The Basketball Game that Wasn’t Fun

My last year as principal at Saybrook-Arrowmsmith was full of excitement. The basketball team was very talented and the community was all caught up in the victories. Several of the players would play basketball beyond high school, a rare thing for the community.  Before they were done, they had won eighteen games in a row including the McLean County championship.

In McLean County, the boys’ basketball tournament is steeped in tradition. Having begun in 1910, the tournament is one of the oldest in the state, if not the country. Winning the county is the goal of every small high school. It is more important than any portion of the state tournament, which was generally out of reach of the local schools. The schools in Bloomington and Normal, including U-high and Central Catholic, are not included. It is truly a contest of small town local rivals and attendance has always been high. This was before the three(3) point shot so all the scoring was two (2) point field goals or free throws.

That January was to see near record snowfall. The road from Bloomington to Saybrook (Rt.9) was buried in drifts. Plows struggled to keep one lane open for traffic. A school bus barely fit between the drifts. In spite of the weather, the tournament, held at Illinois Wesleyan in Bloomington, went on as planned.

In 1983, SA entered the tournament as the 2^nd seed, having just begun the winning streak. Gridley was favored to repeat as champions. In a close game the S-A Comanches won by two points over the defending champions, Gridley. The community went wild. 

Part of the tradition is the name of the winning school is engraved on the trophy. Each tournament winner was also allowed to attach a banner in school colors to the trophy. There is another tradition which I considered a stupid.

 Most of the schools in the tournament played in the same conference. This meant they played each other twice outside of the tournament. One game was before and the second game was after the tournament.The “stupid” tradition was that the tournament trophy was on the line anytime a county rival played the champion.

A short while after the tournament, S-A played  a regular season game against arch rival and neighboring community, Octavia. The S-A Comanches were at home, and made a point of parading the trophy out during pre-game warm-ups. It was apparent to me the activities were as much taunting Octavia as celebrating their tournament win.

The gym was packed with people from both communities. I had asked for police support to manage the crowd, but received no response. It was up to me to keep the place under control. During the game I did see our lone police officer briefly standing in the doorway. He left before the game ended.

The scorekeeper sat on the stage, across the floor from the spectator bleachers. Our scorekeeper lived on the border between the two towns, and he was outspoken about everything. That is, he was not really liked in either community. He and his wife had given me a lot of grief as well. I supervised the crowd from the stage, behind the scorekeeper. I was joined by the principal from Octavia.

The game was extremely close. As the score went back and forth, the crowd got more excited. The noise was so loud, no one could hear the horn or the officials’ whistles. Predictably, the game came down to the final seconds with Octavia leading by one point.

S-A sank two free throws with less than three (3) seconds on the clock. This gave S-A a one point lead. Octavia brought the ball down as the Comanches pressured the ball. Octavia finally shot and made a basket.

The scoreboard red lights went off when time expired.The official under the basket, could not see the clock or the scoreboard lights and indicated the basket was good.  The outside official, who could see the clock and scoreboard lights, signaled no basket. With differing calls, the officials turned to the scorekeeper. He signaled not good.

The fans from Octavia went crazy. In the opinion of many, the scorekeeper many disliked, had screwed them. They started out of the stands toward the stage. I jumped onto the floor to stop them. The Octavia principal stayed on the stage.

As I got to the floor, I told the officials to leave and stood while they did. The players also were quickly herded into the locker rooms. I stood in the middle, alone and reconsidered my career choice. Fortunately no one crossed the floor past me.

Thirty five (35) years later, all of the schools in this story are gone. Octavia and Saybrook-Arrrowsmith, merged into a new district, as did Gridley and almost every school in the county. With few schools, the definition of a county school has changed to include schools which are actually located in larger communities outside of the county, but include some farmland inside the county. It is still the major sporting event in the winter in McLean County.

Last summer I was having a conversation with a friend of my neighbor. She told me she attended Octavia. As I started to describe that night she said, “I was at that game. I was a cheerleader. We all thought the shot was good”  I guess we can all see the game in our head, and see what we wanted. There was no video to replay.