Shooting Out the Lights

Back when I was in elementary school, we had a few things to look forward to every year. There was the Halloween season of which the main highlight was the yearly Harvest Festival. There was the yearly assembly that featured a magic show from our local magician. And who can forget the yearly book fair? But the event I looked the most forward to was the Basketball Shootout that took place every February.

The Basketball Shootout was a fundraiser for a cause that, at the moment, I can’t remember. But the premise was simple. For those 4th and 5th graders who wished to compete, you’d take a form around to family and friends and get them to “sponsor” you by pledging an amount of money that they would donate for every shot you made. In addition to supporting a good cause, the participants competed for trophies and certificates. Each entrant would have 60 seconds to make as many shots from the free throw line as they could. Each shot made would be multiplied by all of the pledges per shot to equal a total donation. Whoever had the biggest donation won the event and took home the big trophy.

This competition really had two sides to it. If you were a bad shot or had a bad performance, but you had big pledges per shot, you could still win the event. Or on the other hand, if you had small pledges, you were going to have to make more shots to get those small pledges to add up to a significant number. An average pledge back in those days was about 10 cents per shot made. Remember that.

Now I don’t recall specifically how many people competed each year, but the number usually hovered around 10-15. I think participation was hurt by the fact that a lot of kids didn’t want to be embarrassed by not making many shots, as the Basketball Shootout took place during the school day in the gym with the whole school in attendance watching from the stands, and the event was also open to family, friends, and local business people from town to come to watch as well.

This sort of thing can put a lot of pressure on a kid who’s trying to navigate their way through the social circles of elementary school. The risk was high that you could either shine like a star with a good performance or crash and burn with a poor one. Maybe the best you could hope for was a middling performance that would quickly be forgotten and leave you in the same social standing you were in to begin with. As a 4th grader in 1988, I needed a boost in my social standing and had enough confidence that I would do well that I signed up to compete. The pressure was now officially on.

I had moved into a new house in 1987. Along with moving into the new house, my dad put a basketball goal up in the driveway. It was the first one that I’d had, and I spent a lot of time out in the driveway shooting. Our neighbor was in his early 20s and had played college basketball. He came over every afternoon to shoot around as well. He taught me the game “Around the World”, and we competed with each other nearly every day. All of this added up to mean that I had become a pretty good shot. And at certain spots around the goal, I had a hot hand… especially the free throw line. At the time I was probably attempting 100 free throws or more every afternoon in the driveway.

All of those free throw attempts is what gave me the confidence to enter the Basketball Shootout as the free throw line was where all shots in the competition were going to take place. My neighbor had the idea to help me “train” for the event. He gathered up numerous basketballs and helped me build a rebound ramp under the net to kick the balls back to me at the free-throw line. Every day after school for a few weeks leading up to the event I was out in the drive way with him just putting up as many free throws as I could in 60 seconds.

On the other side of things, I was working hard to get pledges…as many and for as much money as I could. Both of my grandparents sponsored me for 5 cents each. My mom was in for 10 cents just as my brother was as well. I had some friends at school who pledged a penny each. My dad, wanting to be supportive, pledged 25 cents. Even my neighbor who helped me prepare but was perpetually broke kicked in a dime per shot. I think he had seen enough of me making shots to not go any higher.

Then there was my uncle Ernest. When I approached him, he gave one of his traditional big hee-haw laughs at the idea of me being in the Shootout. Maybe I can’t blame him. Before we moved, he was our neighbor and had probably never seen me do anything athletic. So he offered up a buck as a pledge. I felt the need to tell him that meant he would owe $1 for every shot I made. He let out another laugh and said something to the effect of it not costing him more than 2 or 3 dollars so he was fine. He had no idea that since moving, his nephew had become a skinny, pasty-white, red-headed, 4th-grade Larry Bird. I even tried to explain how it worked again and that pledging that much was going to cost him a lot of money. He laughed it off again saying it wasn’t going to cost him much at all. He had no confidence in me.

The day of the event came, and the gym was packed with all of the students and teachers, plenty of family and friends of the competitors, the mayor, the police chief, and numerous other dignitaries. In the corner of the gym were my parents, and my neighbor caught a ride with them to witness the event, and even my uncle Ernest came.

Several kids took their turns with the whole place cheering them on. If my memory isn’t totally gone, I seem to remember that Melinda was the leader in shots made so far at 12. But I was up next, and I was about to shoot the lights out and blow the roof off the place.

I stood ready at the free throw line with the first ball in my hand. They were playing music in the gym for the whole thing, and the timing was perfect as just as my turn was about to start, Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” started blaring through the place, which kicked my adrenaline up another notch.

The buzzer sounded and I quickly launched a brick. Then another brick. And another. 0-3 to start. Then I made 3 in a row.. Two more bricks followed to end that streak. Two more shots made in a row and then yet another brick. 11 shots and about 15 seconds in and I was 5 for 11, but what happened next is almost too hard to believe.

I don’t know if a trance came over me, or if I just settled in, or if pure adrenaline took over, but whatever it was, I didn’t miss another shot. In that final 45 seconds, I took 23 shots. And never missed a single one. With each made shot in a row, the crowd around me got louder and louder. I just kept ripping off shot after shot at a pace I didn’t even know I was capable of. 23 shots. In a row. No rim. No backboard. Nothing but net. For 23 shots in a row. All while Bob Seger sang his heart out.

When the final buzzer sounded the whole place was as loud as I had ever heard it. But even with all that noise, I could still hear my Uncle Ernest let out an exasperated “SON OF A BITCH!” The realization that he was now on the hook for $28 must have sank in and caused his outburst. With inflation, that’s $76 in today’s money. Such is the cost of underestimating a 4th grader with a goal in their driveway I guess.

But thanks to Ernest’s large pledge and my 23-in-a-row streak, I won the competition that year, and a very nice donation overall was made to whatever that fine organization was.

Coming out of this, I was approached by the basketball coach to play that fall. It sounded great to me. But once I joined the team I came to a painful realization…I sucked at basketball as a whole. Running up and down the floor, dribbling, taking shots with people in your face…none of that was for me. I washed out after just one season. The Basketball Shootout wasn’t the end of my sporting highlights though, as there would be a time a few years later when I would enter the local homerun derby on a drunken dare, but that’s a story I’ll tell later this summer when the time is more appropriate.

But for one shining afternoon in February 1988, I was the human highlight reel (Dominque who?) of our little elementary school, and I’ll never forget the day I shot the lights out. Much later in life I learned of a story about Larry Bird at the 1988 3-Point contest that I wish I knew of at the Basketball Shootout, as I may very well have ripped him off that day. As Larry Bird entered the locker room at that 1988 3-Point Contest, he stopped, looked around the locker room at the other competitors, and exclaimed, “Which one of you motherf*ckers is playing for second?”