Dave Kindred now writing about high school girls' basketball team

A bad JV girls game.

 

I once went to a one of our area high schools in the early days of girls basketball to talk to a boys coach. We sat in the stands chatting through much of the prelim game, a really, really bad high school JV girls game. Final score: 5-4. And from what we observed, it wasn't a slowdown.

 

The worst basketball game in the history of the world beats a kiddie league baseball or softball game where neither pitcher can throw strikes: walk walk walk walk walk walk called strikeout walk walk walk walk walk walk walk called strikeout, etc etc.

I've seen some of those shitshows where nobody swings a bat and nobody makes a play for innings on end.

 

Covering bad Little League games is worse. Covering youth rhythmic gymnastics is way down on that list too.

 

That sounds like a very special circle of hell.

 

Speaking of girls basketball, I was fortunate enough to cover some girls' high school hoops in Oklahoma in the 90s before they adopted the normal rules. Back then, they played three on three on each side of the court, six players total, but nobody could cross half court.

There were some seriously mean screens and picks near half court. Strangest style of basketball I've ever seen.

 

Iowa used to play girls B-ball that way, too. Just think, some pour souls were required to play defense ONLY for an entire basketball game.

 

And I think they could only dribble the ball 3 times, so the "li'l darlings" wouldn't over-exert themselves...

 

When I went to HS in Georgia, our girls team played six aside but with two on offense, two on defense and two "rovers" who could cover the whole court. I thought it was amazing that the refs could remember who was who.

 

Back when Ed Schuyler Jr. retired from covering horse racing and boxing for the AP in the early 2000s, he started stringing for the paper I was working at in his hometown so he could still do some writing. I'll never forget the day he covered a high school field hockey game between two pretty bad teams. He wrote his 400 words and when he called in to make sure we got it, he said "You realize I covered Ali-Frazier, right?"

Ed is still one of my favorite people in the whole world. He's got stories upon stories to tell. He spent two seasons traveling with me to cover the local D2 football team in town and it was some of the best days I've ever had in this business. Between his bitching that ESPN Radio wasn't giving enough college football scores, we'd talk writing and his stories from the heyday of boxing and horse racing. Can't even begin to say how much I learned from Ed.

 

It was two dribbles, then pass or shoot, and players could not cross half court.
If a team scored a basket, the officials gave the ball to the other team across half court in its half of the center jump circle. If a team scored on a foul shot, the other team had to take the ball out under that hoop and move it down the court.
I graduated from an Iowa high school in 1987 and it was same then. Iowa and Oklahoma were the final two states to have it that way.
Iowa changed when I was in college. The state actually had two state tournaments for a short time — 5 on 5, and 6 on 6 — and I believe schools had to declare before the season which style they would play for the year.
There was the typical bemoaning of the loss of tradition by some, and heated words from others, but somehow we all survived.

 

They're 28-3, aiming for a state championship. Might not be so much fun at 3-28. https://www.facebook.com/dave.kindred.5