The Legend of Whitburn County

To complicate matters, the bathrooms were closest to the hallway, with the coaches' offices on the side closest to the lobby of the fieldhouse, which was on the East side of the building.

Apparently, Tam got up and left when we were down by 20 with four minutes to go. She had planned to celebrate Whitburn's win with some sparkling grape juice with Jared — as he drove her home. She switched to plan B. The only way you could look into the sauna/Jacuzzi area was from the Natatorium. The door to the hall separating the showers and the lockers (known to Whitburn students as "Streaker's Alley") was easily double locked. No one was in the weight room after the game, since it wasn't open on weekends, so the likelihood of anyone seeing or surprising them was practically nil.

She sneaked into the Visitor's lockers, found Jared's locker and left a note to meet her by the pool entrance by the Jacuzzi. He found the note, took a brief shower, and sneaked out into the pool area. He found Tam in the sauna, wearing nothing more than a smile and holding a glass of sparkling grape juice.

Without going into the gory details (which none of the three parties cared to share), suffice to say Jared took advantage of the situation. The two of them had sex in the Jacuzzi, right then and there. (Now, I know what you're thinking — no, Jared told me he did use a condom.) What's amazing is that no one noticed that Jared was missing. He had his change of clothes back by the showers, but it didn't look like he wasn't in the shower room. Afterwards, Jared rushed back to the shower room, hurried, got dressed and innocently met a slightly disheveled Tamara in the lobby.

Looking back on the whole thing, they essentially got away with one. They consummated their relationship, and no one was the wiser. It wasn't until Katie told me about it on our date on Monday night — the first day of spring break — that my wonder as to why Tam seemed to smell of chlorine water made sense.

Katie and I had a long talk that night, too. We decided that we should wait until we were married to have sex. We weren't ready for the possible "side effects" of sex — namely, kids and pregnancy. We did have a good kiss-and-hold session, though; then we headed back to Katie's house, where we were going to meet up with Jared and Tam.

What we didn't know was that everything was going to be turned upside down the moment they walked in the door.

I guess I should explain my remark about "Streaker's Alley." It came about when, in my freshman year, the first gal saw the first guy come out of the shower with nothing on but a towel. It gradually evolved from that into attempts by the girls to grab the towels off the guys as they left the showers. Some of the gals were convinced that the guys really weren't naked under the towels, and one or two of them tried to prove it. The first time, the guy had on underwear. The second guy didn't, and the gal chased him all the way into the guys' locker room. That was when it evolved into gals "cutting through" the guys' showers en route to the girls' lockers. It got to be a sort of initiation rite for the girls — especially for the cheerleaders.

The teachers tried to stop it, but then they devised new ways of "sneaking and streaking," as they say. Apparently, it was Tam who did the ultimate "streak": she ran through the guys' showers, then through the guys' lockers (away from the offices) and then out the door. Tam, of course, never was the bashful type. Katie always contends this was how Tam ended up as captain of the squad; Tam downplays it as "coincidence."

Anyway, the same night that Katie and I were talking about life, Jared was at basketball practice. (St. George's wasn't on Spring Break that week.) Tam was going to meet him after practice to pick him up, then we were going to meet at her house to watch some videos. Jared was his usual "last guy in the gym" self, shooting baskets and working on his jumper. Coach MacGwire, his assistant and the team manager were the only ones still left in the building.

What happened next would change the lives of a lot of people. When Tam pulled up, she saw coach MacGwire leaving the building. ("I saw him get in his car and drive away," she told me later.) She wandered inside, catching the manager as he was leaving. He told her that Jared was still in the locker room. She then asked him if the girls' lockers were open, since she needed to use the bathroom.

While she went into the girls' lockers to use the bathroom, Jared was emerging from the showers next door in the boys' lockers. As he went into the showers, Jared said that he saw MacGwire leave as he went into the showers, but noticed that the light was still on in the coach's office. He assumed that the assistant coach was still in there, which he was.

Tam noticed that the locker room was laid out where the coaches couldn't see if someone was coming in without directly looking at the door. That was when she decided she was going to sneak in the locker room door, "to see if Jared was almost ready to go," was her official explanation. The unofficial explanation, according to Katie, was that "she wanted to give him a blow-job right by his locker."

