Memories of a High School Basketball Power

Having spent all but ten months of my life as a resident of the greater Boston area, there are many sporting moments I have witnessed that are firmly etched in my mind.

I will remember Larry Bird stealing the ball against the Detroit Pistons and I will remember the ball going through Bill Buckner's legs in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series.

The sports memory that will stick in my mind most, however, is not a Boston sports memory but a Belmont sports memory. I will always remember Asa Palmer's dunk against archrival Lexington during my junior year in high school.

During the summer before my eighth grade year, rumors swirled around Belmont that a 6'5" youngster named Asa Palmer was coming. The rumor mill said that Asa had a lineage any basketball coach would salivate over--a brother who was a freshman at Duke and a brother who was a 7'1" center for the Utah Jazz.

The rumor mill turned out to be right. Asa was six-five and did have one brother at Duke and one in the NBA. He was a pretty good basketball player, a little uncoordinated nonetheless, but clearly he had potential.

The Chenery Middle School basketball team did pretty well that year. As the official scoreboard operator and manager, I charted the team's eight wins and two losses. What I remember most about that season is the pact the team made on the bus on a snowy day, coming back from somewhere like Stoneham, probably after a win. We made a pact that someday, somewhere, somehow that our team would win a basketball state championship. We all knew it was possible, but I can remember at the time thinking that none of us would have blinked twice if it did not become a reality.

Except that the we-will-be-champions attitude became the mantra of my high school class. When we were freshmen, Asa played light minutes as the sixth man on the team, while Mark Mulvey and a forward named Kevin LaPierre were on the varsity roster but saw mostly jay-vee action. Three more of my classmates were full-time members of the jay-vee squad. I was the freshman squad's scorekeeper.

Belmont basketball wasn't great that year. The most memorable game was probably when David Cerasuolo, a senior, sank two free throws for a 55-54 win against Winchester with time expired. Some team that began with an S--Swamscott?--knocked us out of the state tournament in the first round.

Optimism abounded before our sophomore year. The previous team had graduated eight players, including all five starters, and the grades ahead were thin on talent. Everyone knew that our grade was going to have to step up and lead the way. Seven of my classmates and only two seniors made the varsity squad that year.

The season started off well, but we were a young team, not used to the vagaries of a 20 game Middlesex League season, and we faded quickly. There were many exciting moments, but none that were particularly memorable. We nearly knocked off one of our long-time antagonists--Nick Papas' Melrose Red Raiders--on their home court, but a junior guard by the name of Andy Lennon conspired against us. Lexington, a team that was quickly becoming our most hated rival, and its fantastic sophomore guard Rashad Wilson handed us our heads on two separate occasions.

We made the tournament, qualifying in the eighteenth game of the season, but we didn't get very far. We were matched--overmatched--against an impressive Salem team that featured All-American Eric Brunson. Brunson, Temple-bound, poured in 37 points that night.

Asa, Mark and Kevin were all starting and were all evolving into excellent players. Asa was getting more aggressive on the boards and honing his post moves, while Mark was the runner-up for the Middlesex League MVP. The future looked very bright indeed.

Junior year represented a break-through. Although we ended the season with a very respectable 19-4 record, we weren't just winning, we were dominating. We destroyed lesser teams like Reading and Stoneham when they came to Wenner Field House. We routinely beat teams by more than 15 points on the road.

I think there were two games in particular that really laid the foundation for our senior season. On December 23, 1991, we lost a close game against Melrose on our home floor at Wenner. I remember the date for the simple reason that it was the last time that we lost at home during my high school career. The feeling I had while sitting at the concession stand after the game wallowing in hot dogs and Coke is still vivid.

The second important game was the home game against Lexington. Rashad Wilson had turned into a Division I college prospect and the Boston Globe had ranked the Minutemen near the top of its preseason poll. They were the consensus pick for the Middlesex League title, while we were regarded as too young to do anything.

We smoked them. We held leads of more than 20 points in the second half. Six of our players hit for double figures. Pat Rubeksi had 17 points and ten offensive rebounds. Jay O'Shaughnessy kept Rashad Wilson at bay.

Those statistics were nothing next to Asa Palmer's performance. I don't remember how many boards Asa grabbed or how many points he scored. I just remember the dunk--his first ever in a game--and how it brought the house down.

