The Ghost of Fred Hare

   "You know, I believe we have two lives.
     The life we learn with... and the life we live after that"
          -Iris Gaines,from the movie The Natural


By Harry Cummins

     It has been over 60 years since they played the greatest basketball game I ever saw.  A persisting ghost from that game still lives in my attic, loosely pressed between the pages of a variegated and wrinkled game program.

     However, this story is not about that snowy December night in 1964 when Nebraska sophomore guard Fred Hare blindly flipped the ball backwards over his head as the buzzer sounded, giving the Huskers a 74-73 upset win over No 1 ranked Michigan and their near-mythical All-American Player of the Year, Cazzie Russell.

     No, this story is about the rest of Fred Hare's life that ended on October 2, 2014, at the age of 69. His final years were spent in the isolation of a small north-central Texas town, confined to an electric wheelchair and separated from family and friends. News of his passing failed to reach his own family for almost a year.

     Since that celebrated winter's night in Nebraska basketball lore, this much has been pieced together from the turbulent and nomadic years that shadowed Fred Hare as tightly as any lock step defender:


      Two days before Christmas 1967, early into his final year at Nebraska, Hare quickly showered at halftime of a Big 8 game against Wyoming and walked out of the locker room, never to return. The exact circumstances remain clouded.

     After a tryout with the Los Angeles Lakers, he traveled extensively with the Harlem Clowns and Harlem Globetrotters.  He also played briefly in Canada.

     His mother died in 1967 at the age of 47. After the funeral, Hare sold all his belongings and boarded a plane for Mexico, where he played three seasons for the University of Americas, averaging 35 points a game.

     In 1972, Hare survived a life-threatening head-on crash on a Colorado interstate, spending months recovering in a local hospital.

     Fred Hare came from a large family of 18 brothers and sisters, including stillborn twins and triplets. Many of his siblings met tragic ends and by 2000, Hare was the only one left, living with his second wife and helping a son with a roofing business.  His own father, a sharecropper,had passed away when Fred was just an infant.

     Hare had open heart surgery somewhere around 2008, having already suffered two heart attacks in Mexico in earlier years.  Two of his sons were born in Mexico.

     His final years were spent in the company of a live-in caretaker in Krum,Texas  Hare died as an enshrined member of the Nebraska High School Sports Hall of Fame and the Nebraska Black Sports Hall of Fame. Those who saw him play say he was  perhaps the best player to ever come out of the state.  They said he was a natural.

     In a span of a week, toward the end of his senior year at Omaha Tech, Hare was voted 'Prom King' by his fellow students, most of them white.   A few days later, Parade Magazine named him one of top 15 high school basketball players in America, a list that included a 7 foot sophomore  Lew Alcindor, later to become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the all-time leading scorer in NBA history.

     Hare spent many years attempting to write a book about his roller-coaster life.  Trying to chronicle his journey was "For the Lord, and part of a promise to my mother that I'd finish college" Hare said in a 2011 interview. He took writing classes to finish his college credits.  The book was finally finished by his son, Freddie Lee Hare, Jr.



     I never knew Fred Hare, although I met him once in the men's department of Gold's Department Store in Lincoln, Nebraska, days after his unforgettable no-look shot had reverberated across the sports pages of America.  "Thanks for the memory" I said, and shook his hand. At the time, we both were shopping for warmer clothing to shield us from the cold landscape that lay ahead.

     We were also both students then, learning all we could about the tumultuous world as we knew it in 1964.

     To this day, I remain haunted by the ghost roaming my attic.  Haunted still by the shadowy significance of every human life.

 

   

   

   

 
       



   

Above The Rim

USC Trojan John Rudometkin- 1940-2015  (Pictured here in 1962 game vs fellow AP All-American Jerry Lucas and Ohio State)

By Harry Cummins

     After all, it is one thing to play the game of basketball and another thing, entirely, to manage the vagaries of a fully measured life.

