Hoops Chapter Two

We are now three games into our intramural basketball season and us old guys are standing near the top of the heap. Last week we played two games in three days. Thank God we have had eight days to recover before tonight’s game.

Last week, we played the team that is favored to win the whole thing … and they might because there is a good chance most of us aren’t going to be able to perform at the top of our ability once the “playoffs” roll around. As for this night, however, we were victorious.

The game didn’t start until 10 p.m., well past the bedtime for most of us older fellows, and our young opponents had a definite game plan: They were going to run us and be physical. We, of course, were macho enough to try to keep up with them, regardless of our own personal wellbeing. Fortunately, we have two former collegiate All-Americans on our team.

Finally, in the second half as the teams were trading buckets, I yelled from my position on the sidelines that we should slow it down and put our big fella in the paint. We put the other All-American on the wing and let them play a two-man game. It worked. The rest of us played defense and rebounded while these two carried the offensive load.

But when it was all said and done, the other team failed to recognize our secret weapon: the theatre technical director. Trailing by a point with 11 seconds left, we brought the ball up the floor. Somehow the ball got loose and the technical director scooped it up and dropped in what we like to call a jump hook (although I’m using the term loosely) for the win. It was a huge victory for the ‘old guys.’

With the game over, we stood around looking at each other and comparing wounds: bruised knee, swollen knee, hyper-extended knee, bruised and bloodied ankle, and a complete inability to comfortably walk up the flight stairs in order to get out of the building. But other than that we were all good. The technical director was happy. His wife was at the game and he said he would probably get lucky after hitting the winning shot. Needless to say, he was the first one out of the gym. I just hope his knees aren’t too weak to play tonight.