For this year’s first blog, I want to advance a proposition and make a proposal. The proposition is that Vermont will never again see high school basketball games as intense as those that took place in the tiny gymnasiums of small towns in the years before union schools. The proposal is that we begin a collective search for any images of such games, for some talented documentary filmmaker to edit and assemble as the basis for an evocation of that era.
For Rutland County, I’m talking about the contests, often fierce rivalries, decided in places like Brandon High School (where my parents were teachers), Pittsford High School, Fair Haven High School, and Wallingford High School. Those who have never seen the courts in question would be amazed that games could be played there at all. Often there was no out-of-bounds to speak of, except where corridors happened to enter. Seating was limited: in Brandon, the students sat on the auditorium stage, while the faculty and community went to the same seats from which they might view a senior play; in Pittsford, almost everyone had to make do with seats in a balcony that surrounded the court, literally overlooking it. Visiting teams would typically be sent to the girls’ locker room, which in some cases delivered a dose of disorienting pheromones that created a definite home court advantage.
I’m talking about a simpler, poorer Vermont, where in the Fifties television reception, if feasible, only offered a handful of fuzzy, mostly black-and-white channels. In the bleakness of the cold months,basketball games became important community events. This era I witnessed personally; I can only imagine the games of the Thirties and Forties, but they, too, must have been like movies in the towns lucky enough to have theaters, occasions not to be missed regardless of what, or who, was playing.
Back then, high schools took more of their cues from colleges, pumping up school spirit in rah-rah-siss-boom-bah fashion. In Brandon, at least, games opened with ritual, the cheerleaders out on the floor exhorting students to sing the school fight song. There was a moment when the head cheerleader, all eyes upon her, yelled out the words that linked the first and second parts of that song: “Fight for old Brandon, hep hep!” It was a starring role, like walking down the aisle with your partner as Queen of the Senior Prom. When the head cheerleader went on to marry the basketball star, it seemed only right and fitting that they should be a couple.
Any documentary should make sure to show the offensive weapons of the day, which were to change with the arrival of the modern jump shot. My own high school basketball coach, Bob Sharrow, was a master of a way that players could shoot from NBA distances: the two-handed set shot. Aimed at the backboard, which would absorb some of the shot’s energy and assist less-than-perfect shots to go in, it was sent skyward with a twist of both wrists that gave it terrific backspin. Hitting high on the backboard, it would dive through the hoop with a power very different from the lightness of touch that can give a jump shot artist a “shooter's roll,” the ball dancing around on the rim before determining it might as well drop in. I saw Sharrow work his magic during faculty-varsity games, which were popular as fund-raisers. Such a shot, taken from the side so it had to be aimed at just the right place on the backboard, was electrifying.
A center might have a good hook shot, like Pittsford’s Bruce Hier, or a turnaround jump shot, like Brandon’s Tom Dickinson,. I don’t mean that he turned and took a shot, I mean he jump high (being tall) and twisted 180 degrees in mid-air to take an unstoppable shot. It wasn’t always possible for point guard Chuck Memoe (a future Castleton State College Hall-of-Famer) to get him the ball, but when he did, Dickinson was deadly.
I think a lot Vermonters have such memories, and would be willing to subscribe to a film-making project that would bring them to life. It would be a Homecoming
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