I used to think a $4 Blockbuster rental was a great entertainment value. For less than the cost of a Venti double latte, I could pop in a disc and spend an evening having my pulse quickened by watching Tom Cruise in a jam or Angela Jolie in a little black dress.
This winter, however, I discovered that for a buck less I could get my blood pressure to really redline by riding the pine in any number of local high school gyms as I watched Cape Elizabeth’s Lady Capers do battle on the court.
In the interest of full disclosure, let me start by saying that I may never have been coaxed from my sofa after nightfall in January had my daughter not made the varsity squad this year. I’ll further confess that before this season I knew about as much about basketball as George W. knows about our exit strategy in Iraq. But watching the impassioned play of this group of exceptional young women taught me a little about the rules of the game and a lot about why they love to play it.
If you base your decision on which sporting events to attend on team records, then I’m sure you didn’t share the bleachers with me in any one of the Capers’ 18 games this season. With a record of 3-15 you might assume that most of these contests were about as exciting to watch as C-SPAN, but the fans in the stands knew a different story.
The Capers were lead by their captain, senior forward Rachel “Bud” Budkiewicz, and anyone who watched her second, third and fourth efforts fighting for rebounds knows why she was chosen to lead the team. Bud simply refused to gave up under the net.
At point guard, junior Samantha Culver’s commanding ballhandling skills set the tempo for most of the games. Her rack-and-pinion dribbling enabled her to steer through invisible lanes around aggressive defenders that she often left dumbfounded in her dust.
When those lanes were closed, the team could depend on sophomore guard Anna “A-Train” Tranfaglia to act as team sniper, hitting lethal three-pointers at key moments in many contests.
Inside the circle, junior guard Jackie Moran was equally skilled at putting up shots and pulling down rebounds. Her 11 points at Falmouth at the end of the season nearly won that game for Cape.
Last, but far from least, was the girl I came to think of as the “team sparkplug.” Junior forward Brennan Balfour is simply an amazing athlete whose kinetic energy generated power for the entire team, even on those nights when the score tilted heavily against them. Brennan would find ways to put the ball in the hoop in the middle of a pack of defenders that made it look like we were watching a gymnastics meet instead of a basketball game. She has an uncanny ability to pirouette as she fell away from the hoop and still launch a shot that found its way home.
When the five starters tired, there was a talented string of reserves to fill their places lead by senior guard Samantha Welch, who would fire off the bench and into the game with the kind of reserve energy that would often catch the opposition flat-footed and she’d turbo-charge the second-half of play.
I’d be less than truthful if I said that as exciting as these games were to watch, I didn’t share the team’s frustration at coming up short on the scoreboard on most evenings, especially in a season where the majority of their games were lost by only two or three baskets.
There are some who might be tempted to place the blame on Coach Ron Kiersead, but I would not be one of them. I’ve seen the same kind of transformation that’s taken place in my daughter’s game this year happen among other girls on the team as well. Win or lose, she left the season a quicker, sharper and more confident player than the one who stepped on the court in November.
What’s more important, Ron’s dedicated coaching and the support of the rest of the squad left with her with a deep love of the game that it was impossible for me not to catch as well. I may still not know much about the finer points of basketball, but be sure – come next November – I will once again be leaving my TV remote idle on game nights.
(Bryan Wiggins is an Illustrator and ad agency Creative Director working from his home studio in Cape Elizabeth.)
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