Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 20, 1995 TAG: 9501200061
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The guys were jumping at any sudden sound - the ringing of a telephone, for example.
One fellow looked to be no longer healthy.
Another just sat in a chair, in a contemplative posture, staring blankly into the dirty-gray pattern of the tacky carpet at his feet.
A very depressing scene, this.
One man was asked what the deal was. Slowly he turned to the questioner. Long was the stare. Bloodshot were the eyes.
``We had our first game last night,'' he said.
Game? Ah yes, of course. Basketball. These guys were playing basketball, that game for those of jack-rabbit legs and hair-trigger jumpshots.
Which, as it turned out, was the general description of the opposing team that recent night in the Christiansburg Men's Slow-Break League. Our guys, by way of a comparison, were basketball jacklegs with their hair in the their eyes.
Or so it would seem from the 26-point final margin.
``They tooled us,'' one of the shellshocked said. ``But we were within eight at halftime.''
No doubt they'll one day rise from the rubble and get better. They'll have to.
Learning the law of the league will help.
``The rules are weird,'' one rookie said. ``I wasn't even certain if we could call a timeout. We sure needed one.''
It also came as something of a shock to these hardwood pilgrims that the breaks in the Slow-Break League weren't so slow at all. In fact, accepted technique was to fire outlet passes to midcourt (the rules call for the ball to be walked to that line of demarcation) from whence the real break could begin.
The rookies were frequently left wheezing in the dust of these lightning charges to the hoop.
Safe to say, they weren't quite prepared for the quality of play they encountered.
Yo, dudes. The chumps are few on this circuit.
Our guys readily admitted that that was certainly the case with the team they played on opening night.
Almost makes you wonder what some of these guys are doing in a slow-break league to begin with.
Guys like Chuck Courts, who blew our guys' circuits as he blew their doors off with his quickness. Courts has been doing that for years. When he played hoop and football at Christiansburg High, opponents' eyes would pinball around like those of Dennis Hopper's deranged zebra as he attempts to follow Barry Sanders.
Or Tim Goetz, who the rookies saw more of than they cared to opening night.
``He plays every night of the week somewhere, doesn't he?'' a league official asked.
Absolutely. In multiple leagues - at least on those nights when he isn't coaching out at Auburn High.
``Uh, he can get up,'' one victim said.
Guess what? Only a couple of days before Goetz is hobbling around in sandals and soaking his feet in hot water while recovering from a surgically extracted ingrown toenail. He'll be better next time. Fortunately for our guys, they won't have to worry about that because teams play each other only once per season.
Good thing, too, because some of the guys in this league have serious 'tudes, dudes. Guys like Randy Lawrence. Last we checked, he was a professional baseball player, a right-handed pitcher by trade. Maybe a fellow got a cheap single, a seeing-eye bleeder, off him last summer, and big Randy is going to take it out on somebody in adult hoop league this winter.
Then you have Donald Wayne Snell. He might be hung up thinking he could have caught 200 career passes and had 25 touchdown receptions if he hadn't have played for I-formation Bill Dooley at Virginia Tech a few years ago. Donald Wayne might try to soothe this unhappiness on the basketball court.
Or you have somebody like Kevin Harris, the head coach out at Auburn and another very good player in this league. In his day, Harris was a star player at Auburn, and according to the account of a female schoolmate two grades behind, was the heartthrop of most of her contemporaries in the sophomore class.
Harris had it tough, though. Although he accomplished much on the court as a high school player and later went on to play for Roanoke College, his career was lacking, in a manner of speaking. Whereas his mother was always a fan, he never could get his father to take much of an interest in the sport.
``He never saw me play all the way through high school,'' Harris said. ``Finally, he came to see me play in college.''
Unfortunately, that didn't come off as well as hoped. After the game, young Harris looked up in the stands to find his father and, to his delight, saw him striding purposefully down the stairs toward the court.
Harris, all aglow now, concluded that his father was coming to tell him how much he loved the game, how he'd regretted missing all the others, and now he couldn't wait to see another.
``But no,'' Harris said. ``He walked right past me and went right up to Roy Stanley [of WDBJ-TV, Channel 7]. `I want to shake your hand,' he said to Roy. `I've seen you on TV.'''
When it comes to basketball, clearly we have some men in the Christiansburg Slow-Break League who have some hellacious axes to grind.
As was pointed out before, it makes you wonder why they're in this league to begin with.
You might say the same about our misguided opening-night losers.
Heroic? No question. But then so was the point man in Pickett's Charge, the first mate on the Titanic, and any Democrat who tried to buck the trend last November.
Ray Cox is a Roanoke Times & World-News sportswriter.
by CNB