Not only didn't I, I actually wrote nothing at all about the Calgary Games. But just into March, I found a nostalgic piece I wrote that I had completely forgotten. It was at least in part about someone I knew in high school who recently contacted me on Facebook. Here's the story from March 10, 1988.
***
"Be true to your school, just like you would to your girl or guy."
-- The Beach Boys, 1963
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| 1988 |
All it took was a simple news item in Tuesday's Tribune to trigger the memory. Greeley West High School was sponsoring buses to the Colorado Class 3A state basketball tournament. For just $1, students could ride to Boulder to see the game between the Spartans and Grand Junction Central.
The year was 1966, the month March. At least through the imperfect viewfinder of memory, it was a far more innocent time. It was pre-sexual revolution, pre-Vietnam (for most of us), pre-drugs. Students at W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Va., operated under a long list of restrictions.
Boys had to show up for school in shirts and slacks. The shirts had to have collars, the slacks couldn't be blue jeans. Socks were a must, and haircuts had to be about the ear and the collar.
Girls had to wear either dresses or skirts and blouses. No slacks or culottes. Not too much makeup. I'm not sure the idea of going braless was even around yet, but it would have been completely verboten.
Kids got sent home for wearing the wrong clothes. Boys got suspended if they wouldn't get their hair cut. It always strikes me as strange when I realize I wear my hair longer at 38 than I did at 16.
And yes, to answer the obvious question, this was a public school. We weren't answering top the nuns or Christian Brothers, just the mores of America in the Wonder Years of the mid-1960s.
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| 1966 |
That winter, for the first time in the four-year history of Woodson High, our basketball team had earned a spot in the Virginia state tournament. Ten teams qualified, and our 18-3 Cavaliers were seeded low enough that they had to play a preliminary game on the first day of the four-day event.
The word at the school was that buses would be provided to the second day's quarterfinals if we won the first night. Kids signed up for the two-hour bus ride to Charlottesville. Lots of kids.
It has become fashionable to believe that school spirit was more prevalent back in the mid '60s. Fewer discipline problems, more enthusiasm, lots of Pep Club members. I don't know if that's true. I know we had bigger crowds at our games -- our 1,600-seat gym was nearly always packed -- but I also know there were 3,300 students in our suburban Washington school that year.
Still, it mattered.
Everyone seemed to care so much about the tournament that winter. When our team won its opener at state, we had a regular fleet of buses headed down Route 29 the next afternoon.
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| University Hall |
As it turned out, we arrived at the University of Virginia about three hours before game time. Some of us went into University Hall right away and found good seats in the stands, while others, less fixated on the game, went exploring.
Our Cavaliers and No. 1-ranked Roanoke Patrick Henry High started playing at 8 p.m. Most of us had long since spent all our refreshment money, but that wasn't a problem. The game was what had brought us to Charlottesville and it held our attention better than anything else could have.
At halftime we were up eight points on the state's best team. We were already making plans to come back for the next day's semifinals.
It didn't last. With the sparkplug guard who had helped build the lead sitting on the bench, Patrick Henry came back in the third quarter. Woodson scored just four point in eight minutes. The final score, 63-55 against us, was about what most people had predicted.
The bus ride back was a lot quieter than the ride down. Optimism had given way to reality. Some kids talked softly, others just fell asleep. After all, the next day was a school day.
I sat beside a girl who lived across the street from me. I was a junior, she was a sophomore. Nothing had ever happened between us, although at different times each of us had hoped something would.
Halfway home, I put my arm around her. For the remainder of the trip, I waited desperately for the right moment to kiss her.
It never came, then or ever.
Two decades on the other side of innocence, it all seems so funny. It's increasingly odd to remember the anxieties that used to go through my mind all the time when I was 16. As much as anything else, it's a perfect example of how frightened I lived my life for so very long.
More than a decade after I finished high school, I went back to Woodson as a sportswriter for the Alexandria Gazette. I watched without excitement and tried to capture the spirit I no longer felt in the stories I wrote.
Occasionally, I'd get a twinge. Most of the time, the only feelings I had were memories.
It has been 21 years since I have cheered at a high school basketball game. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy it. I have been thrilled with the success of both Greeley high schools this winter.
It has been nearly 20 years since I saw the girl I rode with that night in 1966. She got beautiful. She moved away. We lost touch. You know the story.
One thing I have never forgotten, through it all, is that everything seemed to matter so much when I was 16.
Everything was worth caring about.
That's why it's easy to understand when kids get excited about things like state basketball tournaments and all the rah-rah, be-true-to-your-school kind of stuff that seems so out of fashion in these cynical days of the late '80s.
Try to remember one thing, though. Whether you're 38 or 16, there's nothing wrong with being true to your school.
Just like you would to your girl or guy.
I wonder what Cathy Becker is doing tonight.
At halftime we were up eight points on the state's best team. We were already making plans to come back for the next day's semifinals.
It didn't last. With the sparkplug guard who had helped build the lead sitting on the bench, Patrick Henry came back in the third quarter. Woodson scored just four point in eight minutes. The final score, 63-55 against us, was about what most people had predicted.
The bus ride back was a lot quieter than the ride down. Optimism had given way to reality. Some kids talked softly, others just fell asleep. After all, the next day was a school day.
I sat beside a girl who lived across the street from me. I was a junior, she was a sophomore. Nothing had ever happened between us, although at different times each of us had hoped something would.
Halfway home, I put my arm around her. For the remainder of the trip, I waited desperately for the right moment to kiss her.
It never came, then or ever.
Two decades on the other side of innocence, it all seems so funny. It's increasingly odd to remember the anxieties that used to go through my mind all the time when I was 16. As much as anything else, it's a perfect example of how frightened I lived my life for so very long.
More than a decade after I finished high school, I went back to Woodson as a sportswriter for the Alexandria Gazette. I watched without excitement and tried to capture the spirit I no longer felt in the stories I wrote.
Occasionally, I'd get a twinge. Most of the time, the only feelings I had were memories.
It has been 21 years since I have cheered at a high school basketball game. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy it. I have been thrilled with the success of both Greeley high schools this winter.
It has been nearly 20 years since I saw the girl I rode with that night in 1966. She got beautiful. She moved away. We lost touch. You know the story.
One thing I have never forgotten, through it all, is that everything seemed to matter so much when I was 16.
Everything was worth caring about.
That's why it's easy to understand when kids get excited about things like state basketball tournaments and all the rah-rah, be-true-to-your-school kind of stuff that seems so out of fashion in these cynical days of the late '80s.
Try to remember one thing, though. Whether you're 38 or 16, there's nothing wrong with being true to your school.
Just like you would to your girl or guy.
I wonder what Cathy Becker is doing tonight.
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