Maybe you know the old joke about the Chicago Cubs: “Anyone can have a bad century.” For Bishop Blanchet High basketball, it hasn’t gotten quite that bad. But it has been a pretty bad 25 years.
The banners hanging in Blanchet’s gym attest that, despite the school’s success in other sports, they are in the midst of a hoops drought. Last time the Braves won a league title was during the Reagan administration.
Now last time I went to a Blanchet game, they got blown out and I spent most of the game watching the social interaction between members of the band. This time? Blanchet got blown out and I spent most of the game watching the social interaction between members of the band.
Blanchet’s problem seems to be consistent year after year–they aren’t very good at shooting basketballs accurately. Being as how that is how one scores points in basketball, it puts them at a distinct disadvantage. In football if you can’t pass you can try to run. In baseball, if you can’t hit homers you can try to bunt and steal bases. But in basketball there’s really no getting around the fact that you have to put a round object into a cylindrical target. And if you can’t, you lose and you upset your spectators.
One moment stands out–a Braves player had an open six-footer from the baseline, plenty of time to shoot, set himself, rose, and fired the ball up…and off the bottom of the front of the rim. I made a sort-of “sheesh” noise and turned to my lovely companion, attending her first high school basketball game ever. Even she was shaking her head in disbelief.
We had long since turned out attention to the band, after they unexpectedly ripped off a version of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” After that song, we saw that a trumpet girl and saxophone guy were having a moment. She had put her music sheets down his back, and would occasionally reach out to touch him playfully. We three Metro League Tuesday attendees agreed that they were definitely flirting.
But then, at the halftime break, the same girl ran up behind some other dude and whacked him, then jumped on some other guy for a piggy-back ride. High school never changes. Every Metro League Tuesday, you see the same types you remember from your high school days–the bored cheerleaders, the over-excited and geeky sports nerd (that was me), and, as evidenced, the flirty chick.
Still, we can see this at any high school basketball game. What we’d really like to add into the mix some excellent basketball. This Blanchet cannot, at present, provide. Not that the players weren’t trying–they played really tough, especially inside where they battled for rebounds against a much bigger Seattle Prep team. They just didn’t have the firepower to win this fight.
After the game, over extremely high-alcohol-content specialty beers at the marvelous Uber Tavern on Aurora, one of our party made a request. “Let’s never come back to Blanchet again.”
And so it will be: Despite its proximity to Uber, and the entertaining flirtation among members of its band, Blanchet is hereby banned from Metro League Tuesday. Sorry, Braves. For your sake and ours, we hope your basketball team makes a spirited rise back to the 1980s glory years. We’ll be keeping an eye out.
I was hoping for your take on Monday’s Garfield v. Beach showdown, and instead you give us a report from a lousy Blanchet game?