Why I Like Sports, vol 2

From the SI article about the death of Hank Gathers:

The first full practice came two days after a campus memorial service for their friend and teammate. Yet even with the finality of that ceremony, Loyola Marymount 's basketball players found it hard to remember that Hank Gathers was really gone...

It was only four days earlier that Gathers had collapsed and died of heart failure during a West Coast Conference tournament game against Portland on Loyola's home floor in Los Angeles . Says Loyola forward Bo Kimble , who had been a friend of Gathers 's for the past 10 years, "We had a lot to deal with quickly. It was hard on everyone. But we knew Hank would have wanted us to play in the NCAAs . At the memorial service [in Loyola's Gersten Pavilion] I looked over and saw his coffin was in the paint. I knew then we would have to find a way to win for him."

And, perhaps astonishingly, they did. Playing in the West Regional in Long Beach , Calif. , the 11th-seeded Lions beat No. 6-seed New Mexico State last Friday 111-92. Kimble scored 45 points and grabbed 18 rebounds, despite playing the entire second half with four fouls.

To be sure, Kimble also had down moments last week. He didn't sleep for three days after Gathers died, and he began to realize that he was placing too much pressure on himself with his vow to make "something happen" every time he touched the ball. But he stuck to his promise to shoot his first free throw in every game lefthanded, in honor of Gathers , who had struggled so much with his foul shots this season that he had taken to shooting them lefty. "It may sound corny," says Kimble, who leads the nation in scoring with a 35.7 average, "but it makes me believe I've got a little bit of Hank inside me. I feel his strength."

Kimble's first lefthanded attempt didn't come until the second half of the New Mexico State game. The two teams had been tied at intermission, but Loyola had just blitzed the Aggies with a 18-4 spurt to start the half when Kimble was fouled in the act of shooting. As he approached the line, the partisan crowd, many wearing HANK armbands, began to buzz and then went quiet. Kimble shook his left arm, took the ball from the official and calmly made the shot. His teammates and coaches leaped in the air, many of them near tears.

Thursday, August 21, 2008