Eden freshmen basketball, 1965-66, and more

Yes, that's me in the front row, black socks. Such a nerd.

Did any of the fourteen teenagers pictured here have any idea of where we'd be, what we'd be doing, or if we'd even be alive fifty-five years forward? Not me. Bill Kappus, #15, next to me, died a few years ago, as did Gary Preischel, second from the left on the front row. Gary was a phenomenal athlete: Quarterback, silky shooting basketball forward, and a sharp third baseman. Bill played some intramural basketball with me in my senior year, married the sister of a classmate (who became a priest), and was part of a famous dairy family in Eden.

We were pretty bad team. I have a pretty good recall of some scenes from the season, including the time I took a shot in the nose in a game against Frontier at the Amsdell Heights school. We were leading when I went out, behind when I returned to the court, after a student manager pictured the instant ice bag that was supposed to chill my nose. We lost that game and, I am pretty sure, every game that season, save one. I remember playing in East Aurora, on this dark, parquet floor that seemed to have a reduced bounce. I recall being pretty good as the starting point guard for most of the season, perhaps the peak of my interscholastic sports career. My 'speciality' seemed to be in drawing charging files, back when the ref would signal the foul with a whistle and then a hand at the back of his head, before he pointed out the offender who, under penalty of a technical foul, was required to raise his hand, acknowledging his violation.

I have a relatively clear memory is of the final game, against West Seneca East (vis-a-vis another opponent, West Seneca West). We were at home in the old, tiny gym in what was then the junior-senior high school building on North Main Street. We played part of the game with an unusually large audience, maybe twenty people, that included the varsity basketball team waiting for their bus to their game in North Collins. Their presence made me especially conscious of my performance. In this game, I ended up earning eleven free throws, making ten of them, all using that clumsy Rick Barry, Wilt Chamberlain underhanded scoop shot. The final score -- again, this is a pretty clear but not wholly reliable memory -- was 41-39. I remember Rick Kranz, a senior guard on the varsity, saying something complimentary to me about my foul shot shooting; he made my day, if not my season.

I had no outside shot, no jump shot, just a strange shoot-from-over-the-head sort of set shot I developed playing basketball in our barn. I had no ability to jump. I was better at driving to the bucket but I also had no left hand dribble. The good news is that I knew no one else on the other team had one either, so I learned to really overplay their right side (my left) as a defender, which also helped produce a number of charging fouls. I think I'd collect as many as three in a game, and usually at least one.

High school junior varsity and college intramural

None of this 'success' as a starter on a losing team helped much the following year as I struggled to even make the junior varsity team, playing very little, and usually in a mop up role, never at a critical time. We had an incredible JV team, winning every conference game, scoring over 100 points against Cleveland Hill, and losing just one non-conference game, to Pioneer (Arcade), in their dingy gym. Again, that only pushed my further back in the line for consideration by my union year, where we had juniors and seniors competing for 14 or 15 spots. Coach Ed Sturm told me some time later, after I'd not made the final cut, that we could only really take one second-string junior, and Joe Marsh got the nod. And brother Tom, who had been a pretty good player, was also on the team. He later quit over some disagreements with Sturm, probably over laying time. Ironically, he played his freshman college year at Fredonia, known then for their nation pleading, stingy scoring defense, back when basketball teams worried about defense as much as they worried about offense, and when there was no 24-second clock, no three-point shot.

So junior and senior year I played intramural basketball and did pretty well. I don't remember our record but I do recall Bill Kappus, Dan Finger, John Ptak and a few others from those seasons. You basically could form a team of two or three players then the rest were randomly assigned to teams. And then there were rules as to participation, meaning every player had to get two quarters of play. You'd always pray that your weakest players would simply not show up; I think we may have even pressured people to not show up to not have to be forced to play them.

Four years later, at Harper, we won a B League basketball championship in my senior year of intramural basketball at Binghamton: Mickey Halpern, Gary Greenberg, Bob Traub, Larry Timm, Gary Leveine and, of course, me, who assembled and coached the team, mostly making sure to get the ball to Mickey and get out of his way, hoping Greenberg would block a lot of shots, and that Levine and Traub would do the rebounding. Larry was our key sixth man.

Sadly, about two years ago, Traub and I attended Larry Timm's funeral service, after his long and eventually unsuccessful battle with brain cancer.