     I had yet to grapple with such inherent complexity in 1970, that same year I first met John Rudometkin.

      I was a young sports-focused journalist on assignment from an East Coast magazine and had arrived in the early morning hours at Rudometkin's Fresno, California home to profile the nearly forgotten former All-American.

     My interview request had been precipitated by a succession of unaccountable events that had baffled medical science.  Following an arduous struggle, Rudometkin had just beaten a rare and inoperable cancer.  The doctors who recognized a terminal cancer case when they saw one, had once advised family members that the end was near.  These same doctors were now running tests on his blood to determine if he might have certain anti-bodies in his system that could be used to cure others.

      I sensed I was about to meet-up with a miracle.

     Later that 1970 morning, I remember the 6'6" Rudometkin, totally cancer free, emerge from the tool shed in back of his house, a timeworn basketball firmly in his grasp. The adulation of the crowd was long gone then.  So, too, were the acrobatic moves that once prompted famed Los Angeles Lakers radio announcer Chick Hearn to dub him "Rudo the Reckless Russian." Those same moves that prompted the New York Knicks to select John as the 9th overall pick in the 1962 NBA draft.

     A salvo of shots soon began to arch their way through the net and bounce crazily off the dirt surface.

     "I guess you never lose that touch," he laughed.

      Until the sad day many decades later, (2015) when he passed away of chronic lung disease at the age of 75, John Rudometkin never lost his touch.


     He never lost a human touch bestowed on the wife and 3 sons he left behind.  Never lost that touch embraced by his basketball family who still celebrate Rudometkin as one of the greatest players in University of Southern California history.  Never lost that touch that memorialized the courts of Santa Maria High School and Allan Hancock College in central California.

      Rudometkin's number 44 still hangs in the USC rafters, his name enshrined in the cardinal and gold Hall of Fame. His luminescent statistics seem irrelevant to this story.  His collegiate coach, Forrest Twogood, flatly called Rudometkin "the greatest player I ever coached."  In 1962, he joined an illustrious AP College All-American team which featured future NBA greats John Havlicek, Jerry Lucas and Dave DeBusschere.

     Rudometkin also never lost that touch for others, traveling across the country as a ministering associate evangelist for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It was a different kind of glory than he once experienced from those celebrated years at USC, and those abbreviated stints in the NBA.  The crowds were quieter, save a hearty amen now and then.

      His time in the NBA beset by chronic fatigue and his yet undiagnosed physical condition, John Rudometkin failed to enjoy predicted success as a professional basketball player.  He was eventually released by the San Francisco Warriors, whose front line at the time included the likes of Wilt Chamberlain and Nate Thurmond.  After just two and a half frustrating seasons in the NBA, unbeknownst to John, a tumor surrounding his heart and lungs was expanding rapidly.

     Why, he wondered, had it suddenly required unnatural effort to run up and down the court?  Where was the burning desire to push himself beyond his capacity, the trademark of his earlier style of play? Soon after his release from the Warriors, Rudometkin found himself paralyzed in a hospital bed, close to death. It was a siege that lasted seven months, sending him into convulsions.

    What he ultimately gleaned while dangling on death's abyss, John explained to me in this later conversation:  "It was at that time that an inexplainable certainty came over me. It was a much bigger game, a different set of rules, but I couldn't ever give up. My trust in God had, above all, become very real to me."  Rudometkin's ultimate triumph over cancer seemed a direct result of his faith in God and a bevy of experimental drugs that nearly killed him.

     Sometimes life presents a window which we can see through... to the underlying coherency in this world. The player that USC teammate Chris Appel once described as having"the same court creativity as Kobe Bryant," had been given an extended, albeit painful, time to stare thru such an opening.

     Many years after our interview, I received another letter from John describing how a fire had erupted in his home on Halloween eve.  His wife and boys narrowly escaped injury.  The house, however, was totally destroyed.  All of Rudometkin's trophies, awards, and keepsakes were lost.

