Loss of Sonics would be a loss for kids
Published 10:46 pm Tuesday, November 13, 2007
At the Sonics game Sunday, we saw a girl holding a sign over her head. “You’ll miss fans like this,” it said.
Yes, you read correctly — I did say “at the Sonics game Sunday,” as though rubbing shoulders with NBA fans at Seattle’s KeyArena is for me as commonplace as going to the grocery store. It wasn’t an ordinary outing. Before Sunday, I hadn’t gone to a Seattle SuperSonics game in at least a dozen years.
It took hearing a radio pitch for a Kids at the Key promotion, with a Sonics lunchbox giveaway, to lure me out on a cold night to see the home team take on the Detroit Pistons. The struggling Sonics lost 107-103. No matter, not to me.
What mattered was my 9-year-old. Taking the lunchbox bait, I took my boy to KeyArena on Sunday because his first Sonics game could be his last.
Earlier this month, SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett made plain to the National Basketball Association that he plans to move the team to Oklahoma City. He wants out of a lease that has the Sonics at KeyArena through the 2009-10 season. Last week, NBA Commissioner David Stern tossed fuel on the fire, saying if the Sonics leave, he doesn’t see Seattle getting another NBA team.
It was time to get my kid to a game, before it gets any uglier — or before it’s too late. My older children saw the Sonics in the old Seattle Center Coliseum, where a leaky roof occasionally left puddles on the floor.
There were no puddles Sunday, just a flood of happy kids. Mine had a night of bliss, complete with a cool lunchbox, a Sonics green foam finger, a dinner that included fries, and a game that didn’t allow for bored fidgeting. He loved it.
More than a game, a professional sporting event is an entertainment spectacle where young fans play a role. At Sunday’s game, kids from Snohomish County drove home the point that a Sonics departure would be a stinging loss for the entire region.
Jesse Koehn, an 11-year-old from Lake Stevens, was Sunday night’s Sonics Junior Assistant, a title won in a radio station contest. A fifth-grader at Hillcrest Elementary School, Jesse was on the floor at the start of the game. He was pictured on the big screen and stayed with the team’s real assistants during the game.
“Afterwards, he got to see all the Pistons get on the bus,” said Tamme Koehn, Jesse’s mother. “He got his picture taken with Kevin Durant, the Sonics rookie.”
Koehn said her husband, Kevin, nominated Jesse in the contest run by KBSG (97.3 FM). The station is a sponsor of Kids at the Key, a promotion for the Sonics’ eight Sunday home games.
“My husband is a big Sonics fan. He has a pennant from when they won the championship in the ’70s. The Sonics have been such an important part of Seattle,” Koehn said. Jesse has two brothers, 4-year-old Zach and 7-month-old Dillon. “We go to a lot of games,” their mother said. “It’s an easy sport to take kids.”
Jesse wasn’t the only one from Snohomish County on the court Sunday. The high school choir from North Sound Christian School in Mountlake Terrace sang a jazz rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“Most of the boys are on the basketball team at school. They love basketball,” said Kari Morris, the school’s choir director. The choir was chosen after sending an audition CD to the Sonics in September. Students also sold Sonics tickets as a fundraiser that earned the choir about $1,000. The money will help pay their way to Southern California in the spring.
Daniel Riley, a 16-year-old junior at North Sound Christian School, said that being down on the floor, “I saw how small KeyArena really is.”
“But I don’t think they should go,” the Edmonds teen said. “I’d be heartbroken.”
Morris, who has a 10-year-old son, agreed. “After seeing how my son and all the kids enjoyed it, their leaving would be a shame,” the choir director said. “The kids all had those lunchboxes at school today,” she added.
“We’re going to go to as many games as we can, and show that the fan base is still here,” Tamme Koehn said. “We don’t want them to leave.”
Here’s what we really don’t want: telling our kids, “I remember the Sonics.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
