Hey, there, Warrior Team...

I wrote the article in March of 1990, but the memories are from March of 1968. Maybe I should have kept this until March of 2018, when it will be 50 years since our school went to the dance, but I found it today and basketball season's coming on fast, so here it is. Tweaked a little, but not much. Do you remember?

March 8, 1968 Peru Tribune

We were just a little bitty school out in the sticks. We'd never won the championship in anything but livestock judging. If we went over 50-50 in basketball, it was an outstanding season. If we made it though the sectional without any snowstorms or other similar tragedies, it was going to be a good spring.

But then it was 1968, and I was a senior in high school. There were 92 of us, and the only thing some of us wanted remember about school was getting out of it in May and never, never having to go back.

Until we won the Logansport sectional.

It was, in the vernacular of a subsequent generation, awesome.

By the time we--we being North Miami--had advanced to the final game of the sectional, every cheering section in Logansport's famous Berry Bowl was rooting for us. Everybody except the Berries themselves, that is, and you couldn't really blame them. After all, we were beating them.


The motorcade going home from Logansport was nearly endless, and we were escorted part of the way by police and fire vehicles. Once back on our own turf, we filled the gym well past capacity and had an impromptu pep session in the middle of the night. It was our first sectional and local media were touting us as the Cinderella ball team.

The week at school passed in a blur of pep sessions and days of wearing strange clothing and classes spent talking about basketball in the hushed-by-hoarseness voices that abound after an exciting ball game.

Come Friday, we were still whispering, but we all piled into the fan buses or attached ourselves to the motorcade and went to the regional. Once there, the whispers gave way to screams and--wonder of holy wonders--LITTLE NORTH MIAMI WON THE WHOLE THING!

The line of cars going back to school was even longer this time. We were accompanied by even more flashing red lights. The gym bulged precariously at the seams. The little school in the boonies had become "the mouse that roared."

We even had a slogan, given to us by the coach of a neighboring school. "We're not satisfied!" became the Warrior battle cry. It reached the point that some of the players grimaced whenever they heard those three words, and they heard them at every turn. Signs cropped up in cornfields that proclaimed the area to be "Warrior Country." Cinderella's night went on.

The following Saturday, still whispering, we loaded up and went to Lafayette to the semi-state. We won the first game. We had advanced from the Sweet Sixteen to being one of only eight teams left. The mouse roared even louder.

But that night, the Warriors met the team who would become 1968's state champions, and the ball was over. The proverbial clock struck midnight, and we went home in defeat. We lost, but we were satisfied.

And now it's 1990. I have screamed my way through my own son's high school basketball career and am now in the process of screaming my way though his brother's football career. 1968 is long ago and far away.

Or is it? Sometimes when I'm in the gym--my kids go to the same school I did--I can close my eyes and remember how it felt in there on those victorious nights.

And sometimes when things get difficult and success seems to be an unknown quality destined to escape me forever, I remember what was accomplished by the little team that could.

North Miami basketball has never reached the semi-state again, but the memory of that long-ago journey lingers on with many of us.

We were, for a brief, shining time, the Cinderella school. And the dance we attended was grand. Just grand.

2017: Thanks to Dale Jones, Mike Coffing, Randy Smith, Mike Walters, Dave Collins, Frank Miller, Roger Grismore, Mike Devine, Mike Skinner, Gary Baker, Bob Pontius, Dick Moyer, and Coach Jerry Lewis (as well as anyone I may have missed) for giving so many of us such a great thing to keep in the memory banks.

Are we there yet?

Although I couldn't find it when I went looking for it, I remember the column I wrote about "random" drug testing. It was sometime in the early 90s. Imagine my surprise when I saw by an editorial in July 28's Peru Tribune that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Here is my response. In order to be fair, I also sent it to the Tribune for them to address--or not--how they chose.

On July 28, reading the Peru Tribune, I was pleased to see an article about Ole Olsen’s Children’s Theatre’s production of The Tempest. I was glad to see Maconaquah’s projects being reported on. Police Chief Mike Meeks gave an informative interview about Narcan. I even liked the headline on the op-ed page that proclaimed, “Schools need to step up.” Because where kids are concerned, of course schools need to step up. As do parents. Churches. Politicians. The kids themselves.

          But then I read this one phrase in the editorial, the one that said, “…strongly considering adopting drug testing for high school juniors and seniors involved in extracurricular activities as well as students who drive themselves to school.” Is this then the stepping up the Tribune is referring to?

          When my kids were in school in the 90s, there was a lot of talk of random drug testing among student athletes. I don’t know if it was ever implemented, because my kids graduated and my mind moved on to other things, but I do recall writing a column that questioned the randomness of only testing student athletes. I didn’t understand then—and still don’t—what was random about that. What about student musicians, student librarians, and the students who skip school as often as they attend? Was there no possibility, no matter how remote, that any of them might be using as many illegal drugs as the athletes?

          So, here we are 25 years after my indignant column, and the definition of “random” apparently hasn’t changed a bit. Students who do not join extracurricular activities--which I always thought we encouraged, didn’t we?—and those who don’t or can’t drive themselves to school are evidently drug-free.

          Now, I admit I’m a little out of it as far as kids go. Well, maybe a lot out of it, but I still don’t understand the picking and choosing. I have no problem with drug testing, as long as it starts with the administrators and works its way down through the faculty to the student body. I truly doubt it will do any good, but I’m usually happy with proactive things. Of course, I’d be happy if the schools’ stepping up had more to do with curricula, better teacher salaries, and making sure no kid ever went home hungry. Or, wait, maybe just the band kids and the ones who wear green T-shirts could go home hungry. Yeah, just random ones. That’s it. 
          Our prompt at this month's writers' group meeting was "are we there yet?" I didn't have to explain at all what this essay had to do with the prompt. Twenty-five years after such total inequality was encouraged, it’s being encouraged yet again. It makes me think of prior to 2008, when I thought racism was…well, not a thing of the past, but better. It reminds me, loud and clear, that no, we’re not nearly there yet. And that we must not give up until we are.