As the school year progressed, a rivalry of sorts had begun between the high school and our class. This was a continuation of the rivalry that had begun when I was in 6th grade. Back then we’d play the 8th graders in football and usually get beat pretty convincingly, but the games were competitive and there was a lot of trash talking. I was also beginning to tap into the fact that I was insanely competitive. I would do everything I could to try and beat the older class in tackle football. We’d lose most of the time, but we would definitely have our moments. One of the biggest moments was on one occasion I broke into the open field and was running straight towards a touchdown. There was only one person in my way, Nathan, who was a year ahead of me in 7th grade but was actually the same age as me and physically smaller. I was not going to try and run around Nathan. I was going to run through him. There was a bullheaded determination to my running and I was taking the direct route. Nathan stood his ground and had his arms outstretched, bracing himself to try and bearhug tackle me to the ground. Charging forward I stream rolled over Nathan and scored. Think of when you see footage of a tank at top speed running over bushes and incidental obstacles in its way. It was emphatic, brutal and glorious. At least in my mind it was! The 6th graders celebrated wildly, and the rivalry was born.
Two years later the sport had changed to basketball, but the embers of the rivalry were still burning. I had only started playing basketball in 6th grade but had quickly become obsessed with the sport. This coincided with the incredible popularity of Michael Jordan in the late 80’s. His athleticism, his talent, his drive, and his manner were so overwhelmingly obvious and compelling. To this day he’s still the most dominant sports figure of my lifetime. It’s really not even close. The release of the “Last Dance” documentary is introducing a new audience to Jordan’s dominance on the court. Sports in general were my overriding passion and once the weather cooled down it was basketball every day in the gym during recess.
I was probably about 5’10 when 8th grade started and right before the school year had started, I had played a game of one on one with David Moreno. He was going into his junior year at Gordon Tech. David had attended G.O. for grade school and his family lived in a house next to the school building. He was someone who had commanded respect from the younger classes just by the way he carried himself. He was smart, athletic, tough, and a very decent guy. Well, we played one on one in the gym and I was fortunate enough to beat him. This was a huge boost to my confidence. David may not have been a great basketball player, but he was a good athlete, physically strong and he wasn’t the type to let you win. This was quite a feather to put in my cap and I must admit that I was also a little surprised to have beaten him.
In my 8th grade class there was no one like David to test me or push me. Danny was all effort, strong and determined, but not skillful or really athletic. Jonathon was a good shooter and ballhandler, but too heavy to move really effectively. Reggie was waterbug quick, but he didn’t really have any skills or fundamentals. Tim had a decent shot, but he was short, a little tubby and his easygoing temperament didn’t translate to being extremely competitive at the time. John was intense and physical, but there was little to no skill. It was pretty much Neanderthal type tactics from John. He loved the Detroit Pistons, who were the best team in basketball at the time and their bruising style was an inspiration to him. The Bad Boys, as the Pistons were known as the time would have loved John.
Coaching soccer and track over the last four years has reminded me how much kids physically change in 8th grade. When I look back on my photos from 8th grade I see the difference from the fall of 1988 to the spring of 1989. I probably grew two inches over those 6-7 months until I was about 6 feet tall. I took a size 10 ½ shoe and weighed around 150 lbs. My hand to eye coordination and athleticism were both pretty good and improved as the school year wore on. I was feeling confident and even cocky about what I could do on the basketball court. I’m not sure how the back and forth started with the high school, but in the winter of early 1989 the trash talking started to heat up big time. The high school boys had little regard for our impertinence and had no problem telling us. Insults and putdowns were sent back and forth for weeks. Finally, we issued a challenge to the high school to play the 7th and 8th grade. They accepted and the countdown to the biggest sporting event in Gospel Outreach School history was on.
