As the finale of a new series on DimeMag.com, follow author Matthew Pierce into the world of not-so-famous college basketball. If you missed parts one and two, you can read them here.
*** *** ***
The loose ball bounced toward the bleachers and I dove headfirst after it. A loose ball is a loose ball, regardless of what level you’re at. Alas, I was too late to save it, and the basketball landed out of bounds directly in front of the raucous home crowd. I wiped out on the hardwood and laid there as the student body rained jeers down on me. The school mascot—a student dressed like Moses—stood a few feet away, his wooden staff raised triumphantly over his head.
It was late in the second half and we were going down in flames again. Our team was completely overwhelmed. My six points had not helped much. Bryan College had given me a scholarship and all I could give them back was six points.
For a moment I lay there on the floor, completely exhausted and broken by the game of basketball. I could sense Aaron behind me, pacing around the three-point line and cursing under his breath. From our bench, the fat man who was pretending to be our coach was stomping his foot, pointing and screaming at me to get up, to get up or else…or else something. I couldn’t hear him over the student section.
Our winless JV team was down to seven players. On top of that, we had been abandoned by our entire coaching staff. Later that day Steve would nearly kill several people at the waterfall.
It was the winter of 1999. We were at a tournament in Toccoa Falls, Georgia, and we had found the bottom of college basketball.
***
“WE ARE GETTING THE F— OUT OF TOCCOA FALLS!”
Several of my teammates were running toward me. Steve was dirty, like he had just rolled around in the mud. Aaron was holding his plaque in his hand. Behind them was the waterfall, the crown jewel of the Toccoa campus. I didn’t have all the pieces, but it was clear that something had gone wrong.
“MOVE IT STRETCH, WE ARE LEA-VING!”
***
Wait, back up.
I didn’t explain why we didn’t have any coaches for the last day of the tournament.
The Bryan College athletics department had accidentally double booked the basketball teams to play on the same day. That meant the assistant coaches who coached JV had to leave us and drive to the varsity game. In their place, the team chaplain had been left behind to serve as our coach. The chaplain was a super likeable dude, so we were excited to play for him. Of course, there was the small fact that he knew almost nothing about the game of basketball, but whatever. Minor detail.
***
Hold up, though. I didn’t explain what was wrong with Aaron, or where he got that plaque.
***
Maybe I’d better start over, from the beginning.
As the JV season drew to a merciful close, Bryan College sent us on one last trip: we were to travel to North Georgia and ascend into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Once there, we would represent the college in a tournament at Toccoa Falls College.
By this time I was fairly certain that the coaching staff was going to pull my scholarship after the season. I could not even win a starting job on JV, much less step up and contribute anything to the varsity team. As the tuition at Bryan was expensive, this probably meant that I would wash out and have to return home to my parents. I wasn’t looking forward to that scenario.
***
In the first game of the tournament we were summarily swept off the court by our opponents. This set up a meeting with Toccoa, the host school, on the second day.
In the time between, there was nowhere to go, so we hung out on the Toccoa Falls campus. To save money we ate in their school cafeteria. We walked to Toccoa Falls, a 200-foot waterfall that sits on the school grounds. Late that night, the JV coaches drove off and left us with the chaplain.
The chaplain was a man of considerable girth who was extremely well-liked by everyone. He was jolly, talkative, and quick with a funny anecdote. He loved to tell stories and eat barbecue. Or tell stories about barbecue. Even better.
As the game against Toccoa approached, the chaplain brought us together and patted each of us on the back. His aw-shucks charm was infective. Just go out there and relax, he assured us. Have fun. Have fun and we might just win the danged thing.
Meanwhile, the entire campus of Toccoa Falls had mobilized into the gymnasium. There were only bleachers on one side of the building, and they were full of yellow-clad students and random people from the hills who had wandered in to see the spectacle. The Toccoa fans were ramped up as if the game were the deciding game of the NBA Finals. Accordingly, the school mascot was ready: One of the Toccoa students was dressed in a robe and sandals, with a fake beard glued to his face. He carried a walking staff, which he would hold above his head for the entire game, just like Moses did in Exodus 17 for the Israelites.
The game tipped off.
About five seconds later, I realized that we were going to lose.
