It's as hard as you'll ever see kids play. Only a few will go on and play at the next level, but being a town hero can last forever.

        It's not really an official seat. It's more of a wooden perch, with a stairstep that currently holds one of the tournament water jugs. But I have seized it for the moment.
        After circling Corvallis High School for 35 minutes, before parking illegally with dozens of others in turmoil, and walking in to the jammed-to-the-rafters arena, where the final few minutes of the Yamhill-Carlton/LaSalle boys game are playing out, any place to park my notebook and camera will do.
        The boys are in a dogfight on the court and both sides of the gymnasium are exploding with every basket. Quite a frenzied crowd on hand from LaSalle, directly in front of whom I have established my temporary beachhead. I'm in the process of setting up a writing table on the water jug when it happens.

        LaSalle scores. Two hands on my shoulders, shaking me several times, in the style of a paint-mixer. The female voice screaming -"Yes -Yessss-YESSSS - Don't you just LOVE it?" As my clipboard flies off the water jug, I turn and face my attacker. She's a young, petite and, one would guess, normally demure woman. "Which one is yours?" I ask. "Oh the one there," she points, "the one guarding the ball". In the next two minutes she will embrace me, twice, like a long-lost relative, exchange "high-fives" with everyone else and begin to shriek again as the game draws to a close and her boy advances to play another day. Bright moment for this mom and, yes, we do just love it.

        Truth is, this woman defines the soul of the event for me. The OSAA/U.S.Bank 3-A State Basketball Championships, at Oregon State University and Corvallis High School. It's a good place to lose your bearings, in many different ways.
        My objective is to view and report on "Game 39." That being the Friday afternoon consolation round game between our Lady Mooks and the Sutherlin Lady Bulldogs. I stare at my brackets long enough to discern that a Tillamook win here today results in an 8 a.m. game tomorrow back at Gill Coliseum. Just hours ago, we had watched the Tillamook boys move on with a victory over Scappoose, at 8 a.m. at Gill Coliseum.  (Photo: Gill Coliseum on opening day, 1949 - OSU archives)

        If you've never watched a basketball game at 8 a.m., in a Coliseum capable of holding 12,000-plus people, with a crowd of 82 doggedly devoted fans, nursing coffee and donuts, after having watched the overtime game the night before that ran till 12:30 a.m., just know it's hard to work the "crowd" into a frenzy.
        But there's a lot of love in the vast arena nonetheless. And the kids play hard, there's no tomorrow without a win. For the Tillamook boys this morning, the girl's team was up - and in attendance, standing in the end zone, handling the rally squad duties along with the regular cheerleaders who were present for the dawn patrol. Many of them closed the building just eight hours ago, watching Astoria's Fishermen win the overtime game, in the wee hours, over the Madras White Buffaloes.

        Along the 50-foot press table for the 8 a.m. boys game sit four of us. The Scappoose reporter, Donovan Brink (former Headlight-Herald sports editor), this reporter and the KTIL/KMED broadcast team of Randy Schild and Dave Sherbondy. The 82 aforementioned fans are Tillamook and Scappoose faithful, some have wandered over from "Mookville," Ray and Debi Hartford's compound, a large RV, which is parked behind Reser Stadium, where several fans are "camping" and the subject of a page-one story in the Corvallis Gazette-Times. The Tillamook fans are rewarded when Tillamook pulls away late to earn a Saturday (12:30 p.m.) trophy game, with a 46-38 win over the Braves.

        Now, two hours after the finish of that game, it's a different story, different building. No room to move, fans jammed like sardines and the roof threatening to come off the building at the high school. The same Tillamook fans, and more that have arrived this morning, are in a kind of holding-pen, waiting for game 38 to end, so they can flood the seats to cheer on the Lady Mooks.  Tonight, there will be several thousand people from small towns descending on Gill Coliseum, across town, for the semifinal games in the championship bracket.

        My encounter with the zealous LaSalle mom seems insignificant as I glance straight up and see Schild and Sherbondy trying to set up a broadcast unit in the jam-packed top row, minutes before they're due on the air. The pair have done a remarkable job of bringing every game, boys and girls, to Tillamook households since Tuesday, and the schedule is anything but forgiving. All the while lugging broadcast equipment from one site to another. Eight games in all before the week would end. Still with voices and smiles at week's end.

        At the 3-A tournament, you're still at a community level. Entire townships move in and out of Gill Coliseum from 7:30 a.m. until midnight, for five days. As a matter of fact, the Philomath kids that win the boys championship have played together, just down the road a few miles from Corvallis, since they were seven years old. The tournament MVP, Logan Garvin, hugs his dad, Dave, the coach of the team. There are 6,000-plus on hand for the final - nobody's home in Philomath tonight.
        The ancient Native American gentleman in a wheelchair is all the way over from Madras, watching every boys and girls game his home town plays. Some of the kids playing in the vast confines of Gill Coliseum are used to gyms that require you to put your hands out to stop if you go to the hoop too hard - the wall is right there. Few of them have played on parquet floors under bright lights, with the roof above them seemingly miles up there.

        It's as hard as you'll ever see kids play. Only a few will go on and play at the next level, but being a town hero can last forever. That chance occurs at state tournaments. You see kids sitting and watching other games, after their own, into the night. Looking for an edge the next day.
        It's the little things that stick with you. A Scappoose senior named Eric Lugar, playing in his last game. After giving Tillamook 32 minutes of banging and abuse, Lugar moves toward Trever Phillips, who is dribbling out the clock with the game in hand, seconds remaining. Lugar reaches his hand out to Phillips, puts his other on the ball gently, it's over, he's acknowledging it in a classy manner. (Photo: O'Brien's home team. Tillamook Headlight Herald)

        The bench substitute from Molalla's girls team that comes in with seconds left in the half, and as the clock expires, she launches a desperation shot from midcourt with all her strength. It goes in to tie the game. The whole building erupts with a roar. Whatever happens in life, she'll  remember that rush. Plus, her team wins by three points at game's end.
        It's busy, confusing, heartbreaking, joyful, your tail end gets sore and you eat exceedingly overpriced stadium junk food for five days. Still, by the end of the last game, you know you'll be back next year. Something amazing will surely happen and some town will have a great thrill as a result, while another consoles each other. Long may  small town basketball live on, despite the financial woes that haunt our schools. There is no substitute.

© 2002  Michael O'Brien