I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that this was probably the biggest event of the school year. Keep in mind, we didn’t really have many events in general at Gospel Outreach so there wasn’t a lot of competition for that title. Once we knew that the game was happening, we started organizing practices at recess, there was no coach, no adult to put together a game plan. I was in effect the player/coach. I told everybody what their role would be and what we were going to do. My classmates pretty much accepted my dictatorial approach. The offensive game plan was pretty simple: I would function as the primary ball handler. I would also be the number one offensive option. I assigned people their defensive responsibilities and as I remember there wasn’t really any pushback from my classmates. Tim remembered one of my clear instructions: Don’t pass Danny the ball on offense! Danny was a good defender and solid rebounder, but he was a dreadful shooter and at best an average ball handler. Tim was an excellent teammate and did as he was told 😉
Everyone embraced their role and we really believed that we were going to beat the high school. The day arrived the gym was packed. It would have been late February when we played. We didn’t have any stands or anywhere for people to sit on the sidelines. The only places people could sit were on the stage towards the front of the gym. Anyone on the sideline had to stand. Pretty much everyone from the high school was there, all eleven kids or however many of them there were. Most of the grade school was present in attendance at the gym as well. There was genuine excitement and anticipation before the game started. We had no uniforms. Neither team did. That’s how ghetto it was! I’m not sure if it was even color coordinated where one team wore blue and other team wore red. I think we wore white shirts, in fact now that I think back, we did wear white. I recall being very, very nervous the day of the game. An eagerness mixed with an anxiety and an impatience to play. I had so much personally invested in this game.
I should probably talk about the high school team and the boys that were on it. Danny’s older brother Junior was 17 and never shy about expressing his opinion and making outlandish claims. He could speak Spanish and he loved talking trash. Danny would sometimes serve as his verbal punching bag and poor Danny was no match for Junior. But Junior wasn’t really malicious or mean. In fact, he was good fun and I got on well with him. One thing was certain, once whispers started about the grade school thinking they could beat the high school in basketball he took the bait and dismissed us as a joke. Junior was about 5’11 and very skinny. He was a decent basketball player but a complete gunner. Junior never met a shot that he didn’t like. That’s great if you’re an excellent shooter but Junior wasn’t. He was an average shooter at best. But that didn’t stop him from thinking that he was the Puerto-Rican Chris Mullin. I matched up very well against Junior whenever we played because I was a little bit taller, a little bit quicker, and stronger.
Ravi was a sophomore and probably the coolest and funniest kid in G.O. He was a smart-ass and he liked to undermine authority, but he was clever in how he did it. He used to drive some of the teachers absolutely up the wall with some of his witty comebacks and sarcastic comments. He was more solidly put together physically than Junior, but while he was strong enough physically, he wasn’t really an athlete of note. I remember he had this weird hop that he’d do while dribbling the ball up the court. Now while me and Junior were friends or at least friendly with each other, I didn’t really have that relationship with Ravi. There was some tension there that went back a couple of years when he was in 8th grade and I was in 6th. Nothing serious or significant, but there was an edge. He was the confident, cooler, older kid and I was wary of him.
Ravi and Junior were shouldered by Nathan and Ranjit, both freshmen. Nathan somewhat resembled a Latin freestyle singer. He had a thin, wispy, adolescent mustache and a well looked after head of black hair. As a basketball player he was average. I had the impression that Nathan had only a passing interest in sports. He was a bit like Robin to Ravi’s Batman. He’d be the one to join in or laugh along when Ravi would make a comment that would illicit a reaction. Remember the film Top Gun? Ravi and Nathan were a bit like Iceman and Slider. There was definite posing and posturing at church when we’d cross paths. They were the cool kids and we were the young upstarts who were not as cool. They listened to rock and were much more about Guns N Roses and Def Leppard while we were into dance music and rap. Ranjit straddled the line between both worlds.
Ranjit was my best friend dating back to 3rd grade. While we were the same age, he was a year ahead grade wise. I hung out with Ranjit a hell of a lot. We were on odd pair on the face of it, he was a small Indian kid with glasses and I was a tall, pale skinned Irish-American boy. We talked on the phone a ton and it was almost always about sports. Conversations would mostly be about the Bulls, the Bears, and boxing. But as far as allegiances were concerned, Ranjit was a freshman at the high school and he was part of that crew. He would often times function as messenger between the two groups. He would also instigate situations by telling me what some of the high schoolers were saying about us. It was almost always derogatory comments and it would fuel the fire of the rivalry. I would take all of these insults to heart and it was very personal to me. I would stew and dwell on the negative feedback and work myself up into a state where I felt that these comments were an affront to my very character. If it were Victorian England, I probably would have requested a duel at 12 paces. Ranjit relished having this role and took great pleasure winding me up. As a player, Ranjit was small but he was a decent shooter and had respectable skills. He loved the game and had a pretty good variety to his game.
