When Dad Ruled as King With the World as His Court

The NCAA basketball tourney is well underway, but no sign of March Madness at my house. I’ve stayed perfectly sane and expect to remain so, well into April and perhaps May.

Don’t think for one second, though, you’re talking to a guy who doesn’t understand hoops hysteria.

A packed gymnasium. A fevered, foot-stomping crowd. Frenetic coaches and nervous players. A moment in time when you would give up everything if your team would just win.

In February of 1959, I was a 9-year-old with the coolest dad in the world. Or, at least in the world I knew, which then was a town of 200 people in central Nebraska. He was the school superintendent but also the 36-year-old head coach in his second year at the helm of the Marquette Cubs, a school that competed in the Class E division only because Nebraska didn’t have a Class F.

But if Marquette was a dot on the map to others, to me it was a sprawling canvas. And on cold winter nights (there are no other kind in Nebraska), the hottest place in town was the school gym. And on those Fridays or Saturdays, a kid who thought his dad was king would sit through the girls’ volleyball game and the boys’ reserves game and wait for the event that mattered most in life--the boys’ varsity game.

“Coach, coach, open the door/

We want the team out on the floor!”

That was the cheerleaders’ cry, echoed by the locals in the stands. No one yelled louder than I. The thought that it was my dad holding the boys in the locker room, to send them out only when he decided . . . well, that was power. And when the team finally hit the floor, wearing their snazzy full-length warmup suits that were almost unheard of for a school that size, what a roar! Why, you could hear it all the way to the grain elevator across the road.

Anyway, on that February night in 1959, Marquette played the first “Game of the Century.” On the line was the district championship, with the winner going on to the regionals and a chance to go to state. In a school so small it didn’t even play football, basketball was no idle diversion; it was the thing that could bring joy to a desolate little town that no one else but us cared about.

The opposition were those dastardly Bulldogs from Hordville, Marquette’s chief rival and a name that even today makes me want to spit. The teams split

two games during the season, each winning on the other’s court. On this night, the loser would pack it up for the season.

The game was close all the way. With less than 10 seconds to play, a Marquette player grabbed a rebound under his own basket and made a shot for a 44-43 lead. Hordville then brought the ball up court to achieve the dual purpose of winning the game and ruining my life.

They worked the ball into their center, Clayton Erickson, who I had come to despise because he scored a lot of points. He went up for a shot but was fouled, with but a couple seconds left.

Time stopped and not just on the clock. The world froze. Everything I had done to that point in my nine years on the planet didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter, the only thing that made any difference in my world, depended on a 17-year-old kid shooting two free throws. Dad called a timeout, probably because he couldn’t bear to watch.

That gave me time to make a decision. I could stay and watch this horrible boy calmly sink two free throws, or I could make a run for it. If I didn’t actually see the team lose, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

In the weeks afterward, folks around town joked how the coach’s kid ran from the gym that night. I remember shivering in the parking lot, hearing the horn sound to resume action and then waiting for the end.

When I had Dad recount the fateful moment years later, he still got a kick out of recalling how Clayton’s first shot barely reached the front of the rim. The second caromed wildly off the backboard as if shot from a bazooka. It seems as if Clayton had been about as calm as a 9-year-old kid.

The next week, Marquette won the regional championship and went on to the state tourney for the first time in many years.

The week of the state tournament, the week when I could have taken March Madness to a whole new level, I instead got the measles. While all of Marquette descended on the state capital in Lincoln, I descended under the covers in my bed. Without me to cheer them on, the team lost in the first round.

Funny, I don’t remember any pain from that loss. What’s never left me, though, was the exhilaration of that frosty night in February when I ran back in from the parking lot to a life that never was better.

What a fine madness it was.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.