Either way, Katie sneaked in without being seen by the assistant coach, and found Jared's locker. She nearly scared the crap out of him by grabbing him from behind.

Meanwhile, the assistant coach is in the office, jamming away to the radio, completely oblivious to everything and obviously unaware that he is the only person over the age of 21 in the entire building.

Jared and Tam both contend that they did nothing just then, but there's just barely enough of a gap in all the stories that something could have happened. Jared contends they argued over why the hell she came in there. Tam says that Jared told her to lay off, he had to finish getting dressed and then let the coach know he was leaving.

They both sneaked back to the entrance of the locker room (after he had finished dressing). He told her to get out before coach MacGwire came back in. Tam protested, telling him that MacGwire was gone, she had seen him pulling away in his car several minutes before. They both saw that the assistant coach was still listening to the radio and not paying attention to the locker room.

He then urged her towards the door, telling her, "Get out before somebody catches you in here."

Which was the exact moment that MacGwire came through the door. Tam turned around and was face-to-face with MacGwire.

They all looked at each other.

There was a long moment of silence. Even the music stopped. That was because the assistant coach had chosen that exact moment to come out of the office.

"Get out of here, NOW!" MacGwire boiled. Jared and Tam raced out the building, not even pausing to stop and listen as MacGwire continued to rant. "You're HISTORY! You're GONE, THOMPSON! OFF THE TEAM, OUT THE DOOR, NEVER GOING TO SET FOOT IN THIS BUILDING AGAIN!"

Jared was expelled from St. George's the next morning, on the "moral turpitude" clause in the student conduct code book.

It probably isn't a big surprise that St. George's basketball team went into a nose dive after that, losing their last three games of the season and then promptly losing to St. Michael's in the first round of the ISAA tournament. What was worse was that this was St. Michael's first year with a basketball program.

Whitburn didn't fare any better. Woodfield tore us apart the next day, just as all the accusations and finger pointing started. Jared was in the stands for our game, watching his best friend and his soon-to-be schoolmates (since he immediately transferred after the expulsion) get whipped by the Eagles.

It was the last year of the four-team tournament for the conference championship, too. Back in January, they announced that six out of the seven HSAA teams in the Northern Lakes Conference would make the conference tournament the next season. We all suspected that the change was made to appease some ultra-liberal in Morgantown who wanted as many teams to be eligible for the state tournament as possible - "to improve the self-esteem of the players."

This season, however, Woodfield walked to the conference title by winning their last three games. Then, they won the conference tourney by beating Newsburg (who beat us, 76-53 in the semis), and advanced to the HSAA final four. There, they ran up against Morgantown West, which was a basketball factory. They had at least one guy go to the McDonald's All-American All-Star Game three years in a row. Just a few years before, they had an alumni end up with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. That is how good they are. They tore apart Woodfield the way the USA Dream Team took apart Olympic opponents. Some weren't even as kind to compare it to that; references in the Morgantown State Journal mentioned that the Eagles "seemed to use the defensive schemes of the Washington Generals."

Meanwhile, as you could guess, Jared was in a massive funk. He transferred to Whitburn for two very important reasons: a.) the state laws regarding school attendance stated that expulsion from private schools made attendance at a public school mandatory; and b.) he had to do it quickly or he would lose any hope of ever playing again. The HSAA and ISAA had rules about transferring from school to school, and in Jared's case, he would have to sit out one whole calendar year. The one-year rule didn't apply if the move was voluntary (as in Chris Smith's case, which meant he only had to sit out the rest of the school year). Nor did it apply if the parents moved into the district (as in Davey Wilson's case, when his parents moved to Whitburn from Thompsonville — he was eligible to play for us the moment he stepped through the door).

That summer, me, Chris and Jared went to Riverton for another 3-on-3 tournament sponsored by Riverton State University, which had just become a lower-tier Division I NCAA school. We lost in the winner's bracket finals to Mitch Jordan and two other members of the Riverton North squad. Then, we beat the winning team from the loser's bracket, and turned around and beat Jordan's threesome by a pair.

