NCAA Basketball Tournament time is here. According to Wikipedia.com “the tournament, organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches and was the brainchild of Kansas (University) coach Phog Allen.” Basketball fever memories are ‘warm fuzzies’ for me.
My dad was so excited when the Kansas State University Wildcats made the Final Four in the 1964 NCAA men’s basketball championship tournament. UCLA was the team we wanted to lose for years.
Dad was 6’ 7 ½” and played basketball on his high school team. He earned a basketball scholarship to our small church college in south central Kansas. Years later Sister Sally played women’s basketball for the same college.
Dad played basketball on a Goodyear Tire sponsored team when I was small. ATSF Railway Co. national headquarters building had a gymnasium in their building and we watched dad’s team play there when we were really little. Mom loved to watch sports, she would clap and shout out encouraging words to Dad’s teammates and make sotto voice comments about referee’s needing glasses.
Basketball was my favorite team sport in high school. We played intramural games within the high school. Women’s basketball competition was non-existent at the time. My position was roving forward. There were six girls on a team back in the day, three forwards and three guards. Only two girls on each team were allowed to “rove” over the center line on the court, either the roving forward or the roving guard, depending on which goal post your team was defending. Even then we thought it was strange to have different rules for girls and boys team sports.
We follow the University of Kansas season pretty closely in our house these days. The exception for me is whenever KU is playing K-State. Old loyalties die hard. When I had to choose a school for one year of college courses before nursing school, Kansas State was my school of choice. By then KU was the basketball team and K-State was the football team. K-State is making a comeback in the basketball arena and KU’s football team is playing better these days. K-State’s basketball team was in the 2010 Sweet Sixteen round and they beat KU during the conference season. Go Wildcats. This year KU is back in the Sweet Sixteen.
Rock Chalk Jayhawks, Go KU…………….
©2011 Susan Kendall. All rights reserved
