The Real Winners …

Neah’s team really didn’t have much hope of winning … but don’t dare tell 12-year-olds anything like that. Her basketball team had only six players. The other team had plenty of substitutes and used a full-court press the whole game.  Yes, the opponents were bigger and faster.  But they were about to be thrown into a hornets nest, and they didn’t know what they were in for.

The game was played at a dot on the Georgia map called Ball Ground.  More specifically, at the City Gym. The Ball Ground City Gym was probably built a thousand years ago.  Some parents watching the game attended school nearby and played in the same gym.  After all these years, the basketball floor is perfect and the bleachers, totally wooden, are as solid as one large slab of granite.  Aluminum, as in material used for bleachers in most modern gyms today, had not been invented when Ball Ground City Gym was constructed.

But, Ball Ground the town is booming.  It has earned its own exit off I-575 and is only 19 miles from the Woodstock exit.  I know the distance because I had to get there in record time after spending a couple of hours with two other granddaughters in Roswell.  Kaisa (5) and Annika (2) were pumped about Gram (aka WW) and Grandad coming at 5 o’clock to babysit, and we were equally excited.  After a large pizza – half cheese and half pepperoni as requested by K and A via video text earlier in the day – it was wild playtime in the basement followed by the dreaded bedtime. In between was a secret piece of chocolate, but “we can’t tell my mom and dad” per Kaisa.

WW volunteered to put the two girls down and encouraged me not to be late for Neah’s game.  That’s when I realized you cannot get to Ball Ground from Roswell.  At least not in one hour on a Friday evening.  So I left a little early after a couple of hugs and kisses (not from WW).  With huge thanks to GPS, I made it to Ball Ground with six minutes to spare even after not trusting GPS and making three wrong turns.

Neah’s team wore white uniforms but they might as well have been yellow and black swarming bees.  Not known for a potent offense, the white team came out with a sticky, shifty, stinging defense that smothered the team in black.  It was 3-0 late in the first quarter, and the favored black jerseys had the noticeable zero. They were stunned. Truth be told, everybody was stunned.  Except maybe the girls in white.

All that first-quarter energy took a bit of zip out of Neah’s team in the second period, but only a bit.  The good girls – I mean, the white jerseys – trailed by only a couple of points at halftime.  And after the halftime rest, Neah and her mates were nagging wasps again. They allowed only one basket in the third quarter while Neah kept her team in the game with a huge basket of her own. Entering the final period, palms were sweaty and perspiration was dripping – and that was from the stressed out parents and spectators.

The team in black endured another period of suffocating defense as the white jerseys refused to give up in the final quarter.  The relentless scrambling for the ball created absolute chaos for the girls in black, but they managed to survive.  “Glad that’s over,” one black jersey mumbled after the game.  Her next thought surely was, “hope we don’t have to play them again.”

Grandparents are proud of their grandchildren win or lose.  Sometimes they are more proud when they lose than when they win.  And, they are really proud when they get to have a picture taken after the game with the toughest competitor on the floor.

A few minutes before the picture, red-faced and drained with fatigue, Neah and her teammates offered handshakes and congrats to the scoreboard winners.

The other winners, the real winners, wore the white jerseys that night in Ball Ground.