I love to read the Sunday New York Times Sports section.
First of all, in this age of the incredible shrinking newspaper, there actually is a separate sports section in the Sunday edition...unlike Tuesday-Friday, when Sports is hidden within the depressing economic news of Business.
I love the Sunday Sports section because it always contains some little "human interest story," the kind of thing that helps us recall that sports is one important way that life's dramas are played out within the context of athletic contests.
So, this morning, after reading about how Tiger Woods's product endorsement deals are in serious jeopardy (Tiger...wtf?), and how, in a first for his football-crazed university, Alabama's Mark Ingram had won the Heisman Trophy in the closest vote in that award's 75 year-history (congratulations!), I came upon this little piece, tucked away at the bottom of the Sports Briefing column on Page 3. Since the article doesn't appear in the Times' online edition (wtf??), I'm going to reproduce it here in its entirety:
The boys' basketball team at Medora (Ind.) High broke a 37-game losing streak and earned its first win in two seasons Friday night, prompting a celebratory bonfire and a late-night parade through town.
Last season, under the 22-year-old first-year coach Marty Young, Medora lost more games than any of the roughly 400 high school teams in Indiana. But on Friday against Tabernacle Christian at the Medora gym, the junior Tyler Ault scored 26 points, including the winning basket with little more than a minute remaining, to lead the Hornets to a 45-44 victory. A planned postgame pizza at a nearby church turned into an impromptu bonfire in the parking lot. A fire engine carried the team (1-4) through the streets and was followed by a line of cars. People stepped onto the porches to wave, Young said.
"It felt great afterwards," Young said. "And it felt even better because it was a close game."
JOHN BRANCH
This is not your typical NYT story. Here's this high school from this little town in Indiana which has lost 37 straight games. They win one and it gets reported in New York.
Why?
Well, I did a little digging and found that John Branch had written this story about Medora, Indiana just a few weeks ago. In it, Branch reports on a small town, midway between Indianapolis and Louisville, suffering all the worst consequences of the economic and demographic upheavals plaguing rural America. The basketball team, Branch pointed out, is a microcosm of those difficulties.
Now the story of those kids riding on the back of a fire engine to the cheers of their fellow townspeople made a little more sense.
Congratulations to Coach Young, Tyler Ault, the other Hornets players and all the people of Medora, Ind.
At least for one night, Medora was a winner.
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