Greenville, South Carolina, Saturday, February 25, 2017, 12:26 p.m.
The girls’ basketball team from Estill is playing Lamar. Estill is about to win. Both towns are a long way from Bon Secours Wellness Arena. Somehow they are playing for an upstate championship. I don’t know why.
Estill just won, 47-40.
I know why Clinton and Southside are playing on this court at 3:30. Both are conclusively upstate. Southside – a high school, not a town – is just a few miles away. I went there one time to write a football season preview. The last time I wrote about a basketball game there, I suspect it was a different gym.
As you may have surmised, the Southside-Clinton game is the reason for my presence.
I am safely in the building, which I last visited for a hockey game. I haven’t seen a basketball game here since I watched Furman play Clemson slightly less many years ago than when this building, originally the Bi-Lo Center, opened.
Lewisville and Calhoun Falls just ran onto the floor. They are boys. This already have I ascertained.
Between now and 3:30, it is my task to find out what I have to do. I know I have to write about the game and take a few photos. What I don’t know is whether or not there are rosters and if there are statistics other than those in the scorebook. If I need to keep up with field-goal attempts, rebounds and assists, I will do so.
The high school reporter, like the Boy Scout, must be prepared.
The Flashes need new batteries. Lewisville is running away. Final score: Lions 71, Calhoun Falls 48.
Next up, and the games are running behind as upstate finals are prone to do, is the Class 3A girls finals between the familiar schools, Newberry and Seneca. The Bulldogs are 25 miles away, and the Bobcats have played the Red Devils in many sports on many occasions in playoff games over the years. I last visited Newberry football season. I last visited Seneca for the 2016 heartbreak of the year, a season-ending baseball game Clinton lost, 2-1.
I haven’t learned about a procedure, if any, for post-game interviews, this being a large and fancy facility soon to host a conference tournament and NCAA regionals. It isn’t the home of the Southeastern Conference today, so I reckon my postgame work will be about the same as if I was writing about the middle-school rivalry between Clinton White and Clinton Red.
Wayne Green, an old Clinton High teammate, and I chatted for a few minutes before the basketball game. Wayne is the football coach at Berea now. We talked about old times and our coach, and he told me about the Berea basketball team and I did the same about Clinton. What he said left me worried, but I worry easily.
One of many little-known facts about me is that I like the Chicago Blackhawks. When I got home, rather than get myself all concerned by watching something like the news, I watched the Blackhawks beat the Minnesota Wild, 5-3. Just let the record note that Jonathan Toews rules.
I’ve got a Powerball ticket for tonight. But it’s too late. Days like Tuesday don’t repeat themselves immediately.
*Paraphrased from an old country song.
Stop by L&L Office Supply, 114 North Broad Street, Clinton and buy one of my novels. Buy Cowboys Come Home, Forgive Us Our Trespasses, Crazy of Natural Causes, The Intangibles, and/or a volume of my short stories, Longer Songs. They’re all signed and reasonably priced.
If you’d like me to ship you a signed copy, you can find my address and instructions here. If you want to speed the process up, send me a note and I’ll hook you up with my PayPal account.
Kindle versions – you don’t have to have a Kindle, just a free app for your electronic devices – of most of my books are available here. Links to print copies are below.
Cowboys Come Home is my brand-new, fresh-off-the-press western, a tale of two World War II veterans of the Pacific who come back home to Texas, intent on resuming their cowboy ways.
Forgive Us Our Trespasses is a tale about a crooked politician who wants to be governor, whatever it takes, and another man trying to stop him. It’s outrageous.
Crazy of Natural Causes is about the fall and rise of Chance Benford, a Kentucky football coach who reinvents himself. It’s original.
The Intangibles is about the South in the 1960s, complete with racial strife, bigotry, resentment, cultural exchange and, of course, high school football.
The Audacity of Dope is the tale of Riley Mansfield, a pot-smoking songwriter turned national hero with a taste for the former and a distaste for the latter.
Longer Songs is a collection of 11 short stories that all began in songs I wrote.
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