I Seem To Love Basketball

If you take a look at my Flickr, you might think that I bloody love basketball. Go ahead, take a look. I have two galleries devoted to big basketball games. The truth is, I don’t really care about basketball. I mean, it’s entertaining, but I’m not a fan per se. I mean, I will probably play AoM on a laptop, on a losing team, on Jutenheim before I’d willing go to a basketball game instead.

This vacation, though, has been all about basketball. We saw Brenna’s game first on Monday. It was a seventh grade game, as you can imagine. My aunt Sue was a ref. Brenna did a good job, but the game wasn’t very spectacular. Bryce and I vowed to drill Brenna on dribbling for the rest of vacation, but that won’t happen.

From there we went to Molly’s game, which was JV. We heard all kinds of stories about an Amber Wollschlager, a 7’0″ tall high school varsity player who trains dolphins and can fly, from mom and dad. Apparently she transferred to Milbank after selling her soul for basketball abilities. Then she round-house kicked the devil in the face and took her soul back, or so I heard.

Molly’s game was nice. The big thing I took away from the game was Molly’s new nickname. Here was the situation. The other team was bringing up the ball, near the out-of-bounds closest to us. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Molly comes flying at her from her left. Molly nails the girl, the ball goes flying, and both of them end up out-of-bounds. Molly gets injured, the girl gets confused, and Molly gets a new nickname: The Rhino. We would cheer on “The Rhino”, and we even came up with a hand guesture. I don’t remember if they won or lost.

Then we saw the varsity game. *holy crap* I thought that I’d be impressed with Amber, but I think the true star was 5′?” Catlyn Wojahn. This girl was unstoppable. She was like a hummingbird crossed with a viper. She got rebounds, scored points, stole the ball, and even more (more? yes, more!). We only stayed for the first quarter, though, then went home.

The next big game was Milbank vs. Ortonville. I got a bunch of pictures of that. We got there, and took our seat behind the Ortonville kids. I tell ya, high school girls seemed a lot older when I was in high school. I don’t think I knew more than 3 people from Milbank, and I knew about twice that from Ortonville. It was good, though. Milbank was the favorite, apparently. Not much exciting happened the first half.

Then, at halftime, there was “A Buck A Ball”, and I gave Bryce a dollar to do it. He went out there, found a friend, and missed. Nice job. Then he went to the concessions, and after a little bit, I went, too. I got there, got Tony a soda (which was apparently the wrong kind), got myself a soda, and then I stood in line for the soft pretzels. After much waiting, I got one. I’m about to go back into the auditorium, when I see that they don’t allow food inside. So, I give Bryce the sodas, and I sit in the lobby, eating a pretzel, alone. I thought, “Hey, I can call Holli”, so then I wouldn’t look so lonely and pathetic, but my phone was dead. The only other interesting thing was the two technical fouls heaped on top of a normal foul, which lead to three guys shooting six free throws in a row. We have our theories as to what happened.

So as you can see, basketball isn’t my top sport. I think that’s why I take pictures of the scores at the end, because I have no idea. I learn just enough to make up my own jargon, and heckling (“Your girlfriend doesn’t find you nearly as attractive as you think she does!”), and cheering terms. If you go to a game, and you hear a guy yelling, “That was unsatisfactory!”, it just might be me.