The Book
Wow, talk about a flooding of memories. The year 1972, the phrase “bench warmers”, my good friend Greg. All these things rushed through my mind as I read the title listed on the small book that I now held in my hand. And when I say small, I mean small. Calling it book is probably a bit overstated so maybe using the word “booklet” would better suit it. Nah, I am calling it a book!!
With the book in my hands I slowly stepped back from the pile of boxes in which it was found and noticed a weight bench that had been stored in the attic. I thought I might as well finally put it to use so I took a seat and began glancing through my newly found treasure. For some reason the coldness of the attic didn’t seem to bother me as much as it did earlier. Before I share with you any of the contents of the book itself I guess I should explain what The Bench was about and how it came to be.
In short The Bench is a book about the life and times of the 8th grade basketball team. Well not so much the whole team, but mostly just the bench warmers. The book wasn’t something that was planned and being a bench warmer definitely wasn’t desired by any of us. They both just seemed to happen. All of us on the team had a year’s worth of experience of playing basketball in the 7th grade so this was our second season of Junior High basketball. Ed Coleman was our 7th grade basketball coach and he did a fine job of introducing us to the game of basketball and as a team we had a good first year. We won more than we lost and I felt like each of us learned the basic fundamentals of the game. For myself I had the privilege of being on the starting lineup during some of the games that year and looking back the same was true of my 9th grade year on the basketball team. But this wasn’t my 7th grade or 9th grade year. This was my 8th grade year and things were a little different that year.
Just like all the players on the team I had high hopes going into the 8th grade season and making the starting lineup. But as with all teams not everyone is going to be a starter so some of the members are going to find themselves as bench warmers. Or as we later called ourselves, Benchies.
Things looked good for our 8th grade team as the practices started immediately following the football season. We experienced a little success during the previous year and thanks to another year of physical growth we looked forward to building on that success. Plus with the arrival of a new student and a stud of an athlete, John Wynne we were excited about the coming season.
Richard Correll was our basketball coach that year and he was also a science teacher at the junior high. Thinking back to junior high and science I suddenly remembered our science teacher in the 7th grade, Miss Navarro. Wow, they shouldn’t do that to 12 year old boys who are at school to get an education. Miss Navarro was young, pretty, red headed and very well built. I would like to be able to write in this book that Miss Navarro inspired me to be a better student and she was responsible for me continuing on with my education and finally getting a minor in biology. But really all I can remember is that she was young, pretty, red headed and very well built. But again, I was a 12 year old boy. What do you expect me to remember? And now I am 50+ year old man, what else do you expect me to remember?
Since we had one year of basketball behind us Coach Correll didn’t have to start our practices with “This is a basketball and that is the basket” speech. However, a lot of practices, especially the early ones dealt mainly with the basics of basketball. We did a lot of dribbling and passing drills at each practice which is never as much fun as shooting the ball. Everyone dreams of making the game winning shot but very few of us spend much time dreaming of making the game winning pass and that’s probably what is wrong with the game today.
Over the first few weeks of practice we worked on dribbling, passing, shooting, offense and defense all under the watchful eye of Coach Correll. As he evaluated each player he was trying to formulate in his mind who should be the starting five players once the season started. Every athlete at any level wants to be on the starting team and I am confident that each and every one of the 17 players on our team wanted to be a starter. We all worked hard, well at the beginning of the season, to try to make the prestigious starting line-up but unfortunately that is not how it worked out.
The starting positions ended being awarded to Keith Morris, center, Lloyd Walker and Wes Waggoner, our forwards, and to John Wynne and Tracy Prigg, our two guards. So with those 5 spots filled the next thing to work towards were the key position of the 6th or 7th man. These were the guys that would be the first two substitutes to go into the game to give one of the starters a breather. The guys filling those two positions seemed to fluctuate through the season between a handful of players depending on who was doing better in practice that week. Guys like Garry Clute, Sam Starkey and Toby Bottom battled it out for the 6th and 7th man position. The rest of the players ended up filling in the second and third team spots. Now that I think about it, had Greg Storm or myself landed any of the top 7 positions on the team "The Bench" probably would not have been written and I wouldn’t be writing this book now. Had Greg been picked to be a starter he probably would have gone on to lead the team to an undefeated season thus winning the heart and attention of Miss Navarro and they would have been involved in some kind of scandal which you would have read about it in the National Enquirer. (You don’t know how hard it was for me not to write myself into that role.) But none of that happened.
