Story and photos by BEN MCCARTY
News staff writer
February 6, 2008
For the better part of five years Horizon
Christian School basketball players have made the 10 minute
drive from Hood River proper to Pine Grove Elementary School for
practice.
The gym is small, with only two regulation
hoops, no three point lines, and the Hawks share the space with
wrestling mats, tetherball poles, climbing ropes and soccer nets
and brightly decorated signs reminded children to be courteous
to others.
A pair of large white storage closets at the
south end of the gym that creep right up to the edge of the
court mean there is not enough room for three-point lines.
Two tightly packed rows of bleachers run down
one side of the gym. They serve as a ball-rack of sorts of the
Horizon teams when the practice as there is not enough space to
have one on the court.
One row of bleachers runs down the other side,
but they are buried under mats and playground equipment for
school children.
When the Hawk boys and girls teams are forced to
share the small space because of scheduling, all drills end
abruptly at half court. Otherwise a player may go flying head on
into a member of the other team who has his or her back turned.
The Hawks held their final practice at Pine
Grove on Thursday as they prepare to move into their new gym at
the school’s Pacific Avenue Campus.
As the final minutes of their last practice in
Pine Grove wound down, Hawks players took the opportunity to get
in a few more shots on the aging hoops. And the gym was not
quite ready to say good bye yet.
One of the quirks of the gym is that any ball
that bounces to high off the backboard is likely to become
lodged in the metal struts behind the basket. The Hawks have
found themselves in that situation many times over the years and
have kept a pole handy just to get the ball out from behind the
hoop.
So of course in the last minutes of their last
practice, it would figure that Hawk players would once again be
grabbing a pole to remove another ball from the supports.
After practice several of the players reflected
on their favorite memories of the gym:
Guard Phillip Stenberg: “Coach (Ron Haynes)
blocked a couple of players in here. They were nice blocks too.
He got pretty excited about that”
Forward Adam Ohlson: “Probably singing songs
while were stretching. Singing helped it go faster. But we were
all out of key.”
Forward Bobby Cofrances: “Coach was talking
over a play, and Stephen (Stenberg) and I were out of the play
and just kind of messing around on a side hoop. We tried to dunk
and the ball ricocheted off and hit coach right in the side of
the head. He turned and looked at us and said ‘Hold the balls
please.’ I suppose you kind of had to be there”
Post Josh Larson:
“Every time someone would shoot the ball and it
would get stuck behind the hoop and then we’d have to go find
the pole to get the ball out.”
For most of the players on the Horizon team,
Pine Grove is the only practice home they have ever known, but
after so much time spent in a gym, the team is more than ready
to move into its new home next week.
“I’ll be happy when I can walk into the office
next week, hand in the key and say ‘Thanks for the memories,’”
Haynes said.
