ORIGINALLY WRITTEN THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1972
Tomorrow is our first game – Lehigh County Community College – first of 17. We’ve practiced for six weeks now, having started on October 16. We have never beaten this team. We will tomorrow.
Sounds like perfect jock talk, doesn’t it? Well, I think we will. We should. They’re a two-year school, we a four. I think we are too good a team to be playing them. We must beat them if for no other reason to prove to ourselves that we have improved since I was a freshman. I’m a junior now. Not yet a senior (as Chris Cashman keeps reminding me – he, of course, is a senior, and co-captain, as is Dennis Ramella, senior, too).
(“Tomorrow Is Our First Game ” continues below)
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WELCOME TO CENTAUR SEASONS. “Tomorrow Is Our First Game ” 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. Forty years ago this basketball season Steve kept a diary of his junior-year season. A blog before its time then, it is now an electronic diary at CENTAUR SEASONS and here on HoopsU.com.
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Last Monday Coach told us to dedicate this game & Monday’s game [Northampton Area Community College] to ourselves. I suppose we should. We deserve it. We have worked hard. We’ve scrimmaged Ursinus College and the Lehigh Freshman team, the Allentown Business School and Allentown-Penn State – 4-0 so far. We are ready.
I’m not yet really getting nervous. I was for awhile while coach was giving his pep talk – never beat them and so on. But I’m not nervous now. I should be able to sleep. Hope so.
Might as well get some preliminaries out of the way now. There’s 12 on our team: 2 seniors, 2 juniors, 5 sophomores and 2 freshman. (I hope that’s 12 – It isn’t! Son of a gun, I forgot Flem. He’s a senior.)
Tomorrow I should start, along with Bobby Stormes (soph) , Bobby Hoeffner (soph), Dave Glielmi (soph) and Dennis Ramella (senior).
Sitting down at the start of the game – which really doesn’t matter to Coach, he plays a lot of guys, all 12 if he can – are John Cooper (junior), Flem (senior), Gary Caccitorre (soph), Joe Thompson (soph), P.J. Brennan (frosh), Tom Shirley (frosh).
I forgot somebody. Oh, yeah: Cash (senior). Chris Cashman. The first practice, very first, Cash fell and sprained his ankle – bad, real bad. He just rejoined the team on Monday. You gotta respect somebody like him. I remember last year I sprained my ankle – before the season even started – and I was fit to be tied. Couldn’t control myself, my lack of activity. Cash did. Came to every practice, too. Kept it all inside him, too! Some kind of guy. I really respect him for that. He really is the leader.
Well, let’s see. Anything else worth mentioning? Probably not.
Tomorrow is the first game. #1. Will we win or lose …
Till tomorrow. Doo-dah.
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