The season finally got underway and realistically Coach Correll made the right choice for the starting five. Not only were we beating the other teams we were beating them bad. Many of the early games that season were routs and we would end up beating the other team by 20 or 25 points. And it was probably those lopsided victories that made setting the bench even harder. Even with a huge lead going into the last quarter many of us only got to play a minute or two or sometimes just a matter of seconds. That really got discouraging after a few games.
You have heard the term, “What came first the chicken or the egg?” Well that phrase seemed to apply to my situation on the basketball team that year. If you would ask Coach Correll he would probably tell you I was a bit of screw off all year long and that is why I didn’t get to play. But the way I remember it was I wasn’t getting to play much so THEN I became the screw off.
I do remember one time during warm-ups before a game that I definitely pulled something that I am sure didn’t help my chances for getting to play. We had already warmed up a little by doing some lay-up drills and then everyone shot a few free throws. Then we were just practicing shots from different positions on the court. While most of the team was shooting more layups or eight to ten foot jump-shots, you know, shots that you would see someone taking in the game, I chose to practice a few shots from around half court. Of course I wasn’t making any of my shots and the ball would bounce wildly off the top of the backboard or if I was lucky off the rim. But I kept shooting them. Coach Correll then noticed what I was doing and he gave me one of those “coach glares” as he motioned for me to come over to where he was standing. Looking me directly in the eye he said, “Hey Cunningham. Why don’t you work on some shots that you would shoot in a game?” At which I wise-assly replied, “Coach, you get me into the game and I will shoot that shot.”
You can only imagine what my playing time was after that not so wise comment. Obviously the coach thought I might have been serious about shooting that shot so I don’t think he was willing to risk it. From then on I found myself along with seven other guys getting to watch the games from the comfort of the bench.
I don’t remember the eight of us calling a meeting and discussing, “Ok guys, if we aren’t going to get to play we might as well have as much fun on the bench as we can.” And I am not sure who, if anyone was responsible for leading us down that road but I do remember what was written by the teacher on my 6th grade report card. The report card was packed away in the same box I had found "The Bench" book and on the back of it Mr. Conrow had written, “Jon shows good leadership quality but he tends to lead in the wrong direction.” So I could have had something to do with leading us astray.
With the top 7 or 8 players getting all the playing time in the games they obviously got most of the attention during our daily practices. And since the team just had one coach that left the rest of us mostly unsupervised. Not a good thing. It’s never a good thing for 12 year old boys to be unsupervised. So most of the practice time we would take turns sneaking out to go to the bathroom or get a drink. We would bring candy and eat it while the first stringers kept the watchful eye of Coach Correll on them. The worst part was when we did finally get on the court to practice it was very hard to shut off the “screw off” mode and turn on the basketball player mode. So we would do things like this.
One day Correll had the first string working on their full court press. A full court press is when you are on defense and you try to keep the opposing team from throwing the ball in bounds or try to stop them from advancing the ball up the court. Well to really work on this you needed some guys to play the role of the opposing team so that role was played by the bench warmers. Coach reluctantly picked out 5 of us to see if we could get the ball in bounds and then advance it on down the court. This was 8th grade basketball and I wasn’t much good but in 7th and 8th grade football I was the starting quarterback so I knew a little about throwing a ball to receivers. So I had a plan. The starters got into position to defend against us and as they did the five Benchies formed a huddle like they do in football and I made up a play. We broke from the huddle and I stood along the inbound line under the basket and the other four guys lined up like wide receivers. The starters looked at us kind of funny, imagine that, and they started to laugh. I don’t think Coach Correll was laughing. I called out in my best quarterback voice, “Down, set, hike!” and I rolled out to my right as all four of my highly skilled receivers ran their predetermined pass routes. Of course the 5 starters didn’t know what to think since I am sure the coach hadn’t covered this maneuver while explaining the proper way to run the full court press.
