Last weekend I had the chance to spend some time with some old friends as we came together to celebrate Ron’s 60th birthday. One of our neighborhood heroes, Jesse Floyd started talking about the “old days”, we reminisced about everything from the neighborhood athletes to the rituals and rights of passage conducted by the older kids. One ritual that I totally forgot about was Night Gym, where two nights a week Nichols Middle School gym was the hottest ticket in town for pick-up basketball. Night Gym started at 7:00pm and I can vividly remember all those Tuesdays and Thursday’s crowded around the door at the back of the school for Mr. Crane to come down the long flight of stairs to unlock the door. It didn’t matter whether if it was 80 degrees or 20 below, there was always a group of kids ranging between 12 to 19 waiting to get in.
The first part of the ritual was conducted by a simple process, we lined up at the free throw line to shoot for teams. This ritual was not for captains to pick their teams but even more simplistic, first five team one, second five team two. There was always some jockeying for a spot in line but never any outright conflicts, it didn’t matter if you were one of the many elite athletes or just a “buster”, you got to take your shoot. I like to think I was somewhere in the middle. It was very rare that the first ten hit, if you missed you simply went to the back of the line for second and sometimes a third shot. There was a bit of gamesmanship in this process, maybe a missed shot on purpose to make sure you where on the right team but for the most part the process was fair.
Once the teams were decided, the next shot made, number eleven, was probably the most important because the eleventh person to hit automatically got next! As soon as this shot was made all you heard was “let me run with you” or “can I run with you?”. Now, if there were four others left, lucky number eleven could end up with a weaker team BUT if there was more than four left, they then got to pick his squad. Sometimes they stalled because they knew so and so was coming, sometimes there was only two or three left and number eleven watched the current game to see who might lose and pick the best players from the losing team.
The game itself was your standard pick-up game, first team to fifteen by ones and got to win by two. Players called their own fouls but there were no free throws, there was no shot clock or time clock. The winning team stayed on the court.
The sidelines were always buzzing with activity because depending on the number of people at the gym that night, “next” could be three levels deep. You’d have people walk in the door either hollering “I got next!” or asking, “who got next?” The losing team would immediately jockey to find out who had next or next next and that’s how those epic Tuesday and Thursday nights from 7-9:30 went for years.
There were some great games, fierce battles on the court, and not once that I can remember was there ever a fight…
