As much as I have always loved baseball, basketball was my first love. I couldn't get enough of the sport. It's too bad, though, that my physical abilities never caught up with my enthusiasm. On game nights at St. Thomas, I was always one of the first to arrive, helping my mom set up the concession area, and one of the last to leave, picking up trash and dust mopping the floor. On nights when I didn't have a game, I would often help my dad with the scoreboard or with keeping the scorebook. Enthusiasm and helpfulness are nice, but those things just don't translate into victories.
My 8th grade team won 1 game and lost 16. If you had asked me a week ago what our record was that year, I would've guessed we had won half our games. It wasn't until I dug out Coach Schumacher's old scorebooks that I found out the sad truth. Yep, the old scorebooks are still stored under the St. Thomas trophy case, and they don't lie: we won only one game, a 48-41 thriller versus Holy Cross on November 24, 1978. Maybe we played so well because we were excited about hosting our annual St. Thomas Thanksgiving Tournament, or maybe it was because one of the 7th graders who was allowed to play up that night scored 20 points for us. Whatever it was, the magic didn't carry over. We lost the championship game the next night, losing to St. Matthew's 73-29. For the record, I was held scoreless both nights. Typical.
Actually, the scorebook can back me up - it was typical. I scored in six games that year (totaling 19 points), and that even includes a game that I played with a bunch of 7th graders. The teams for that particular game were divided up by height and weight instead of by grade. That night (January 4, 1979), playing as a member of the "lightweight" team, I ended up with the highest scoring game of my career. I scored 6 points, including 4 of 6 on free throws. We lost 30-28 to ABL. Looking back, I can only wonder how different things might have been if I had hit those 2 missed free throws.
That fact that I scored 19 points that year is a miracle in itself. My primary job on the team was to inbound the ball to Mike and then stay out of the way. I don't know how I ever scored baskets or why I was ever fouled.
After the season was over, we had our annual St. Thomas basketball banquet. The night we got the cool letters for our letterman jackets. The night we got to sit at the front of the gym, closest to the food line. The night we got to meet a real Illini basketball player who was invited to be our guest speaker. Except that year, we didn't get an Illini basketball player. We got Lee Cabutti, famed Champaign high school basketball coach. I was disappointed. I was hoping for Levi Cobb or Eddie Johnson, maybe someone who I'd at least heard of before. I still had a reason to be excited, though. I was the odds-on favorite for winning the Sportsmanship Award, and the trophy that went along with it. You didn't have to be the most talented player to win that award, just someone who worked hard, didn't get mad, and maybe dust mopped the gym once in a while.
Sadly, I didn't win the Sportsmanship Award. In what has to be one of the all-time St. Thomas basketball banquet shockers, I was passed over, and the award instead went to Andy Hughes. Even Andy seemed stunned when his name was announced. Me? I was dumbfounded, and, at the time, wasn't feeling very sportsmanlike at all. My disappointment was short-lived. The highlight of my athletic career came next, as I was announced the winner of the free throw trophy. As it turns out, I had the best FT percentage on the entire team, and I now had a trophy to prove it. "Dave Happ 1978-79 Free Throw Champion - 60%".
For years I wondered if there must have been some kind of mistake. I was afraid to ask Coach what my actual numbers were for fear that he'd find a tabulating error and I'd be forced to give up my trophy. But now, with the actual scorebooks in hand, I could check the numbers once and for all. And here is what I found out: I did, in fact, have the highest FT percentage on the team. Apparently no one else hit over 50%, and the next closest was at 45%. That might help explain our dismal record. But, as it turns out, I did not shoot 9 out of 15 (60%) that year. I only made 9 out of 16 (just over 56%). Looking closely at the November 30th game versus St. Joe, you can clearly see that I went 0-1 on free throws that night, but that the missed free throw in the third quarter did not make the player tabulation column.
Thankfully my margin of victory means that I won't have to give up my trophy. That's fortunate because somewhere between 1988 and 1997, I lost my coveted trophy. I moved 7 times over those years. Maybe the trophy got left behind somewhere, or maybe it was stolen by a jealous moving company employee who scratched out my name and now proclaims himself as the 1978-79 Free Throw Champion. Little does he know it should read 56.25% instead of 60%.
