He Got Game

Disclaimer: This is way old news, but something I wanted to write about so I can better remember it in the future.

On Tuesday, February 22, I was part of a team of Cedar Falls teachers and local personalities, taking part in a fundraiser for North Cedar school. Their enrollment is significantly smaller than the other 5 elementary schools in town thus their parent organization is smaller as well. When it comes to raising money, they need to think outside the box.

So this year they put together a team of Incredibles and brought the Harlem Wizards to town! The idea was brilliant! 12 of my 28 fifth grade students, and even some of their parents came to the game. Mom and Grandma came to keep Kelli company with Charly in the crowd too! That's at least 15 tickets sold just by me being on the team! A team of 25 teachers, including KWWL anchor Ron Steele and weatherman Mark Schnackenberg, Saturday Night Live vet Gary Kroeger, and radio DJ Brett Manion were sure to bring in plenty of spectators. The packed gym was proof of the event's success.

The entire game was scripted. We knew exactly what minute of what quarter we were going to play and how long we would be on the court. With 25 players, playing time was stretched thin. My only playing time would come in starting the third quarter, which I took as somewhat of an honor because the third quarter was the only quarter in which the Wizards played competitively. In quarters one, two, and four, the Wizards got the crowd involved and directed our team on the court as to where to stand (and where to be out of the way!) while they performed some of their tricks.

Throughout the night the Wizrds' announcer gave members of our team nicknames ("She-wears-short-shorts", "He-wears-short-shorts", "Everybody loves Raymond", "John McCain", "Barbra Streisand", etc). As the first and second quarters played out I became nervous about stepping on the court for a few reasons. One, what nickname was I going to get ("The Missing Member of the Backstreet Boys")? And two, did they only tell us the third quarter would be competitive to get us to try really hard so we could be the entertainment while they embarrassed us (Kind of)?

After halftime our Cedar Falls team trailed by 12 points. The announcer told the score keeper to tie the score, shouting "The home town crowd didn't come out to see their team lose!" Once the score was tied, the announcer told the scorekeeper to spot us 20 points! Now I knew we were going to be embarrassed, but in a totally different way. The Wizards had one 8-minute quarter to get those points back!

My 4 minutes of playing time went by in the blink of an eye. I had a few assists, snagged a few steals I was proud of, and before I knew it the clock was approaching the 4-minute mark and I hadn't even gotten a shot off. With my playing time dwindling by the second, I pulled up on a fast break and drained a three-pointer! I was happy to be done as it couldn't have gone any better. Our group of five scored 10 points to the Wizards' 20. So we only gave up 10 of the 20 points spotted to us!

We ended up losing by 30+ points! But the night was a lot of fun. Charly got a good nap in during the first half of the game but woke up just in time to see her daddy play. North Cedar raised a lot of money and my fifth-grade students were pleasantly surprised by what remaining basketball skills their teacher still had!

Note about the competition: The Harlem Wizards are not the Harlem Globetrotters! But they are close. The Wizards were formed in 1962 (the Globetrotters in 1926) along with many other traveling show basketball teams. The Wizards and the Globetrotters, both out of Harlem, are the only two remaining show basketball teams today! All of the Wizards are college stars that just missed out on the NBA and decided to keep basketball a part of their life by helping raise money for organizations and entertaining fans.