     "You know", he wrote, "I realized then that those things no longer meant that much to me. God had replaced that part of my life with something far greater."

     Fighting thru a lifetime of health anxieties and the aftermath of cancer treatments, much of John Rudometkin's final years were accompanied by an oxygen tank to help him breathe.  I never knew the degree of his daily suffering.

     Recently, I happened to chance upon the old Walt Disney movie classic, 'The Absent-Minded Professor' which tells the zany tale of a professor/scientist who rigs a basketball game by ironing a miraculous substance onto the soles of the home team's shoes.  Once those players take to the court, they bound high over their taller opponents, high above the rim.

     In what remains a stroke of perfect casting, John Rudometkin was selected as one of those real-life basketball players used in the making of that film.  Today, the memory of John's honorable life motivates my own life to ascend in search of higher ground.

     John called me one afternoon a few years before his death.  He would always begin our conversations with "How's my brave buddy"?

     In reality, he was the brave one.  His example, his touch for life, was a towering influence in helping me understand the exalted lessons and miracles that reside above the rim...above our natural impulses.

     Yes, it's another thing, entirely, to live a life.    I understand now.

In  Memoriam

hcummins@aol.com

This story is also dedicated to every player, coach, and administrator at every level of basketball. Those who pursue their chosen sport with passion and who also aspire to make a significant difference in the lives of others.

As they say at John's alma mater... FIGHT ON!!!

   

   

   

 

   

   

   

     

The Magical Quest of Coach Quinn Curry

                                                           

                      

By Harry Cummins

     From his commanding position these days at the end of the Multnomah Lions bench, 26-year-old Associate Head Coach Quinn Curry has found a front row seat on the shimmering edges of a dream.

     Basketball has always been the catalyst to Curry's twisting odyssey, transporting him from the hardscrabble streets of west Chicago to a master's degree in management and leadership from Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon.

     Once Curry's own playing career at Multnomah concluded, which he modestly characterizes as "being a good teammate," his observable talent in skill development and statistical analysis landed him a job as assistant coach under then head coach Curt Bickley, who had earlier recruited him as a 5'9"guard.

     When newly appointed coach Tayo Gem took control of the Lions last season, Curry was soon elevated to the title of Associate Head Coach. "After just a few conversations with Quinn, I quickly realized that this guy had the vibe of a future coach as he knew so much more about the game of basketball than just being an operations guy," says Gem, himself a former NCAA D-2 player and fellow Masters scholar. 

     Together, Gem and Curry have quietly coerced this malleable edition of the once mediocre Lions to a robust 10-3 start to the 2024-25 season and a coveted spot in the upper regions of the NAIA's rugged Cascade Collegiate Conference. It has also catapulted Curry closer to his own holy grail, the discovery of basketball "magic."  

     "You always hear stories about those special teams from way back that were able to bring together a diverse group of undervalued players that were able to create magic because of how connected they were," says Curry. "This is my passion, to try to get as close to making magic as possible."

    Such transcendent destinations are not easily reached, concedes Curry, but can often be aided thru tried- and- true measurements.  "There first needs to be an honest attitude about what needs to be improved," says Curry.  

    "Statistics often tell a coach where a player could improve. A different way to drive home this lesson while also creating connectively is to show a player how he can improve individually in specific categories that will most benefit the team" 

     Curry claims Multnomah seeks first to enlist the person rather than the player in their recruiting efforts. "I think listening to them talk about the game is huge. What a person loves about the game is important to me," says Curry.

     "Do they play for status or to be cool? Or do they love being a part of a team? What is it that draws them into the game itself?"

     Married to his wife Lydia last year, they share a home with two cats, Tallulah and Ezra. Quinn Curry has long maintained a fidelity to this Bible based Oregon school thru a series of changes in its leadership, the latest when Multnomah was purchased last year by Jessup University in California.

