With the “HISTORY OF THE EVENTS OF THE ALLENTOWN COLLEGE’S 1972-1973 B-BALL SEASON, AS CHRONICLED BY, AND WITH THE PERSONAL MEMOIRS AND OCCASSIONAL PHILOSOPHIZING OF THE AUTHOR, ONE STEPHEN J. McKEE” still on Christmas break (next game January 18) this seems an opportune moment to look back on where CENTAUR SEASONS has been, and where it might be going, with a couple of MidSeason Reports.
MidSeason Report No. 1: A list of all CENTAUR SEASONS posts, from Day One
MidSeason Report No. 2: The John Wooden Interview, a CENTAUR SEASONS Exclusive
(“MidSeason Report #3” continues below.)
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WELCOME TO CENTAUR SEASONS. “MidSeason Report #3” here on HoopsU.Com appears also on CENTAUR SEASONS, a “memory blog” of the half-good, half-bad, all-new Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales Centaurs in Center Valley, Pennsylvana. Forty years ago Steve kept a diary of his junior-year season . A blog before its time then, it is now an e-diary at CENTAUR SEASONS and here on HoopsU.com.
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This third MidSeason Report looks at CENTAUR SEASONS posts that have tried to explain what it was like to go to a tiny-little, barely there college in the middle of some cornfields. How we had to make something out of nothing once we got there. And why we went there in the first place. “The Secrets of the Centaur,” I call them.
SEARCHING FOR THAT … SOMETHING ELSE. Posted October 1, 2012. “ ‘Is this going to be a story about a quaint little place,’ Bob Zeccardi, my senior-year roommate demanded of me, ‘or is it a story about what makes a really great place anywhere?’ That’s the question. ‘Because there aren’t a lot of great places, right? If you can communicate what it was that made that place so special, and you can somehow convey that those thing are transferable to other parts of your life, man, that would be powerful.’ ”
“WHY US? WHY FIRST?” Posted October 12, 2012. “At Allentown, my junior-year roomate Dave Glielmi remembers, ‘We had the unique opportunity to be someplace where the school changed year to year because of us – because we changed, and that changed the school. It was going through an evolution that we were involved in. I don’t think the average kid at the average school gets that kind of an opportunity.’ ”
“BRICKS AND A BIRTHDAY” Posted October 22, 2012. “…[I]t was no accident that we – a specific we – went to Allentown. That this particular place in its particular moment exuded a particular vibe only a particular kid could hear.”
“THE NIGHT THE CENTAURS MOVED THE BUS: Part Three of a Metaphor in Three Parts.” Posted November 6, 2012. “The things I learned, the values I learned — sometimes in the face of adversity, sometimes in the face of fun, sometimes in the face of competition – I learned them there. The basketball was very important. The education was very important. But it’s the collection of friendships and experiences that helped me define who I am. That’s what those four years were.” (Chris Cashman, Centaur senior co-captain, 72-73)
“AT THE END OF THE BENCH: What a Centaur Turned Coach Learned at Allentown and Shares with UCLA Coach John Wooden.” Posted November 19, 2912. Tom Shirley was just good enough to make the team at Allentown and sit on the bench. As with many of us (me, for sure), had Tom gone to school anywhere else he likely doesn’t get a sniff of the basketball team. Meaning if Tom Shirley, bench-warmer turned long-time successful coach, doesn’t go to college where he did, he perhaps never learns one of the most important lesson he has taken with him through his professional life. “I know what it’s like to be the twelfth man,” Tom said, declaring it proudly. ”And I learned it at Allentown College.”
“KEEP YOUR FOOT IN THAT BUCKET, STEVE!” Posted December 10, 2012. “This is what I learned about learning while learning at Allentown College. I learned that learning is what you make it, what you make of it, what you make with it. Learning isn’t what others make for you.”
“ON THE PASSING OF JACK KLUGMAN” Posted December 28, 2012. “We Allentowners of the getting-started vintage received a singular education, if only because in the absence of most of the usual collegiate accoutrement, so much of what we learned we learned from each other. It was a priceless opportunity. ‘The experience was so important to everyone, so developmental, you couldn’t buy it again,’ Jerry Wilkinson says. And what college these days would try to sell it anyway? Come to our school. We have nothing.”
“THE YEAR THE CENTAURS PLAYED THE FIGHTING IRISH (yes — in football!)” Posted Janaury 7, 2013. “ ‘When you first got to the school,’ Wayne Rizzo says, thinking back, ‘you’d look around and it was, “Geez, this really IS in the middle of nowhere! How am I going to survive four years at this place?” But you did. And by my second year I wasn’t thinking about it being in the middle of nowhere anymore. Or that we were missing out on the stuff other places had.”
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.
- CENTAUR SEASONS: A new Inductee to the DeSales University Hall of Fame recognizes the contributions of the school’s orginal athletes … - September 18, 2013
- CENTAUR (OFF) SEASONS: A dozen ways to read the 97 posts in the scorebook thus far — until a new roster begins taking the floor in the fall - June 13, 2013
- CENTAUR SEASONS: In a ‘Carnival of Opportunity,’ One of Our Own Shines in an All-Star Game - May 14, 2013
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