Only problem was, in the winner's bracket game, Jared and Jordan had banged together going up for a rebound, and Jared twisted his ankle. He gamely kept playing, but by the time we played our fourth game of the day, he couldn't do much more than do the old "toreador" style of defense (you know, "OLE!" as the offensive player goes by you).

Jared insisted that if they had just one more day, let the ankle rest, then take them on, we could have won. This was a point well taken, since he was fine when we finally got home the next day.

There was one last bit of justice that was served out of the expulsion incident. Jared's younger sister, Jenny, still went to St. George's, so Jared's dad and his Uncle Jerry (who was a trial lawyer) brought negligence charges against MacGwire. It turned out that MacGwire not only left his assistant in charge while there was an underage student still in the building, but he also had no intent on returning. Had he not stopped at the local KwikMart and discovered that he didn't have his wallet, he wouldn't have come back to the school at all. (That was why the assistant coach had stepped out of the office as MacGwire came in — to hand him his wallet.) The charges stuck, and he was given the pink slip as a teacher and as a coach at St. G's. Gerrold took over as the interim basketball coach. He would resign as AD and coach within a year.

The hearings that led to MacGwire's dismissal included testimony from Tami and Jared. When both acknowledged that nothing improper happened when Tami went into the locker room, the people of Whitburn County believed them. Sympathy for Jared rose even as he finished out the year at Whitburn. Some of the local businessmen who were members of the Panther Pride Booster Club tried unsuccessfully to convince the HSAA to rescind the "one-year rule" for transfer students.

Interestingly, MacGwire managed to get an assistant coaching position at St. Mary's Immaculate University in Riverton. When Coach Mayers finally retired, however, MacGwire didn't get the nod as the head coach. That honor went to — you guessed it — our head coach, Roger Mason.

Each year, the Panther Pride Booster Club paints a schedule for the boys' and girls' interscholastic teams, and hangs them outside the fieldhouse at the beginning of the new sports season. The schedule for boys' basketball was apparently altered one night, and the date "February 27" was circled in red paint. That was the game against St. George's - but everyone knew that it was really the day that Jared came back. And that was the date we were all waiting for.

The wait would be a long one for both Jared and me. At the first home game of the season, I went up for a rebound and came down wrong on my ankle. I knew the second I landed on it that I'd broken it. It hurt like hell, and I had to be carried off the court to the hospital. Jared came down from the stands to help me to the cart, and even went with me and my dad to the hospital.

The break was bad enough where I wasn't going to be playing ball for a couple of months. It didn't help that Chris came down with — are you ready for this? — the measles while I was gone, and Davey couldn't take up the slack by himself. We rattled off five straight losses, then managed to win the first game of our holiday tournament against St. Michael's when Chris came back. Unfortunately, after the game Davey came down with the flu, and we promptly lost to Shoreland in the championship round. After two more losses, I was finally able to walk without a cane or a soft cast on my foot. I went out and got high-tops that had a Velcro strap across the top, to protect the ankle from further injury. In the first game back, I scored 25 and Davey and Chris scored 21 each, and we whipped up on Marshall at their gym, 87-53. The next game, we all scored over 20 again and beat Chemequon by 22. Everyone at school was hyped up. Even though we were 4-9, we still had seven games left, and four of them were at home.

The only problem was that the next game was against the team that had won the state title two years ago, Riverton Tech. They'd lost three in a row to Riverton North and Washura West, and were ready to take out their frustrations on us.

It was bad from the opening tip. Chris went up to take the jump, and the other center, Willie Green, just plucked the ball out of the air. Two seconds later, he fired a pass to forward Marty Williamson, an all-HSAA team member the previous season, who went up and laid it in. He then promptly stole the in-bounds and laid it in again. We managed to get the ball to half court, but then Williamson swiped it away from Chris and went down for another uncontested lay-in. I called for the no-dribble play, where we pass it up the court and try to set up a shot on the perimeter. We got three clean passes, actually caught them slightly out of position, and I fired a shot from behind the three-point line. Trouble is, Green timed his leap and swatted the ball down as it went up. The ball caromed off my good leg and shot into the stands. I went down like a shot. The ref didn't buy it, but my leg was hurting. Turned out that he just bruised it, but I was on the bench for the rest of the game with an ice pack on my leg. They took the ball down the court and scored again, and the rout was on. Tech ended up shutting us out in the first half — yes, that's right, the entire first half — by the score of 36-0. We actually made a few baskets on their second stringers, but we never got within more than 40 points of them. The final score was 62-12. All 12 of our points came after halfway through the third period.

