Game Changers

I imagine playing basketball if I have trouble falling asleep. I envision the basketball rolling delicately off my fingertips while shooting a free throw. 

March is a wonderful month for me because the NCAA tournament is taking place and great basketball games erupt over three straight weekends.

To add to the smorgasbord of games and commentary, this past week I saw an old documentary that went back to my high school days called GameChangers. It was about the 50th anniversary of one of Illinois’ most famous high school basketball games between New Trier, whose students were among the richest and whitest in all of Chicagoland, and Marshall, an all black school from East Garfield Park, one Chicago’s poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods.

The two teams played in the SuperSectional, which would determine the winner who would go down to Champaign for the State Championship the next week.

They played one another in 1965 and Marshall won, and they played again in 1966. New Trier beat Marshall in 1966, but at the end of the game a brawl broke out, the stands emptied, and the fight spread over the entire floor.

The parents of the New Trier team had taken 8mm movies of their boys playing the game. Almost 50 years later, Tom Anderson, a 6’4″ guard on the team had the idea of compiling the films and digitizing them. The final product would be the impetus for a reunion of the players on both teams, celebrating the game 50 years later.

For me, the documentary about the reunion brought back so many happy memories of playing on my high school team and the 50-year reunion we had for the Classes of 1962 and 1963. Our team, the U High Maroons (part of the University of Chicago), did not win any championships, but we were a pretty good Private School League team. 

Several members of our team came to the reunion, and I gravitated to them. One guy, the team captain, had been a highly successful lawyer and had been recruited in recent years to unravel the mess at Penn State after the Joe Paterno scandal. Another good player had a 30-year successful career at Johnson & Johnson and his two sons were working on Wall Street. He was one of my black teammates, Russell, who we called “Rusty.” At the reunion he told me he had to take two public buses for an hour every day and night to get to school. For 50 years I never knew that..

Another member of the team died flying over Laos in the early days of the Vietnam War. 

The basketball team was the highlight of high school for me. The competition to be a starter, the nuttiness of our coach, Sandy Patlak, the joy of winning, the fun bus rides, my mom yelling “Give the ball to Lloyd.” I once scored 31 points in a game. Very few people saw it, but for me it is an indelible memory.

New Trier and Marshall had big time teams, and many of their players played in college. They have their memories like me. 

Playing on a high school basketball team is a great experience if you get into it. My sons had soccer and tennis team experiences, but they probably were not as memorable. My daughter could have played high school softball but felt intimidated. Instead she devoted herself to becoming Valedictorian. I cheered for all of them.

Friendship is hard to find–then and now. Basketball gave me a shot at it.

Questions: 

What teams did you participate in while growing up? 

Has your company incorporated any team building experiences that have been worthwhile?