There were two other boys that rounded out the team: Carlos and Roland. Carlos was an interesting cat. He was quiet and carried himself like he was 30 years old. He was only 15 but had the air of someone much older. Carlos had a slick home entertainment set-up at his place with great sounding speakers. When me and Ranjit went to his place to watch “Die Hard” we were both impressed. Carlos had a wry and sardonic way about him. He had very little time for Gospel Outreach Church or school and he had even less time for Pastor Tom. Carlos had not grown up in Gospel Outreach and his mother had only recently joined the church. He was an outside observer and he quickly figured out that he wasn’t buying what was being sold. He was quiet most of the time and was not a loud or boisterous presence. But the way he’d question a point that Tom was trying make and the tone of his comments would soon land him in Pastor Tom’s doghouse. Carlos was a gem from that standpoint. He wasn’t really interested in sports and that was reflected in what he brought to the court.
Roland was probably the tallest kid in the high school, and I didn’t really know him at all. He was new at the high school and I don’t think that he and his family were members of the church. He had brown hair and wore glasses. He was probably as tall as me, but he wasn’t much of an athlete. Are you picking up on a pattern here? The high school didn’t really have any outstanding players or big-time athletes.
As for the game itself, it took place after school at the grade school gym and as I mentioned there was considerable excitement and anticipation. The stage at the front of the gym is where most everyone was and kids were pounding on the stage, generating noise and eager to see the game get underway. I was nervous and at the same time impatient to get the game started. There were no smiles, I was all business. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. That pretty much summed up my mentality and approach. It was a wildly disproportionate sense of ego and I embraced that delusional mindset wholeheartedly.
The game began and we jumped all over the high school early on. I don’t have many recollections of exact moments in the game. Much of it has blurred together. I do remember that Junior was matched up with me and I worked him over. Trying to reply in kind, he took a ton of shots and missed most of them. The high schoolers clearly didn’t have much of a plan. Anything that they missed I would grab the rebound. There was an intensity to everything that I did. No quarter asked and none given. I was fully invested in every aspect of the game. Defense, rebounding, handling the ball, barking instructions. It all came together that afternoon. The pattern of the game was pretty much as follows: Jonathon would inbound the ball to me, I’d push the ball up the court with the intention of driving to the basket or pulling up for 10-15 foot jump shots off the dribble.
When the high school had the ball, I would guard Junior and then cheat over to wherever the ball would go. I’d clean up on the boards and once I grabbed a rebound, I would push the ball hard up court, often times going coast to coast for a layup. I was simply faster than most of the high schoolers as well so there were a lot of easy baskets. The high schoolers were getting embarrassed in the 1st half and we had a lead of 20 points by halftime. At the break we were thrilled to be leading but knew that there was still work to be done. In the early part of the 2nd half the high schoolers started to get a foothold in the game. However, the comeback was short-lived and we went back to controlling the game. We weren’t as dominant in the 2nd half, but it was still pretty comfortable. We ended up winning 72-56.
It was pretty easy to put together my stats for the game. Jonathon had scored 4 points and Danny had added a bucket. I scored the remaining 66 points. Danny sent me a clip from the grade school yearbook in 1989 and my numbers according to the article were 66 points and 33 rebounds. Who were the authors of this article documenting such a sporting feat of herculean proportions? See below.. What do they say? History is written by the victors. That’s right.
Once the game ended, we absolutely reveled in the result. I soaked in the moment and paraded around the gym with arms raised. This was complete vindication. But I wasn’t walking around smiling and happy. It was arms raised in righteous vindication. We said that we were going to beat you and we came out and did exactly that. It was a massive “I told you so” moment. I was not a gracious winner. Minutes after the game I was approached by Rochelle. She was a high school senior and Junior’s girlfriend. She said something to the effect that I was a very good player but a terrible sport. She was 100% right. What was my response? It was short and to the point, “That’s how you play the game.” I was utterly dead serious. Anybody who didn’t understand that mentality I simply had no use for them.
