Eagle Three-peat

The final game is in the books-Central won their third straight Class A basketball championship last night. It was a tight game against Bellevue East with some questionable calls thrown in for added tension, but the final score was 59-58. I tried taking a few videos with my camera during the game, but they didn't turn out very good. Here's a clip I took just as Creighton recruit Josh Jones made a slam dunk. (the basket is made in the first second of video. Watch carefully or you'll miss it.)

I realize it may not make a lot of sense to still be so intense about Central High sports fifteen years after I graduated, but I think high school sports offer more of what I love about college sports. (and what makes me ambivalent about most professional sports) It's about school and team pride and playing for your teammates and classmates. It's not about salaries, bonuses, and endorsements. It could also be that we didn't have a ton of athletic success when I was in school, except for a soccer championship in 1992-I happened to attend I-Back High right between when Calvin Jones graduated and Ahman Green transferred to Central. There were no trips to Lincoln for State playoffs while I was there.

After the basketball excitement, I caught up with Corrie and a couple of other guys out on the O Street bar scene. I won't discuss some of the odd things that occurred in a short span of time, but we did find Hopkin green frog at Iguana's.


I didn't mis-type that-I was indeed in Iguana's. I'm 33 years old and I did some kind of shot named frog sperm. I admit I had a good time, even though this didn't fit in with my preferred bar scene, which is either hanging out for the duration of the evening at Duffy's or sipping cocktails at the Starlite Lounge. I'm getting too old and too lazy for the bar hopping the kids do these days.

Lost Sweatshirt

In light of this week's high school boys basketball tournament and with the possibility that my alma mater, Omaha Central High, could be competing for their third straight championship and continue to simultaneously hold titles in football, basketball and track (yes, I'm annoyingly still proud of my high school. If you went there, you'd understand) I decided I'd try to once again find my comfy grey school sweatshirt that wouldn't be too obnoxious to wear to the games. (It's very simple, only lettering, no graduation years mentioned. Timeless fashion.) I realize now that I have many totes of old clothes stored in our basement, however, I didn't quickly find that sweatshirt. Of course, I found a few other things that had to be drug out of the basement, inspected by the cats and me, and photographed.

1. my Husker scrapbook from the 1987-88 season. There are no fancy football stickers purchased from Hobby Lobby's scrapbooking section, just roughly-cut stories and photos from the Sunday edition of the Omaha World Herald.

















2. my 1990 Earth Day t-shirt. I was in the middle of an environmentally-conscious phase back then. I was a vegetarian for a whole week once. I even found a kindred spirit with the same shirt at that summer's music camp. The shirt is a *little* faded now.





















3. my 1992 U2 Zoo Tv Tour t-shirt. Seems like just yesterday we were on the eve of electing Clinton to the White House. I had missed their show in Ames, IA that fall because of marching band duties at the high school football game, but I somehow begged and pleaded my way into getting to see them in Kansas City a month later. It was great-I think it was my first experience being around really drunk people, which was not so great. The shirt got a lot of wear-it too is faded and oddly shaped now.

















4. my college band jacket. In one pocket, there were a couple of peppermints, still in tact in their wrappers, the combination to a residence hall mailbox, and an empty clarinet reed case. In the other pocket, and I don't know why this was there, was one of Corrie's socks. No clue. I tried to collect pins for the front from all the places the band took me, but along the way I believe I lost my Kansas Jayhawk pin and maybe a Cyclone pin. The collars on these jackets were dreadful-Corrie has a jacket from the year before with a normal collar.

















5. Finally, there's a happy ending. I did find my senior class t-shirt! "U Can't Hold Us"-were we rebels or something? Had someone threatened to hold the whole class back? Unfortunately, I think it's too silly to wear to the game.