THE LESS SAID ABOUT ME AND BASKETBALL MY FRESHMAN YEAR, THE BETTER. AT LEAST ABOUT ME AND BASKETBALL.
Who was I kidding? Not me. I made the team – became a Centaur – because the top of my haircut was six feet eight inches north of the hardwood on the Billera Hall court at Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. End of story.
Six-feet-eight-inches tall, maybe 165 pounds. Yikes. And as the guys on the team quickly pointed out, for hands I had metal crash can lids. That clanking noise you hear is Steve losing another ball out of bounds.
Though wait. For just a second, give me my due. I did have four years of CYO and it counted for something. Mr. Bauler on the fifth-sixth-grade team at St. Joe’s in York; Jack Angelo on the seventh-eighth. I knew how to position my feet on defense, how to keep myself between my man and the basket. I could shoot a layup. Left-foot-dribble. Right-foot-left-foot. Right-foot-up. Ball off the backboard. In. I can still hear Mr. Bauler shouting the cadence, over and over.
OK. Due is done. I am six-foot-eight-inches tall. Have I mentioned that? If I was any good, I mean any good, would I have been playing at Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales? And I mean that to disparage not the Centaurs, but all eighty inches of ME. I was 17 going on 18 and, yes, timid and shy and scared was I every time I took the court.
(“Forgetting/Remembering Freshman Year” continues below — )
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WELCOME TO CENTAUR SEASONS. “Forgetting/Remembering Freshman Year” here on HoopsU.Com appeared originally on CENTAUR SEASONS, a “memory blog” of the basketball beginnings of the half-good, half-bad, all-new Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales Centaurs in Center Valley, Pennsylvana. Steve McKee played on four of the school’s first seven teams, was MVP senior year and in 1974 graduated in the sixth class.
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I hadn’t played basketball at York Catholic High School in some measure because I was terrified of running my pale-pale, pipe-cleaner person out there in front of people in green-and-gold underwear. (Me in the underwear, not them; though maybe if I had pictured it that way … Hmmm.) When I got to Allentown and recognized the opportunity of this four-year-old program, I knew I had to get over it, put on the red-and-blue uniform and get out there. If I didn’t grab at this – at least try – I knew I’d regret it for the rest of my life.
Yes. At little Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales, it was for me that big of a deal.
I was enormously proud of myself when I ran out there with the Centaurs for my first college game, against Eastern Baptist, on November 30, 1970. It was the first four-year-college game I had ever seen in person. And I got to see most of it from the bench, which was OK-fine by me. When I did get in I ran around hoping the ball didn’t come my way, and, when it did, I ran around some more hoping I could 1) catch it and 2) get rid of it before I dribbled it off my foot.
We went 7-and-13 freshman year. A record for most wins. Joe Schieber, the only senior on the team, became the school’s first four-year basketball letterman. Good for him. And we got pummeled by York College twice – by 26 and 23 — extending that embarrassment to three years and six games.
But from out of nowhere we also beat Strayer College, up from Washington D.C. A big deal. With no way to anticipate it, against Strayer everything clicked, giving us a glimpse of who we Centaurs were, maybe could be, if not always, at least right then. A wonderful sight.
At every juncture where an Allentown College team would normally have folded and settled for the moral victory, against Strayer our resolve inexplicably stiffened. Down five early, by halftime we led by one. We pulled ahead for good in the second with nine straight from the foul line. Confidence, a new concept, dripped off us. For once the scoring was balanced, with Dennis Ramella (29), me (17), Jerry Wilkinson (13) and Chris Cashman (11) in double figures. The crowd, such as it ever was, understood the moment – this shouldn’t be, but it is! — and rushed the floor at the final buzzer.
Quite a day of college basketball it had been. Johnny Neumann of Ole Miss went for 63 against LSU to set the season’s scoring record. UCLA beat UC Santa Barbara, 74-61. And Allentown College manhandled Strayer, 89-72.
Our record was now 5-and-7; a dozen games in, and we could still make something of the season. Didn’t happen, of course. We went 2-and-6 the rest of the way. But that night — like with UCLA, which would go on to win another 87 straight games — who knew?
Our locker room after was a holiday of hoops and hollers, hearty hugs and half-believing handshakes. Then suddenly in the doorway stood the Strayer coach. He wanted to offer congratulations, he said, as if he too understood the meaning of our moment. When he spoke, the room was silent. Though perhaps stunned is a better word. The opposing coach had COME TO US. This, too, was a big deal.
My seventeen points equaled the final-score differential. But like with the team and the rest of its season, the rest of my way that year I never scored more than six. Indeed, these 17 would remain my game high until January of my senior season.
And yet.
I showered quickly and grabbed a ride to a thrown-together victory party (because who knew beforehand that one would be required?). John Esposito, a senior, jumped in the backseat with me. The talk of course was all about the game. And then Esse turned and asked me if I had played basketball in high school. No, I said. Essie nodded — not surprised, apparently. But then he said, “You’ll be doing it all by your senior year.”
The idea thrilled, of course, and clearly it stayed with me.
I can’t say the Strayer game itself was the exact turning point for me — 17 points, with confidence! — but somewhere in that freshman year I came to see myself for the first time ever as a basketball player. I liked what I saw. Even more, I came to see how much I needed to be a player. And I liked how that felt.
I needed my six feet eight inches not to be the reason I was out there on the court. I needed to be good because I was good. And since I was this tall, I realized that meant I needed to be the star. Only by being the star could I transcend my height, make it somehow not matter. Even as I knew it always would.
My freshman season this need took me over, and it would drive me for the next four years. I never cared that Allentown College was a nowhere school with a nowhere program. In fact, quite the opposite. I embraced it. I loved it. I am grateful for it. To everything their seasons. Here were mine.
You’ll be doing it all by your senior year. I needed that to come true.
CENTAUR SEASONS can also be found at www.centaurseasons.com. The centerpiece will be the posting in "real time" of the diary that Steve kept of his 1972-1973 junior-year season, beginning on November 30. Prior to that (and after), Steve will be posting regularly about his freshman, sophomore and senior seasons, as well as about what it was like to be there at the beginning to help get a struggling college basketball program off the ground.
Steve was the original writer of The Wall Street Journal's popular sports blog, "The Daily Fix" in 2001-2002, and was even dubbed "The Unwitting Father of the Sports Blog" by Gelf Magazine, the online publication of the "Varsity Letters Reading Series. Steve was the Journal's sports editor for its original Weekend sport section and was involved in all of the Journal's Olympics coverage, Winter and Summer, from 1996 through 2008.
He is the author of three books, most recently "My Father's Heart: A Son's Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease," which he is adapting as a one-man show. For his first book, "The Call of the Game," Steve traveled the country in search of sports events -- including the famous N.C. State Wolfpack victory over "Phi Slamma Jamma" of the University of Houston. For his second book, COACH, among the 150+ coaches Steve interviewed are/were college basketball coaches John Wooden (UCLA), Pat Summitt (Tennessee), Frank Layden (Niagara), Bobby Cremins (Georgia Tech), P.J. Carlesimo (Seton Hall), Bill Guthridge (North Carolina), Abe Lemons (Texas), Stan Morrison (USC), Kathy Rush (Immaculata), Jim Satalin (Duquesne), Charlie Thomas (San Francisco State), Butch Van Bredda Koff (Princeton), Bill Whitmore (Vermont) and LaDonna Wilson (Austin Peay).
For more, you can click on www.steve-mckee.com, where you can find a TODAY show appearance and an NPR interview.
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