I look back and have a good laugh as well as cringe when I run back the memories of this game. But what I cannot emphasize enough was that it was a personal validation. I knew that I was becoming a very good player, but more importantly I had the mindset to be very good at sports. This obviously made my ego swell, but in my own mind I was just doing what I knew that I was capable of. This was a crowning moment and I lustily basked in it. Part of my own hubris was born out of the fact that nobody really encouraged me to play sports. There was definitely a resentment within me since I had no support system or direction when it came to sports. As a 14 year old, this was my proverbial middle finger to the nonbelievers. Even people at the church had heard about what had happened and had complimentary things to say. This should have been the beginning of my scholastic sporting life, a launching point for developing my abilities as a basketball player, but it would actually be the apex.
It was an audacious claim to plant our flag and say that we could beat the high school. Then we went out there and not only beat them but dominated the game. It didn’t really matter that they didn’t have any outstanding players or athletes. Who cares! The grade school had beaten the high school. The humiliation for them was utter and complete. Predictably, they were sore losers with a bagful of excuses. They claimed that they didn’t take the game seriously, that they weren’t used to playing on our court. There was no credit given for what we had accomplished. I was steaming with anger and basically was ready to do it again. There would be a rematch and it would be on a neutral court.
The rematch happened about a month later. It was early spring and the circumstances were very different. For one it was at a park district gym on a Saturday. My sister thinks it was Horner Park, but I can’t say for certain. We weren’t familiar with the court and it had regulation rims that were 10 feet high and glass backboards. Since it was a Saturday there were not many people there. Ranjit says that my mom came to watch but I don’t remember her being there to be honest. One of our players, Tim, had been suspended from playing in the rematch. This was due to a mocking letter he had authored, denigrating the abilities of the high school players. This fine piece of writing had made the rounds before eventually being turned into the school authorities. This was a completely lame move by the administration, and it was our job to make sure that Tim would be vindicated by another victory over the high school.
However, the deck was stacked against us going into the game. Rochelle, the high school senior who had been so put off by my intense, win at all costs attitude had somehow convinced the school to have her father, Gene, serve as the referee. Well, this guy took his responsibilities very seriously and showed up in a pinstriped referee shirt. He looked the part, his hair parted to the side and thick glasses. Gene wasn’t going to let any chance to blow the whistle get by him.
I was less certain of myself in this game because of the surroundings, but also because Gene called a very tight game. I think we played with 10 minute quarters. The game felt shorter than the first game which was basically just two halves if memory serves me correct. I was an aggressive player, especially defensively and this guy was calling fouls for minor contact. I would challenge and try to block any shot taken within a reasonable vicinity. I have more clear recollections of particular moments in the game. There was one sequence in the game where I blocked three consecutive shots by three different players: Junior, Nathan, and then Carlos. Something else that stands out is that Carlos was wearing jeans instead of shorts. At one point in the game Reggie stole a pass at around midcourt, but his shoes had no traction and he slid all over the gym floor as he tried to race down the court.
The game was tighter, and baskets were harder to come by. That said, we were still winning but it was far from comfortable. Playing against the hometown ref and trying to adjust to the regulation rims wasn’t easy. But winners find a way and that’s what we did. We were leading 26-18 or 26-20 with about 5 minutes left when Gene found a reason to blow his whistle and call me for my fifth and final foul. I had fouled out of the game. At that point I had scored 24 of our 26 points. I was despondent as I walked off the court to watch the remaining few minutes. But I quickly snapped out of feeling sorry for myself and adapted into my new role as Coach Cook. I was barking instructions and encouragement to the team. Jonathon assumed the ball handling duties and the team picked up its intensity. Danny may have been a horrible shooter, but he was a very good rebounder and he cleaned up on the glass as the high school pushed to try and close down the score.
The score was 26-22 and it did begin to feel that the high school was gaining momentum. Ranjit was shooting the ball well when his team remembered to pass him the ball. But then Jonathon stepped up and hit a 17-foot jumper from the left side of the court to stretch the lead back to 6 points. I went berserk! That was the breathing space that we needed. We ended up holding them off and winning 28-24. This win was gratifying in a different way, it was much more of a team victory. I was truly very proud to see the fellas close the show without me. We had beaten the high schoolers twice and they could have no excuses this time. We had overcome the hometown ref and the unfamiliar surroundings to become undisputed Gospel Outreach basketball champions of 1988-1989. Maybe I’ll have commemorative shirts made that educates the public of this incredibly impressive achievement 😉
Gospel Outreach School and High School Memories 1988-1992 