FABL SHOWTIME STORY

So, I was sitting at my desk this evening after 4 hours and 2 minutes of pretty exciting and well played Elite 8 games thinking about when this all started for me.  Sykesville/Eldersburg was a million miles away from home, well 47 to be exact (Vienna, Va).  It was like, OK, we have a Salernos, Ledo Pizza, The Harvest Inn, Becks and other fine dining establishments.  No Rofo or Sheetz, Big Belly Deli didn’t make donuts that should be illegal, Century High School had just opened and St. Joseph’s was where I went to church with all of my family on Sunday because we are a good catholics…..it was what you did.

My son was a sophomore in high school….at Mt. St Joseph’s because the new principle of Century HS told my wife “we hope to have 50% of our students go to 4 year colleges”.  I am thinking that I should have signed him up for the 4H Club.  50%….for goodness sake!!!  Anyway, my son said to me he wanted to play basketball, rec basketball at St. Joseph’s Church.  We signed up at the Optimist’s Club for Freedom Basketball, right on the first day…August 1st, and got in to this six team league that, at one point, was described to me as a “necessary evil” for rec sports in South Carroll County….sort of a civic responsibility.  There were stories on a gun and a broken trophy case.

Anyway, the gym floor at St Joes was short, slippery and scary.  As a coach, I was thrown out of as many games as I won.  I hated referees….they were blind, deaf and dumb all at the same time.  So as our 8 game season ended, this guy named Andy Sullivan, our fearless commissioner, asked me to take over the league.  (it was a set up)  Heck, why not.  For some reason, he thought I would be a good fit.  If you want to catch a thief, hire a thief or maybe I had sucker written all over me.

2003-04 was my first year running this thing.  That season we had this player…..  Now, I have told this story many times, changed this story so often that I am not even sure if it ever happened the way I am going to tell it but, there was this player, a senior at “The Mount” when my son was a sophomore.  His name…Jeff Pouff…after is saw him play the first time, I thought to myself, “Self, when I was his age, I probably could have taken him….after all, people used to say to me, Steve, if God were to shoot a basketball, he would want to shoot like you!!”….anyway, the game before we matched up against Pouff, he lit up the white team coached by Sykesville baseball and basketball coaching legend Tom White, for 42 points…the date was January 20, 2004.   That number was so big it was stupid.  Well, my son and namesake heard about it and wanted to cover Pouff when we played them the very next Saturday after the 5:00 Mass.

Gameday came and we all went to the 5:00 Mass, Father Pat gave a great sermon.  Something about hard work and temptation.  We were raring to go and full of Jesus too.  Game time was 6:30 PM!!!  The crowd of over 20 people was buzzing.

Our first quarter group went out and Pouff was not starting so I quickly adjusted my line up so my boy could prove his manliness in the second quarter.  Sidebar here but very important to the story,  back in those days, there was this trend where dudes were…..let’s say piercing things that shouldn’t be pierced.   Jeff was one of those adventurous dudes… and “adjusted his beach body the Friday before the game.  The very first time my boy boxed Pouff out, his back to Pouff’s chest, you thought JP would collapse in pain.  Steve stole the ball, went the length of the floor, missed the layup like everyone else in this league, but he won their first encounter.  He quickly learned that he had 5 fouls to give, the refs were not calling it tight and Pouff was going to pay every time he came up the floor.  When the smoke cleared and the screaming stopped, Steve held him to 12 points and we won the game convincingly.  For a night, thanks to a great effort and some unfortunate decisions about body parts by his opponent, my son was a superstar!!!!  BTW, he scored 7 that night.

But, and this is a big but, to this day.  This league respects Pouff for what he did the week before.  His record of 42 points…in 2 quarters of play has only been beaten by a few…First by Matt Kouhry with 44 points 4 years later.  Matt play 36 minutes to beat what Jeff did in 18 minutes…1,010 point scorer Aiden Addison did it in 27 minutes…Mark Conway did it in 27 minutes and last year Nick Duvall scored 48 in 22.5 minutes.

The league also respects efforts like that one by my son on that cold night in January.  Efforts like his are a very important thread in the fabric of this league.

The great thing is that all of these guys did this amazing things in our program.  These records, this history is awesome.

We also have a few guys that seem like they have been at it as long.  BUFANO, HILLMAN, WOLFE and KIMMETT have a combined 50 years coaching experience in this league alone.  I love seeing Brian and Scott in the Final Four and possibly facing off in the Final.

So, after 20 years of running this thing, the Elite 8, on Tuesday night was exactly why we do this….EXACTLY.  Without to many details, our 17 seed Cinderella LANE was bested my HAYNES 40-28.  The Orange team will meet WOLFE, a 38-35 winner over defending champ DAVIDSON.  MATTHEWS has earned a date with destiny outlasting a well coached FREY team in a squeaker 36-34.  They will meet KIMMETT in the other semi, a 41-39 OVERTIME winner over a tough and spirited HEARN squad.

They say there is no shame in losing if you give 100%.  Everyone who played Tuesday evening, everyone who cheered Tuesday evening and everyone who officiated should be proud of what we built here!!!   What a great four hours…and 2 minutes of basketball.  I can’t wait to see what happens next.

THIS is why we play this game.