An unusual thing happened to me the other night.
I went to a basketball game and couldn’t get in. A high school game, no less.
I couldn’t have been happier.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to have seen it.
I was in line to buy a ticket. When a freeloading newsman is willing to pay to get in, you know it’s a game worth seeing.
And this one was.
It was the Western Conference, North Division boys basketball showdown between the top two teams, Snohomish and Stanwood, in the Stanwood High School gym.
The game had been postponed because of snow from a weeknight to Saturday night. I had circled the game on my calendar: Nothing beats a high school game between really good teams.
I took my time getting to Stanwood, figuring there would be a large crowd, but surely enough room to squeeze one more body in.
As I drove up to the high school a few minutes before 7, I started to reevaluate my timing.
Every parking spot was filled on the school grounds. You couldn’t have fit a motorcycle in. I ended up a half-mile from the gym.
I hadn’t seen anything like this since the early 1970s back in the Midwest, a hotbed of high school basketball.
This was right out of “Hoosiers.” I anticipated two energized cheering sections. The high school pep band rockin’. Players wide-eyed and psyched, their nerves tingling. A big, salty bag of popcorn and a soft drink. Man, it doesn’t get any better.
I couldn’t wait to get inside.
Then I got in line. There must have been about 75 people in front of me. Nobody was moving.
Normally, I show my press card and I’m in. It’s one of the benefits of this job. But since I wasn’t writing a column, I didn’t think it proper for me to squeeze out some fan who had followed his team all year.
These weren’t just loyalists of the two teams. A woman behind me described herself as an Arlington fan. “But I know all these kids,” she said.
About five minutes after 7, I saw Stanwood Athletic Director Jim Piccolo come out of the high school and begin counting heads. “This is all we have room for,” he said in an apologetic voice.
About 20 lucky people were admitted.
Wow, I thought. A high school basketball game with turnaway fans. Rather than feel disappointed that I didn’t get in, I felt jubilant that not a seat was left empty.
This is the way it should be for a big game. Two small towns celebrating the game at the purest level of competition.
As I turned and started back to my car, dozens of fans were still streaming towards the gym. “They’ve stopped selling tickets,” I told a couple of them. “Oh, no,” one said. And continued on, as if she had a seat reserved.
I took solace in the fact that I could probably listen to the game on radio on the way home. I scanned the dial. Nothing. It wasn’t being broadcast.
Bummer.
I should have known better than to arrive so late. Hadn’t the first meeting between these teams been a sellout in Snohomish? And this being a Saturday night and the only game in town, so to speak, Stanwood was the place to be. This might be a game that people would look back fondly on in 20 years and say, “I was there.”
As it turned out, it was one for the ages. A rip-roaring’, double overtime classic, with Stanwood reigning 82-75 before a standing-room-only crowd of 3,000.
Piccolo hadn’t seen a crowd like this in his gym since Mount Vernon and Sehome played for the district title a few years ago.
“But,” he said, “we’ve never had this many for a regular season game.”
He estimated he turned away more than 1,000 fans for the tournament game, and perhaps 250-300 for Saturday’s game.
The revenue from a game like this – twice what any other basketball game had brought in this season – goes a long way toward underwriting the entire Stanwood athletic program, Piccolo said.
“I asked a lot of fans at church the next day their reactions to the game,” he said,
“and they all agreed they got their money’s worth. It lived up to what it was supposed to be. Of course, it helped that their team won.”
Even after the ticket window closed, a dozen or so fans hung around outside.
Such steadfastness didn’t go unrewarded. Periodically, Piccolo came out to update them on the game.
They didn’t even do that in “Hoosiers.”
Eat your heart out, Gene Hackman.
Finally, with the game tied at the end of regulation play, Piccolo emerged one final time and invited the diehards inside.
Lucky them. They got to see the best part of the game.
There’s likely to be a third meeting between these teams in the postseason.
Get there early.
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