Finally Home: Girl's State Basketball

Simply exhausted. Even with a fair and adequate amount of sleep in the past couple of nights, I feel like I've been awake for 72 hours.

Ever since our girl's basketball team won the Section championship, I had debated whether or not to head to the state tournament to watch them play. In the end, the pros outweighed the cons.

• The last time that I had seen anything "state tournament" related in Minnesota was back in 1987. My school's high school football team won the state championship at the Dome.
• I had been to state tournaments in South Dakota while I was attending college there (my ex-brothers-in-law played in state basketball tournaments).
• Just the fact that they were THERE in the first place ... and the opportunity to play at the Sports Pavilion (the backside of Williams Arena).

Coming from a small, rural town, I immediately turned on my pessimistic attitude and started to think that we were going to lose out right away in the 1st Round of the state playoffs. It just all seemed to good to be true. Why were we here?!

Last Thursday was the first round and right away, it was looking bad. We were down early -- BIG TIME -- like 16-0 mid-way through the first half and our girls finally got some points with nearly 5 minutes remaining. Soon afterwards, the jitters were gone and the half ended at 20 to 17, with our girls facing a 3-point deficit. That, in itself, was a win.

Later on, the game was a great one with our girls pulling off a victory. It was decided that I would stay in the Twin Cities (my dad was in town on business and he already had a hotel room) and thus began the long downfall of the weekend.

First off, I drove up by myself. I just met people at the games. It was a fairly boring outing being by myself in a big town, but I could manage. The students were also surprised to see me at the state tournament -- but they all had their own plans for some crazyness back at their hotels.

After leaving the Pavilion, I drove to a northern suburb to where my Dad had set up some hotel accommodations and I dropped my stuff off. I made a few calls, talked to my brother Dan, who was watching the boys basketball Section championships back home; called Mike and gave him an update on my status since we were going to continue to film some more interviews for the documentary; and called my old buddy "Brew", who I had the pleasure knowing from college (in Minnesota) A LONG TIME AGO. He called me back later that afternoon and I met him and his fiance at an Irish pub in a suburb south of Minneapolis. It was a 2-for-1 deal and they kept on coming. It was great catching up with a guy who I hadn't seen in nearly 6 or 7 years.

I hauled it back to the hotel that night and found Dad, and later on we ate at the Green Mill restaurant (I highly recommend the "Desert Fire Pasta"). I drank even more tap beer while Dad had his share of Jack/Sours and it after a while, it had gotten pretty late (and I had gotten pretty drunk) and we hit the sack.

Again ... another step towards the Ruin of Me ... my Dad snores like a chainsaw. I was prepared -- brought along a set of earplugs -- but they didn't help. I woke up around 3:30 a.m. Friday morning to piss out some of the alcohol from a few hours before and the sound of the snoring continued to seep through the plugs and into my ear drums. I probably didn't crash until a few hours later, until my Dad woke up for an early meeting at 6:30 a.m. Once he left, I removed my ear plugs and it wasn't a half an hour later, the housekeepers were already coming around. I gave up, flew the white flag at 8:30 that morning. I showered, gotten dressed and drove to a mall to look for a few things. One of the items that I was purchased was a brand-new pair of Nike Shox (since I'm determined to get back into shape with a little running routine), but more on this later.

I was already tired that day and I was supposed to meet with Dad at his temporary office for lunch. The second round of the playoffs wasn't until 6:00 p.m., so I had lots of time to kill. I hung around the office for a couple of hours, then decided to head to the Mall of America to finalize a few things that I wanted to buy. It was there when I ran into a hoard of my students and I heard a few interesting "stories," but what else was new?!

As the afternoon wore on, I was becoming gradually tired. Our main course of entertainment was watching a certain worker who worked at place called "Hot Dog on a Stick" and made fun of their unique uniforms. Interesting... Soon afterwards, I made my annual stop at the NASCAR simulator -- a student of mine rode with in the passenger seat -- as I raced at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte and raced at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

We got to the Target Center just in time for the 6:00 p.m. tip-off and we ended up beating a team who our girls had lost to in the state volleyball tournament eariler that fall. It was an overtime victory, a little revenge ... and again, I was surprised that we had actually won and were going to play in the state championship game. But during that semi-final game, I was running on fumes and didn't get into the game itself. I did my fair share of hollering when the opposing team decided to "sit on the ball" at half-court (when the opposing team had a 2-point lead). I was so tired -- and broke -- that I decided to head back for the HomeTown that night. I didn't have the money for a hotel room and I didn't want to stay with anyone else. I fought off my sleepiness for a few hours until I arrived home and immediately went to sleep.

Since Saturday was St. Patrick's Day, that gave me a pretty good excuse to drink! Mike called and said that his younger brother Kevin was coming to town and we could get his interview done, so I bought a case of Miller Lite and we watched our girl's play in the championship game on television. I don't even want to comment or break down the 3-point shot that happened at the end of the game. It ended up being the deciding factor in the game as our girls won by 1 point and I'm sure the referee's call (referee called a 3-pointer while the guard's foot was on the line for the shot). In the end, we got the trophy and the medals ... the first ever P-Town championship in ANY sport!

We finished interviews -- Sean stopped over and got his done -- played a little Wii and slept once again at my parent's house.

Today, I watched the NASCAR race at Atlanta and drove back to P-Town and here I am now, dead tired and ready to hit the sheets. But overall ... a great experience for myself and hopefully many others from P-Town ... hell, we're the champs!