Kingdom Harbor

In a former life I breathed the oxygen of basketball. I gave my heart, soul, mind and strength to excelling on the hardwood. And I did. Then I moved on from the game in a dramatic way in college and beyond, and didn’t look back. Except when I came back after college to coach high school basketball at Mound! :)

Now 25 years later, I’m a dad on the sidelines and beginning to dip my toe into the world of hoops again. The fiery passion has not returned, but recently I have been thinking about the game more than usual for a few reasons.

[Warning: Funny old photos below.]

First, our boys high school team at Mound Westonka just went to the state tournament for the first time in nearly 50 years! The local news did a story. I took the boys out of school and headed to Williams Arena to cheer them on. It was a blast. One of the dads invited us old-timers to send in video congrats for a montage to inspire the players before the big game. That was a fun touch and you can watch the video below.

Second, I actually took an interest in the March Madness action this year, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching several games. Unbelievably competitive and full of upsets and nail biter finishes. I got Isaak pulled into the action by filling out my bracket together. (We went from worst to first, winning our Oslin family competition.)

Third, the Athletic Director reached out to me inviting me to the Senior Breakfast and Award Ceremony to honor Jason Spaeth who just surpassed my scoring record this year by “passing him a ball.” This sent me down memory lane a bit, digging out my binder with old newspaper clippings from my glory days. I was pretty decent, ya’ll.

Keri and I joke around about records being broken, pathetically trying to justify my “enduring superiority” by the fact that players today play longer games (by 4:00) and many more games each year than we played back in my day. Of course, the generations before me did the same thing saying, “If we had had a 3-point line in my day…” and so on. :)

Anyways, this summer we will erect a basketball hoop in our newly expanded driveway specifically for this purpose. We will paint the white stripes for the 3-point line and free throw, and see if my kids catch the bug that bit me so deeply years ago. While I’ll continue to get older and slower and more out of shape, I will do my best to defend my legacy (at least on my driveway) as the best 3-point shooter to ever where red and white!

As I read through newspaper clippings, it wasn’t how many points I scored that stood out. It was my lights out 3-point percentages such as “Berg led all scorers with 28 hitting 6 of 8 from the 3-point line” and so on. For vanity sake, I will attach an old clipping giving a taste of my former glory when, as a sophomore, I had a three game stretch where I scored 83 points and hit 19 three pointers. Not too shabby! :)

As fun as it is to relive one’s high school glory, I have written elsewhere quite humorously about my desire these days to live for a much greater glory. Read that piece entitled “My Fading Glory” here.