    "I am grateful to Multnomah, and especially to Curt and Tayo, for giving me the opportunity to pursue my passion of coaching, relates Quinn.

     Selflessness, professes Curry, is a huge part of living a satisfying life. 

      "What, then, is more rewarding than giving yourself to a group and perhaps seeing that group pull off something truly unforgettable."

   

  Spoken like a true magician.

Postscript- Within weeks following the publication of this story, Multnomah University announced the end of undergraduate studies and NAIA athletics at the Oregon school. At the close of this unforgettable season, coach Curry will look elsewhere to pursue his passion.  (FINAL UPDATE) Multnomah finished their final season ever with a school record 17 wins, including their first ever win in the post season. They also came within an eyelash of upsetting the nation's number 1 team, loosing 89-88 to the College of Idaho.

        

     

     

     

     

                                    

Remembering The Death Of A Dear Friend

 

The Sunshine Boys, Spring Training 1989 - Robert Brustad (right) along with this author
and the late Commissioner of Major League Baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti

By Harry Cummins

     A few years ago I lost a close friend to metastatic cancer.

     Dr. Robert Brustad, age 69, left behind a wife,Vone, and a teenage son "JJ".  Not incidentally, Bob also left behind the game of baseball.

     Baseball ultimately couldn't save my friend from an end that awaits us all, but it became a comforting companion to his well-spent life and especially to his final agonizing year of chemotherapy. Our final conversations would always leave space at the end for the saving grace and hopeful expectancy of another baseball season, another season in the sun to share. We both knew we were talking about far more than a game.

     Baseball may not be a road to God, but it can become a clear pathway to a deeply shared, collective love between persons.  One of the things that lets us know we are never traveling alone. 

     This, then, is the supreme message my friend's life left behind. The sacrificial hit that transcends seasons and sends us all "home."

     Love one another!

hcummins@aol.com

     

     

Happy Mother's Day To All!

 

An Adolescent's Affecting Story Recalled

 

"When I think about it now, it wasn't too bad, after all.

Worst things happened in 1958. In actual fact, I am a specialist when it comes to feeling compassion. I still can't forget that terrible story about Laika, the poor Eskimo dog in Sputnik 2, who was so brave while there was still some food left inside the rocket.

But what happened after that? Did she starve to death?

Just think of that!!

From My Life As A Dog

Remembering the Distinctive Voice of Paul Auster

 

From New York Trilogy-1985

"Every life is inexplicable, I keep telling myself.

No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling.

To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge .... none of that tells us very much."

Paul Auster [1947-2024] 

Reflections From The Shoreline - Bird Rock 1950

 

By Harry Cummins

     When I was 7 years old, I lived with my mother in blissful Bird Rock By-the Sea.

     My life then, the part I now choose to remember, consisted of collecting ladybugs in aerated canning jars filled with blades of grass. In the afternoons my mother and I would walk the short, steep hill cascading to the sea where she would sun herself on a smooth rock, her watchful eyes always fixed on me near the shoreline.

     In the 73 years that have passed, my mother has died. Our clapboard beach cottage was sacrificed long ago to Southern California sprawl. I, in the name of becoming settled, have wandered from one address to another.

     Reflecting on all this, from shores many times washed over, I can still trace where prevailing stability first began. Glancing back up the beach at my mother, my anchor, daydreaming on her rock, I could safely sense the rush of a wider world lapping at my tiny feet.

     In those moments, then and now, life was simply everything I saw and imagined. I guessed the same was true for my mother there on her rock of refuge.

     Bird Rock, it turned out, was a moveable fortress.

A Brief Dissertation On The Nature Of Decline

 

                                        

By Harry Cummins

         

      "So we do not lose heart; though our outer self is wasting away"    - 2 Corinthians 4:16

      "Behold, I am doing a new thing: now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it"?  -Isaiah 43:19

     My recent go-round with modern medicine has sent my mind spinning on the health of our world these days, not to mention my own well-being. What does it mean when a once-sturdy life or society suffers a measured collapse with advancing age?  Is individual illness merely a reflection of the wider unraveling proliferating in our collective culture?

