the ball’s pressure left her fingertips? Is that why she froze like a statue for a moment after the shot’s release, arms up, fingertips pointed skyward, so in the zone for that moment that the only things in her world were the ball, the basket, and the inevitable passage of the former through the latter touching nothing but net? No one is perfect but all of us can have moments of perfection.

Tourney time reminds me it is possible to change the world. My wife played high school ball when girls basketball was not thought of as a real sport, its players were not thought of as real athletes, and many resented them for taking school resources away from boys teams. Many girls had to buy their own uniforms and played with basketballs the boys had bounced into near retirement. Cheerleaders often showed up only for the boys teams. One generation later the world of girls basketball has been transformed, a rebounding reminder that only idiots and Eyores think today’s inequities cannot be pushed aside by the constant application pressure for a better world.

When some old guy walks a bit unsteadily past me up the bleachers steps I am reminded that a body can get old but a soul can still feel its youth in the closing moments of a tight game between two teams of young people who remind us of us of when we were their ages. No one is really old when they watch high school hoops.

The food. My rule is that no food eaten at the tournaments counts toward your waist, your cholesterol or your blood sugar. Somehow, a tourney hot dog should be laden with condiments, not guilt.

The intensity on a young face as its owner drives to the basket, eyes focused on the player in his path and mind knowing what move he will use to fake his opponent out of his shoes. My wife likes to sit up high and watch the plays, while I like to sit up close and see the players (and because I would not know a set play if it ran me over).

A top team can be beaten at the buzzer by a bomb launched from too far away and be guided in by the sheer desperation and determination of an underdog team that refused to quit. Good kids lose and good kids win, proof that you can pray as hard as you want for victory, but God is neutral at tourney time.

Every tourney provides lessons in social studies, geography and life. Tourney time reminds me of towns such as Mattawamkeag and Ashland, Damariscotta and Oxford, and the rest of Maine. It reminds me that if you give people teams to scream for and put franks in red casings in their hands, you find that people from different places are not that different from each other. We all love our kids, our fun, a great game and a good fight, and those special occasions between the buzzers when the world disappears from view behind a screaming crowd raised to its feet by the soaring thrill of a wonderful moment at the tourneys.

Swish, indeed!

Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.