Back-seat Bench

Former sports columnist at Greensboro News & Record and Winston-Salem Journal.

Being an athlete in junior high school had its perks, not the least of which was being called out of seventh period to join the rest of your teammates in the locker room.

There was nothing like a bus filled with ballplayers and cheerleaders headed for a road game across town.

Our basketball coach realized early on that this was a tradition fraught with peril, so he banned the cheerleaders from riding with us. We were never the same as a team.

One of the first games after the controversial decision was against Griffith Junior High, a rival school that Dalton Junior High had a fair amount of success against in football, baseball, track and basketball. Most of us played all four sports all three years at Dalton.

Anyway, we're headed across town in a half-empty school bus that echoed our laughs and hushed conversations, carrying our voices from the back all the way to the driver's seat, where Coach Crackback watched us in the mirror and listened to every word.

About halfway to the game, he heard the distinct giggle of a girl. It was indeed a cheerleader named Betsy, the girlfriend of one of the biggest clowns on our team, the late-great Chris Lewis.

Coach stopped the bus in the middle of the road, opened the red stop sign and turned on the emergency flashers. He walked the length of the bus with his eyes locked on Lewis, then looked at Betsy.

"You're on the bench today," he said.

He was talking to Betsy.

"And you're sitting right where you are now," he told Lewis.

And that's exactly what happened until, well. It didn't end that way.

Coach managed to piss off the officials early in the game in part because Betsy was something of a distraction sitting on our bench and yelling at the refs along with Coach.

Their revenge was to call every touch foul they could come up with, eventually sending four of our players to the bench with five fouls. Somehow, the game was still close until about a minute left in the game when Coach switched seats to sit beside Betsy.

"I need you to go get your boyfriend," he said.

We were down to five players, three of which had four fouls. Betsy was gone in a flash, returning to the gym with Chris just as another whistle blew. I'd fouled out on another ridiculous call.

There were six seconds left in the game, with Griffth leading by one with possession of the ball.

Chris, having seen nothing of the game, walked over to me on the bench and asked who their best player was. I pointed to this pesky little guard, the one kid we couldn't handle.

Chris walked up to him just as the inbounds whistle blew, grabbed the kid by his shorts and pulled them down about an inch as the ball was thrown to him. He hesitated one second, adjusting his shorts. Chris jumped in front of the pass, stole the ball and laid it in to win the game.

The buzzer sounded, and we all ran onto the court and raised Chris on our shoulders as Coach Crackback and Betsy followed the officials out of the gym, cussing and taunting them all the way to their cars.

Coach and Betsy were on the bus when we got there. We celebrated all the way back to school. Chris was the most popular kid in 8th grade for about a week.

But then Betsy broke up with him for some reason. We didn't win another game.

- Ed Hardin
Dalton Junior High
Class of '71