      Bereft of answers to these grandiose questions, some considerations still remain.

     Not every illness we confront, personal or societal, abates or reverses itself. Therefore, we need a new set of observations to challenge our thinking about healing and what constitutes true restoration.  In this process we need each other's unique voices of experience. We need to hear them for their remarkable ability to balance self with reality, hope with acceptance, fear with affirmation. We need to hear them, especially, for their ability to establish a concomitant connection with one another.

     To reconstitute ourselves, as individuals and as a society, in the midst of illness and attack, is to help one another make the attempt to go on...is to bear our histories and infirmities with the highest of human credentials.

     Our old stories are ripe for retelling... but in transformative new ways.  We need words with the capacity to turn memories into steadfast hope in the midst of repeated, cumulative loss.  

    Given the urgency of our age, I might suggest this should be an overriding agenda as antidote to our collective affliction.

     

The 'Politics of Movement' 2024

 

  

By Harry Cummins

Nearly 40 years ago, working on a profile for Boxing Scene magazine, I sat down with the celebrated prize fighter Archie Moore in his hotel suite and asked the knockout king of all-time to peer into his crystal ball and fortell the future of the human race.

 His brief response remains one of the more prophetic utterances I have ever heard, reanimated and remembered daily after all these years.

When asked in 1986 what he viewed as the most pressing problem worldwide he responded: " I am very concerned with the plight of the homeless," replied the former Light Heavyweight Champion of the world.  

"Right now I'm working with HUD to find suitable low cost housing for the disadvantaged. Thru poverty and wars, the world has evolved into what I describe as the politics of movement. It is a problem that I fear won't go away soon."

Archie Moore died 12 years later in 1998 at the age of 84.

We all remain on this world's Jericho Road... reminded of Archie's unabated divination while still deciding who is our neighbor. 

Final Stop On Road to 5,000

 

     Washington Huskies QB Michael Penix Jr needs 352 passing yards tonight in the much anticipated National Championship matchup vs. Michigan to reach the rare milestone of 5,000 passing yards in a single season.

     Will he get it?

     Over or under?

     

New Year, New Car, New Contributions

After barely contributing in 2023 (I don't think I did), I thought I'd let you know what's going on with me. 

I'm still living in Eugene, married to my sweet wife for almost eight years and together for close to 23 years, still with locally-owned and operated KKNX, Eugene's ONLY Classic Hits radio station (Beavers and Eugene Challengers American Legion baseball station, too) and KEED, Eugene's ONLY Classic Country radio station and KORE Fox Sports Eugene, Eugene's #1 sports station and the Blazers and Chargers radio affiliates in the area.

I'm still doing freelance radio sports play-by-play and am the Public Address Announcer for my high school alma mater, Churchill High School in Eugene. I’m doing football, volleyball, girls and boys basketball plus some baseball if I'm not at work running a Beavers game.

This summer will mark my ninth season as the Eugene Challengers play-by-play radio voice and will continue my role as the Public Address Announcer at home games unless I'm broadcasting a game. Games can be heard on KKNX in Eugene (FM 105.1/AM 840) and radio84.com. It will be the 14th season of games on KKNX, one of just a handful of radio stations in Oregon that carry local American Legion baseball games (Eugene, Roseburg, The Dalles and Florence). 

Also this summer, it's my 50-year class reunion. I'm planning on attending the Churchill class reunion and the Class of 1974 reunion for Crater High School in Central Point, near Medford. Before moving to Eugene originally in 1970, I attended Central Point schools from the first through eighth grade and stay in touch with many of the people I grew up with, some since the first grade back in 1962. Basically, it's anybody and everybody I grew up with. It's going to be a fun summer. 