Although he routinely dunked in practice, Asa had tried to dunk twice before in a game and had been unsuccessful. Against Burlington during our sophomore year in a game that I am sure Harvard baseball's Denny Doble remembers, Asa found himself alone under the basket with Belmont desperately trying to make a comeback. Asa tried to dunk but missed, smashing the ball off the back of the rim.

Asa tried to dunk a second time, against Wakefield, early in our junior season. On a turnaround post move, Asa found himself staring right at the basket with no one guarding him. Seeing a rare opportunity, Asa went up for the jam. The ball rattled around the rim for what seemed like an eternity before dropping through the cylinder.

Until Lexington, Asa had never cleanly dunked in a game. With Wenner at a feverish pitch on that day, however, he did it. I can still see Rashad Wilson losing the ball at midcourt and Pat Rubeski picking it up. I can still see Pat turning his head to find Asa--now 6'7"--flying up the court. I can still see Pat unselfishly but knowingly dishing the ball to Asa at the foul line. I can still see Asa taking one more step and then launching himself into the air. Asa sent the ball through the net with a kind of velocity I had never seen before. The backboard shook for five minutes, Wenner shook for the rest of the night.

At that point, I think everyone began to believe that a state championship could be ours. But Casey Arena's 49 points knocked us out in the third round of the state championship.

We had one more year to realize our goal, but we could no longer quest in anonymity. The Boston Globe turned up the heat by picking us first in its poll of all high school basketball teams in Eastern Massachusetts.

We started out rockily. In our first three games, we best Melrose and Lexington but lost to Woburn, which was neither expected nor forgivable. It was a Tuesday night away game, one of those games that it's intrinsically hard to get excited about. We came out flat, letting Woburn mount a 15-3 lead. We battled back valiantly, and even had a chance to win the game. But we didn't.

The rest of the season hummed along, with the exception of a loss at Lexington. We finished with an 18-2 record, co-possession of the Middlesex League title and high tournament hopes. But we had been flat all season.

It took a 31-24 deficit against Arlington in the second round of the state tournament to finally make us come out of our nearly season-long funk. I don't remember us trailing by seven points at any other time that season, besides during the Woburn game.

We pulled through, somehow. When Kevin LaPierre sank a huge three-pointer (he had the habit of making big three-pointers when it really mattered) to tie the game, everyone knew it could still be ours.

After that game, nothing was going to prevent us from a trip to the Worcester Centrum. We had our moments--the Lincoln-Sudbury game for Sectional Championships was particularly nerve-wracking--but we were going all the way. We knocked off a dazed Latin Academy squad. We dispatched Bunny Jefferson and his Burke team at the Boston Garden.

The state championship game was like nothing I had ever experienced in high school basketball. It seemed like the whole town of Belmont made the hour drive to Worcester to cheer us on. Amidst a sea of blue and maroon in the stands, we blew out the pretenders to our throne, Wahconah, and took home to Belmont what we had claimed to be ours years ago.

At the party that night at Mark Mulvey's house, we felt like celebrities. We watched the highlights on the evening news, we beamed as people heaped praise on us and we sang Queen's "We Are The Champions."

I mention all of this because Asa and I had a reunion of sorts on Tuesday night at the Harvard-Dartmouth basketball game. Asa, after spending a year at prep school, is now a freshman and backup center at Dartmouth. I watched the Harvard crowd harass him, I watched him score an athletic fastbreak basket and I watched him grab an offensive rebound.

I talked to him after the game, asking him if he was enjoying Dartmouth and whether he was enjoying playing Dartmouth basketball. He told me that he really loved it.

And for the first time, I felt a pang of nostalgia for my years as a manager of Belmont boys' basketball. All of the memories that I have related washed across me suddenly and a chill went up and down my spine. I had always known that we had a great run those couple of years, but I never realized how important it had all been to me. Standing there with Asa, seeing him in Dartmouth Green and not Belmont Blue and Maroon, the pieces began to fall into place.

Sports are not--or at least it should not be--about winning or championships. Sports, especially high school sports, are about friendships. It would not have mattered if our team had won the state championship that year, because we all became great friends along the way. And friendships last a lifetime. Some team wins the State Championship every year.

Every time I step into Wenner Field House, I remember our team and I remember winning our championship. But long after the banner at Wenner that has all of our names from the team is removed, long after the trophics are removed from the trophy case, long after I forget that we even won a state championship, I will remember the lasting friends I made on that team. I will the remember little moments--Asa's first dunk, for example--that have special significance.

And those little moments are what sports--and life, for that matter--are all about.