CHURCH LEAGUE BASKETBALL; NOT QUITE THE NCAA C'SHIP GAME

When Coach Gill cut me from freshmen high school basketball, I was a little crushed. But I didn't want to quit playing.

After school everyday, Hoobie and I played basketball till dark at St. Mary's School. We played in the Winter at the outdoor court and would walk home in the dark and cold, red faced and sore fingered. Usually some other guys would join us. Once Donna McDonald played with us. Too bad they didn't have girls' basketball back then. She'd have been a great Number 2 guard or point.

When it really got cold, we went inside and tried intramurals but they didn't play all that much. We both went to church anyway(s), so we we joined our Church League teams.

It was a great program. Very competitive. Even at our storied high school where basketball was king, townspeople would comment that so-and-so was good enough to be on the high school team. That was seldom correct, though my senior year with The Hoob, who grew 6 inches between his sophomore and junior years, starred for the Rams along with two other starting forwards who had played Church League the prior year(s). And that team advanced to the Sectional finals, narrowly losing to Benton on a tip in. So I guess there was some merit to the program.

Hoobie, by the way, is in the MTV Hall of Fame. After high school he played for LSU with Pistol Pete Maravich. Dan Hester, "Hoobie", went on to play some professional basketball with Kentucky and Denver in the old ABA.

The only rule about playing Church League was that you had to be in attendance for Sunday School and the worship service 3 out of 4 Sundays every month, or you had to sit out for a month. It was a great motivator. I always enjoyed the prayer before and after the game, too.

It was a great program that our son enjoyed, too, when he was in high school. By that time, those guys had started playing a different game than we played. Faster, stronger, bigger. We didn't draw the crowds like the NCAA. They were just about the size pictured. But we had a ton of fun. And you never had to run "killers" in practice.