On the subject of people NOT using turn signals while driving, my wife and I drove to Roseburg to eat at the closest In 'n' Out restaurant to Eugene in our new car, a 2024 Volkswagen Tiguan that we've had since Friday (yep, two days). Our previous car, an '18 Hyundai Tucson, decided not to be as dependable as it used to be. Anyway, it must be an epidemic that A) people need to learn to use those turn signals. There is a law that says you have to use those when turning right or left. B) Please quit leaving car-length gaps behind cars when you're waiting at a stop sign, traffic signal or at your favorite coffee stand. I've never been able to figure out why people do this nowadays. C) The speed limit on most Oregon freeways is 65 mph. Some locations it's 60 and on some other sections it's 55. Quit going 85 in a 65 mph zone. There are reasons speed limits are established, mostly for safety reasons. 

I welcome your comments also. I don't go off on rants very often so please excuse me if I came off as complaining. I'm a pretty friendly person who really wants to stay that way. 

Thanks for your friendship. I'll do my best to contribute more in 2024. Have a great week. Happy New Year!

 By Gregory Crawford, Founder of Craw's Corner

CLIMATE CHANGE: I personally am in no way the Denier of climate change. However after living in the Portland, Oregon area for 8 decades, I can verify and sustain the fact, out summers might be a little warmer, but our winters at least in the past 50 years, along with fall and spring have pretty much remained the same.

While each season might be a little different over time, the consistency remains the same. Does this tell us anything scientifically, I will let others tell us and weigh in.

OVERTIME---Speaking of overtime, I do like the idea that the icon Jon Spoelstra talks about when it comes to basketball overtimes. If not the first overtime, the second if needed for sure, (first team to 5 points wins.) Benefits of this change, much more exciting, defense really comes into play and if you really study overtimes, they are poorly played and at times very poorly officiated. Shorten them and you have a better product.

TURN SIGNALS---I would like two introduce you all to  a new concept in driving cars, Turn Signals. If you turn right, push upward, if you turn left push downward. I know this is new to most of you, but like everything else, go out in the driveway and practice. 

INVENTIONS----- What is the greatest invention in the last 200 years? Love to hear your answers and thank you for reading,

So Long Dr. Smooth

 

By Harry Cummins

     After 15 seasons and 1,445 games, sweet swinging Michael Brantley has decided to call it quits this week.

     Playing for Cleveland and Houston, Brantley was a 5 time All Star and a Silver Slugger Award winner in 2014.  With 1,656 hits he ended his career with a .298 batting average. Rare air.

     Brantley probably will never make it to Cooperstown, but his picture book swing will endure in the minds of his many fans.  His quiet manner stamped him as one of baseball's most respected players. 

    His coveted power-speed combo likely anchored many a fantasy baseball teams lineup as well. 

    Including mine. 

The Defense Rests!!

 

By Harry Cummins

As evidence, here are just a few NBA winning team point totals from the last 3 days:

Pacers   142

Cavs      140

Hawks   141

Pacers    150

Mavs      139

Jazz        154 OT

A Hall of Fame Half Inning

 

For one day in 1961..the greatest outfield baseball has ever seen!

By Harry Cummins

     Among the substantial number of baseball memories I have stashed away over a lifetime, seen either from wooden grandstands or perched in a press box, a brief 4-batter half inning played 63 years ago still lingers at the top of the list.

     It was the summer of '61 and baseball fans had not yet realized that Babe Ruth's season homerun record would fall later that season and Billy Crystal would one day make a movie about it.  The American League, with Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in the lineup, met the National League in the 1961 All-Star Game at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

     In the top of the 10th, the American League took a 4-3 lead and sent famed knuckleball artist Hoyt Wilhelm to the mound to face a gauntlet of the game's greatest hitters.  Hank Aaron led off the inning with a single, went to second on a passed ball and rode home on a Willie Mays' double to tie the game. Wilhelm then plunked Frank Robinson, putting runners on first and second.  Roberto Clemente then won the game for the National League with a line drive opposite field hit.

