YMCA Days

Things sure have changed over the years. I see these basketball players warming up before games wearing headphones. Why?? I always found the noise of a gym to be enough to provide that extra little bounce in your step. Even an empty gym. The echos of an empty gym, in their own way and in a persons mind can be as loud as 500 wildly screaming people in the bleachers.

Yesterday I went to a used book sale held in the old gym at the YMCA. Looking around that court (it sure looked small) and those walls brought the memories flooding back like they were ..... well like they were yesterday.

• Arriving at The Y and finding your membership card missing from the box. Some non-member using the facilities under your identity.
• Win and you keep playing. Lose and you sit out one or two games and wait to challenge the next group of winners. 
• Keeping an eye on your Wilson Jet. Things like that tend to find their way into less honorable people's gym bags. It was always best to have the best basketball in the gym becauise it would be chosen for use and then you'd know where it was. A ball not brand new and slick but with a small amount of wear and still very grip-able.
• "Old guys" hanging onto their youth, without the skills of their youth, by freely using what skills they still had ..... elbows, hips and knees!! I always hated those guys though if I still played, I'd surely be one of those guys.
• Driving to the basket, receiving a hard foul and meeting up with those walls just a few feet from the baseline. The wood floor felt like a bed of feathers compared to those walls.
• Skins vs. shirts. I always hated being a skin and would do just about anything to avoid it.