We didn't recover from that game. Woodfield promptly beat us at home that Saturday, and three days later we lost to Newsburg at Newsburg. On February 23, with four games to go in the season, Woodfield beat us again to put us squarely in last place in the conference. Marshall, who was having just as bad a season as we were, actually beat Newsburg at Newsburg to put us one game down for the final spot in the conference tournament.

When we got back to the locker room, there was a note on the blackboard by the coaches' office: "MANDATORY PRACTICE MONDAY, 11:00 PM." We all knew what it was about.

The practice was on the first day of Spring Break, but no one seemed to care much about being on vacation. We don't usually have many people at practice, but when word got around about the 11 o'clock practice, a lot of the more supportive students showed up beforehand — along with Tam and the varsity cheerleading squad. We ran through some drills, but everyone knew that the real reason why we were there so late was in the old Boys' Gym of Whitburn High School. He was playing intramural basketball on a Monday night, keeping himself in shape. Katie was assigned by Coach Mason to keep tabs on him that night. While we were going through the drills, we kept sneaking looks at the clock on the one end of the fieldhouse to see what time it was. Everyone was getting antsy, and just about five minutes before midnight, Coach Mason got out his cell phone and called over to the gym.

He blew the whistle on practice, and called all the players over. He told us that he wanted to show us something. He took out a duffel bag, unzipped it and pulled out a brand-new Whitburn jersey. It had the number 12 on it. We all knew who it was for.

"There's this kid who wants to play for us," he told us. "I want to know if we should let him play on our team or not. We have room on our team roster, so none of you have to demote to the JV for him to play." A smile came upon his lips. "Anyone have any objections?" We all started shaking our heads vigorously. "Then it's settled. He'll be coming over to join us any minute."

Tam had already stationed herself over by the door of the fieldhouse, looking up the hallway by the pool towards the main school. "He's coming!" she shouted out. Just then, the school bell rang to indicate it was now midnight. Jared came strolling into the fieldhouse, arm-in-arm with Katie and Tami.

The kids let out a long cheer, then chanted, "Jared! Jared! JARED!" Mason quieted them down for a moment, and then turned to Jared to hand him his new uniform.

"Here you go, Mr. Thompson, you're on the team." Another spontaneous eruption from the students. Mason quieted them down again. "Now, as it is, you're an hour late for practice. So after you go in there and change, you've got free throws to do." Jared shook his head as the kids in the stands cheered him out the door.

For the next five minutes, the entire assembly started the chant, "WE are WHIT-burn!" with the staccato claps. Jared emerged from the locker room with his fresh uni's and a great big smile on his face. Mason blew the whistle before the crowd could start up again.

"Thompson! Go up to that line and give me 10 free-throws." Mason had a team policy that, if you were late for practice, you would have to step up to the line and sink 10 free-throws. If you missed any of them before you sank the 10, that was how many laps you had to run around the court to make up for it. I remember one kid who missed 20 shots and only made five of the free throws. After he made the fifth one, coach just told him to go run laps until he told him to stop. The kid collapsed from exhaustion after about 15 laps. He quit the team the next day.

Jared knew full well about this policy, and didn't flinch at all. Instead, he calmly went to the line and proceeded to sink one free-throw after another. One after one, they went in like clockwork. He hit five in a row, then six, then seven, then eight. The ninth one bounced off the back of the rim, bounced straight in the air, and went swish right into the basket. Everyone had stopped to watch him do this. He then bounced the ball a couple of times, looked up, let out a breath, and sank the last free-throw. The crowd erupted as the ball hit the floor. The entire team went over to mob him.