     As with most All-Star Games, this one wasn't about the score. There they were. Four immortal names who found themselves hitting in a brief but glorious Murderers' row.  Incredibly, Mantle, Mays and Clemente found themselves positioned in the same outfield during one point on this magical afternoon.

     A Midsummer dreamscape for youthful eyes... still undimmed.

     

      

     

Big News for Craw's Corner This Week

 By Gregory Crawford, Founder of Craw's Corner

After a long absence, way too long, Craw's Corner will be back this week, with lots of new

things included and plenty of good reading. You will enjoy. So get ready.

Transformed Lions Seek Route To Redemption - 2023-24 Season Preview

New Look Lions Coming Into Focus

 

By Harry Cummins

     The basketball floodwaters of change at Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon have sufficiently receded this Fall, revealing a decidedly altered landscape.

      An off-season metamorphosis now casts an illuminated shadow on all those invested at this small Bible-based NAIA school with an arabesque past.  Such a sweeping sea change, whether for good or ill, likely will depend on your point of view and an incognito season yet to reveal itself.

     The Multnomah Lions first influenced the geographical imprint of small college basketball several years ago when a whirlwind descended on this campus of 300 plus students in the form of a diminutive 5'8 guard named Justin Martin. He would go on to capture back-to-back NAIA national scoring titles while posting record-setting 71 and 74 point scoring games in successive seasons.  It was a rousing, if not winning, brand of basketball to behold.

     Martin is gone now. So too is 2,000+ point career scorer and all-time 3-point leader Zach Richardson, along with 20 year head coach Curt Bickley who has retired after decades spent strapped for conveyable resources. Their combined legacy was cemented in one particular 2018 game that saw Multnomah sink a still-standing NAIA record 38 3's in a single contest that also saw Martin and Richardson score an incomprehensible 49 points each. 

     Multnomah's fitting  '3 Point U epithet has now been reconstituted by new head coach Tayo Gem in character with the rallying cry currently fashioned on the wall of the Lions locker room, Sustained Intensity.  Gem, it seems, along with his assistant coaches Quinn Curry and Xavier Dupree  are at work on a larger canvas, a roll call showcasing an ideally balanced ensemble of players with an increased focus on the defensive side of the ball.

     Gem is not bereft of current offensive weapons however. Seniors Tyrese Taylor and Neyland Block return to form a dynamic presence. Taylor, a 6'8 forward with bull-like strength, averaged a double-double last season, while the 6'5 Block, gifted at creating for others, finished 5th in the nation in assists.  Assistant coach Curry unequivocally calls Block "the most underrated player in the country."  Both are All-Conference candidates in the rugged Cascade Collegiate Conference that produced last season's national champion in College of Idaho... as well as yet another in a succession of second division finishes for these Lions.

     Lifting the burden from Taylor up front is 7'0 Senior F/C and Nebraska native Javier Turner, who can run the floor, block shots, and was his conference defensive player of the year last season for Point U.  Joining Turner at the forward spot is Miles Macadory, a converted 300 pound offensive tackle in football who has transformed his body into a sleeek 6'6, 210 pound shot maker, replete with a 5th year senior's court savvy.

     Chad Napoleon, a 6'6 Jr. forward, brings an infectious energy to the Lion's fortified front court. From Del Ray Beach, Florida, Napoleon played the last 2 seasons at Blue Mountain C.C. where he became the only 1,000 point career scorer in the school's history. Versatile and experienced, he once played summer ball in Spain on an international high school travel team.

     Multnomah's back court is loaded, allowing Coach Gem to deploy his guards like breaking waves.  Kadeem Nelson is a 6'5 Junior who took his City College of San Francisco team to the State championship game last year. Long and athletic, he is blessed with great speed and change of direction in blowing by opponents. 

