By Al Owens
For each of the past two summers I've been frequently awakened by the sounds of basketballs bouncing. To you, that may seem to be a complaint. But for me, it is not. That is the sound that success makes.
Certainly early morning rains or armies of talkative birds would be more calming, but bouncing basketballs means somebody is going to work. When you're a 15 year-old aspiring Uniontown Red Raider basketball player, you're workplace is a basketball court and your only barriers to greatness are gravity and mid-afternoon thunderstorms - and that's ok!
Two years ago, those wonderful sounds did not so frequently burst through my bedroom window. But that was before the Uniontown Red Raiders took their town deep into the PIAA play-offs. Now no sound can be more exciting than that of a ball being slammed against asphalt. Especially on the East End of Uniontown, where it was thought (and wrongfully so) that somehow children had forgotten how to play with anything less important than their own lives.
Now come the tragedy of admitting that sometimes clichés can actually be true. You know the one where they say, 'success breeds success'.
And nobody teaches these young basketball bouncers that. They just do it. The very afternoon following Uniontown's elimination from the state play-offs this year, I encountered a Red Raider bouncing a basketball and heading toward the nearest court. Our season had ended. His had just begun!
You can write libraries based on these kinds of things. Books about how kids learn to do things without knowing they do them. I can only guess that when you were a small child, to avoid attacking bedtime monsters you'd hide under the covers. That you mistakenly thought that if
you couldn't see the invading monsters, they couldn't see you. Admit it, some of you still think that. And nobody, I mean nobody taught you that. You just did it.
And nobody teaches you that success breed's success either. You just act accordingly. And the would-be champions of 2001-2001 are responding no differently to success than hundreds and hundreds of would-be champions between 1960 and 1981. And that's what this is all about.
If you could search through all of the record books and championships of that single period and try to find the roots of those incessant bouncing Uniontown basketballs of those days, you'd probably come to one inescapable conclusion. Sanford Sandy Stephens started it all! I mean all of it. Not the Sandy Stephens who lived and played at East End playground and bounced basketballs down on Wilson Avenue, when it counted. I'm referring to the one who took the Minnesota Golden Gophers to a National Championship and the one who still managed to think of Uniontown, Pennsylvania as his hometown while he did it.
For all of us, all roads led to Sandy. All championships led from Sandy. And nobody taught us that. We just did it! It seemed moments after Sandy Stephens established a national presence Uniontown's Red Raiders seemingly became invincible. That is not a coincidence. And it is no coincidence that basketballs bounce all over town and everyday now.
Young children who have no idea who Sandy Stephens was, or what he meant (and still means) now know who Nelson Jones, Dierre Jenkins and Terrance Vaughns are now. And they know what they mean. To them, it is so easy to say, keep bouncing that thing. Keep bouncing and take us where you want to go!
e.a.
owens
webmaster Red Raider Nation