With the starters caught off guard I found it quite easy to hit one of my teammates in full stride as they ran a “fly” or “post” pattern down the court. In a matter of seconds the full court press was broken. I don’t think the starters were laughing now and I know for a fact that Coach Correll wasn’t laughing.
Clowning around like this wasn’t just saved for practices. We proudly took our show on the road and performed countless antics during the games. We weren’t getting much playing time but we were having a lot of fun. And to this day I am not sure how we came up with the idea to write about what we were doing but somehow the idea was born.
One of the mistakes in our educational system at that time was the formation of a class called “Study Hall.” And to multiply the mistake of study hall the Webb City School system went one step farther in making it even worse. They separated the boys from the girls for Study Hall so there was a Boys Study Hall class and a Girls Study Hall class. I'm sure they meant well by this and I am sure the reasoning behind it was quite simple. They figured with all the hormones and testosterone racing through a pre-teen’s body they should come up with a way to separate the sexes thus giving us all a “cool down” period. A nice idea but I am not so sure it worked.
So for one hour a day during school a class was set up that would separate the boys from the girls with the intent of giving us time to study. The plan was for us to use this hour to get our homework done, study for an upcoming test, or to read. Their plan failed miserably. At least in the boy’s class. The only reason most guys at that age would study at all would be to impress some girl. To try to show them we actually had a brain in our head. But take the girls away then the only person you can worry about impressing are a bunch of other guys and you aren’t going to impress most of them by studying. You need to be much more creative. The silent but pungent fart immediately comes to mind or throwing a textbook out the second floor window. Or as it happened one day being the first guy to point out the two dogs “humping” in the yard across the street. That’s how you impress a room full of 12 year old boys. But even a 12 year old boy can only fart on command so many times before the fun wears off and of course the dogs are not going to show up every day. So we had to think of something else to fill the hour we were supposed to be studying.
So Greg and I somehow came up with the idea of writing "The Bench". After each basketball game we would get together in Study Hall and would talk about the events of the game and then write them down on paper. Sometimes under the guise of working on a paper or actually studying Greg and I would ask to go to the library where it was quieter so our creative minds could work their magic as we wrote "The Bench". Thankfully we had the sense to let Greg do the actual writing. He had great penmanship for an 8th grade boy so he got the ever important job of putting "The Bench" down on paper. In each chapter we would talk about the bus ride to the game or something about the team we were playing and then we would give a blow by blow analysis of what happened in the game. Probably the best part of each chapter was the “Comments of the Game.” You can only guess what kind of comments we would come up with after spending most if not all four quarters setting on the bench with nothing much to do. That’s right, most comments had something to do with the cheerleaders. And usually the opposing team’s cheerleaders. If not the cheerleaders then the ref or the coach seemed to be the topic for our comments. Since most of the basketball team was in the same Study Hall we could go around the class and ask each “Benchie” for their comment on the game.
So Greg and I wrote the first chapter and then added the Comments of the Game. After that I am not sure if either one of us really thought there would be anymore chapters written. The attention span of a 12 year old is pretty short so the odds of us continuing on with the book were very slim. But without any girls in Study Hall to distract us we continued writing and as time went by we ended up writing a chapter for the each of the ten remaining games that year.
The highly esteemed position of Benchie was awarded to eight players, I mean to eight bench warmers. They were Jim Byrd, John Bailey, Kent Williams, Bobby Lauck, Norman West, Greg Storm, and myself.
Sadly by now the memories of Miss Navarro faded away and I once again realized the coldness of the attic and I wondered how long I had been up there. So I closed up the boxes of relics and with "The Bench" under my arm I headed back down the stairs, turned out the lights, and raised the steps back up into place and yelled out, “Hey honey, you will never guess what I found.”
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