     The best contender to propagate the link to the litany of former 3-point snipers at Multnomah is 6'3 Senior guard Taylor Pomeroy.  Also a local high school star from Portland, Pomeroy transfers from Bellevue University in Nebraska where he shot a sizzling 44.9% from long distance and led the team in free-throw shooting as well. His companion skill at getting to the basket stamp him a defensive nightmare to defend.  Josiah Sewell is a 6'1 Junior guard from Colorado Springs and Portland Community College who will allow Coach Gem to use his versatility and deft shooting touch to impact games.

     Two of the top defenders in Multnomah's 'sustained intensity' model are 6'3 Senior James Sanders and Senior 6'3 returner Amande Uchime. Along with Taylor and Block, Uchime is one of 3 senior holdovers from the wholesale remake of last season's roster. Already one of the top defensive players in the CCC, Uchime is looking to create more disruption this year among Lions opponents.  Sanders, meanwhile, is a seasoned D-1 transfer from Denver University with 2-way skills. 

In this forest of tall trees it may be easy to miss Multnomah's newest 5'9 wonderkind, Freshman Marje Windfield, who hardened his game on the rough and tumble courts of the Chicago Public League, once dropping 37 points in a key league match-up. His amazing quickness has dominated Fall workouts.

     The lure of the bright lights at the national tournament in Kansas City each Spring remains the Holy-Grail toward which every NAIA team points. Lions coach Tayo Gem and his staff should be well-served in that pursuit by coalescing this current cluster of talent, motivational psychology, and the growing pains of the past in synthesis with this lock-step poeticism from William Blake:

"I give you the end of a golden string....wind it into a ball.   

 It will let you in at Heavens Gate."

The grasp for golden threads begins Nov 4

hcummins@aol.com

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

Pieces Of Her Heart

 

By Harry Cummins

     Until the day in 1984 when she just collapsed on the kitchen floor and died, I believe my mother had always thought of her life as being hard.

     She was married most of the time, to my father for a short while until his drinking drove her away, then to another man for nearly 30 years. It was sometime early into those 30 years that I grew into the understanding that my mother had given up on her own happiness.

     When I was in the sixth grade, my mother sent me away to live with a Norwegian family near San Francisco. Even then I never doubted her love. Often she would come to visit, putting her powerful arms around me and squeezing so hard I could barely breathe

 "Your happiness means everything to me," she would say.

     As my own life moved ahead, I could feel my uneasiness that hers was not.  Love held us close, but we seldom spoke to one another about what really mattered. In the end we got a little better at it.

     I know this now:  There is nothing so remarkable as the gifts we freely extend to others in the face of our own unhappiness.  It is not just ideal families or undamaged dreams that begat hope and affection. It is the powerful mystery of human love extended one to another.

     The mosaic beauty of broken pieces.

Home Stretch - A Railbird's Meditations

 

By Harry Cummins

     There was lunacy in Louisville last week where 7 horses died in the lead- up to the Kentucky Derby and no one seems to know why.  Elsewhere, political violence and militarism in this country continues unabated in the wake of endless mass-shootings. Seems we are all stranded somewhere along the spectrum spanning anger and desensitization as our age-old institutions seemingly unravel at an alarming rate.

     Then, out of the blue, something nice happens in our ordinary back-page lives.

     I received a note on social media this week from a woman who once sat next to me 60 years ago in an 11th grade history class. She remembered that I used to carry her text books between classes. Probably not as bent toward generosity as I was back then, her note nevertheless triggered a softness in my current stance, along with the realization of the current play of light and dark in my own life.

     My belief was reinforced that there is an uninterrupted laser-like light source that can guide us thru life... if we don't loose sight of it, obliterated by long stretches of darkness. It operates, I surmise, much like the current pace-setting system using LED lights employed by the sport of track and field in keeping athletes on task.

     This beam of obedience, kindness, forgiveness, or whatever label you attach to it, still radiates in a world coming apart at the seams.   

     Like every jockey knows.... hold on tight and look for the light.

     

            hcummins@aol.com