Keep reading to see what happened next…
I had never seen our team chaplain without a smile on his face. However, sitting all alone on the team bench with the coach’s responsibilities foisted upon him, the fat man soured. He exploded off the bench to his feet and immediately began to scream at the top of his lungs at our JV team. His panicked shrieks were unlike anything I had ever heard: he tore into Steve for losing the opening tip. He screamed at Josh for two full possessions because he missed a shot. When Michael’s man grabbed an offensive rebound, the chaplain paced the sideline, following Mike up and down the court.
“YOU CALL THAT BASKETBALL?”
“YOU BETTER GET IN GEAR OR YOU’LL NEVER PLAY AGAIN.”
“SORRY! SORRY! YOU’RE JUST SORRY!”
At this point our basketball team was the equivalent of a robust dumpster fire. It did not take long for Toccoa Falls to establish control of the game. In the blink of an eye we were down by 20.
“Maybe we should run Head,” I whispered to Aaron as we huddled during a dead ball.
Normally Aaron was good for on-court banter. Not today, though. Today his eyes were faraway and angry. There was no response.
Perhaps it was the coaches leaving us. Perhaps it was the sudden transformation of the team chaplain. Or maybe it was the long-simmering issue of why Peppy was on varsity and Aaron was stuck on JV. Whatever the reason, Aaron had left the building.
The seven of us fought long into the afternoon. Our last gasp brought the deficit to single digits, but we could not keep the momentum going and the rally broke apart. The further we fell behind, the more detached Aaron became. He was playing in a fugue state, attempting the kind of moves you usually only try in an empty gym. It was as if he couldn’t see any of the other nine players on the court. He closed the game with a wild flurry, drilling a sequence of stepback threes at NBA range.
Immediately following the game, the tournament organizers bashfully called Aaron to center court to give him the plaque for Tournament MVP. We were by far the worst of all the teams, but Aaron had averaged almost 40 points in the two games, which was nearly double his closest competitor. Aaron sauntered out to midcourt to a smattering of polite applause from the Toccoa Falls fans.
Meanwhile, as my teammates stood and clapped for him, our chaplain pounded his hands together and guffawed. Whatever spell had bound him was gone; he was completely restored to his old self.
“Yeah, Aaron!” he chortled, his sweaty face spread wide into a smile. “Send that trophy home to Mama!”
***
And then Steve almost killed some people.
***
We ran across the campus as the sun set over the Blue Ridge Mountains, sending shafts of yellow sun filtering through the trees. Our feet were swollen and sore from the grueling game, and each pounding step on the pavement burned like fire. I got the story in bits and pieces as we fled:
After the game, impatient for the chaplain to come out to the van, a few of my teammates decided to pass the time by walking back to the waterfall. Since they had already seen the falls from the bottom, they decided to climb to the top and get a better view. Once at the top, everyone was content to just stand and take pictures…except Steve. Steve was not like everyone else. He disappeared into the nearby woods and reappeared a few minutes later, dragging an enormous dead tree that he had found.
Steve was going to show this place. He was going to show the basketball gods what happened when seven kids got pushed too far. He took the huge tree and shoved it out into the rapids, into the current of water flowing toward Toccoa’s precious landmark.
It is fair to say that no one understood the physics at play. The rapids took hold of the tree and accelerated it like a torpedo, launching it off the falls with a force that was terrifying.
Moreover, while everyone had been watching Steve, an elderly couple had walked up to the bottom of the falls.
Steve had intended for the tree to splash down into the water pool below, but that is not what happened. The missile of death went airborne, casting its shadow over the unsuspecting people below. After 200 feet of descent, the tree shattered against some boulders, close enough send a shower of splinters onto the elderly couple.
As my teammates helpfully described, “It sounded like the whole world was ending.”
***
We frantically climbed into the van, leaping over the rows of seats until the last man was inside and the door was slammed shut. The chaplain was in the driver’s seat, his big belly wedged behind the steering wheel in a way that did not look comfortable. He was tinkering with the stereo. He had burned a CD of Veggie Tales songs for this trip.
Steve had made his revenge against the basketball gods for all of us. And then some. Now it was time to leave this forsaken place and go home.
The chaplain threw the van into gear and started rolling away from the campus. His head bobbed with the childish music; he was in the finest of moods.
“Hey, fellas,” he called out, peering into the rear view mirror. “They only gave me enough money to take you boys to McDonald’s, but if we each put in a dollar I think I can get us a deal on some barbecue. What you guys think ’bout that?”
Matthew’s new book, Points: the 6 Best Sports Stories You’ve Never Read, is available on Amazon for 99 cents.
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