The terrible end to Kim Babiak's basketball career

As a full-time student at Monmouth College and having to work nights, let's say the degree of difficulty in accomplishing anything in my life was fairly high. Add a girlfriend in there who didn't have a license to drive at the time, and yeah, things certainly were challenging in the fall of 1986 and winter/spring 1987.

But I did like the idea of making money like any other 20-year-old at the time and I took on assignments to cover in Ocean County to get my foot through the door at another newspaper ... or so I thought back in 1987.

This included covering Friday night basketball when we didn't publish on Saturdays at the Observer. And so on Friday night, January 30, 1987, I was asked by my boss to cover a big Shore Conference Class A South girls basketball game between Toms River South and Southern Regional at South, right around the corner from the newspaper building. My last class of the day on Fridays ended around 3 p.m. during that time, so that didn't bother me at all.

For one thing, I handled all the statistics for girls and boys basketball. This was right up my alley since I knew who the players were on all the teams and I got to see them up close. And in this particular case, the Rams of Southern Regional coach Kathy Leslie came in with an 11-4 record overall and 5-2 in the division, trying to catch up to division leader Lakewood. South, meanwhile, was very formidable at 8-2 overall and 5-1 in the division, also chasing after Lakewood in Class A South. So for now, the battle was for either South to maintain second place in the division or for Southern to force South into a two-way tie in second at the time.

Southern Regional had good players on its team like senior all-everything guard Michelle Jones, scrappy junior forward Patti Caufield, sophomore standout guard Mary Tantillo and solid junior center Charity Smead, a standout in track and field as well. Southern was good. The Indians of second-year coach Barbara Hughes was loaded with talent, too, starting with senior center Toni-Marie Izzie and junior forward Chris Maloney.

But their star player was a senior guard named Kim Babiak. If not for Lakewood's incredible Carol Walters, Babiak would have been the best senior female athlete in the county that year. She was a four-year All-County first-team standout on the tennis court at No. 1 singles and was a dynamite role player for the previous two seasons on the basketball team for Hughes and before her, the late Bill Dougherty. And she was a sensational sprinter and hurdler in track and field. But in her junior year, she left track and field and tried out for coach Jim Christiano's softball team. Not only did she make the team, she patrolled center field and stole 37 bases in 37 attempts -- no one threw her out! And her bat and speed helped the Indians reach the finals of both the Ocean County and Shore Conference tournaments as well as a share of the Class A South title with an overall record of 24-6.

And as I kidded her while she was in high school, I told her it was amazing that she found the time to be the female lead in the Honeydrippers' video for the song "Sea Of Love" because if you remember seeing the video or even view it on YouTube, she looked very much like the young lady in the video. Of course it wasn't her, but she was a spitting image.

I totally thought the world of Kim Babiak. She was a great young lady from a great family. Her mom, Geri, was a sweetheart and her dad, Bob, was a terrific guy. Her older brother, Bobby, another super guy, I got to know as a South football and track standout and then again when he was coaching track at Toms River North in the 1990s.

Babiak was averaging 18.8 points a game in 10 games and a big reason why South and Hughes, also the school's field hockey coach in the fall, did not have to worry about the outside game or handling the ball for that matter.

So as I came into South's gym, I got my spot at the scorer's table, wrote down the lineups for both teams, chatted for a moment with both Hughes and Leslie, and said hello to the people I knew fairly well, which would be Izzie and Babiak. All seemed right for the moment.

Southern Regional teams under Leslie were best known for their defensive prowess. Whether they had the best talent in the county or not, she always stressed defense as a major part of her team. In other words, if you couldn't play defense for Leslie, chances were you weren't playing for Southern Regional at all.

So imagine Leslie's surprise as Izzie won the tip from Smead, Babiak got the ball and drove right to the basket for the game's first two points.

Already, the yelling started from Southern's sideline.

"Michelle Jooooooones!! You are supposed to pick her up!! Where's the rest of you to help out?!"

It didn't take long for the Rams to answer. Jones hit on a layup to tie it at 2-2, then after a South miss, Caufield got the ball from Jones and delivered a basket from in close to make it 4-2. Another South miss and Southern had the ball back, but a pass by Jones was deflected and picked up by Babiak for the steal.

This is where everything changed for South in the game and their season -- and Babiak's basketball career.

As she took the ball down the floor for what seemed to be an uncontested layup, Smead raced down the court as fast as she could to try to catch up with Babiak. I can still see Babiak being grabbed from behind by Smead -- not viciously by any means -- but as Smead got her, she turned Babiak around as the South guard threw up a wild shot.

That's when it happened. It wasn't clear enough, but when you started to hear wails of pain, you knew it wasn't good. To brace her fall from Smead's foul from behind, Babiak put her right arm out.

It snapped. The wrist was broken. And for the next five to 10 minutes, the game was delayed as South trainer Debbie Morante had to come out to tend to a shaken and crying Babiak. And worse, when her good friend and longtime teammate Izzie came over to see what was going on, she became so shaken she started to weep openly. This moment was an absolute hot mess.

I always said the person who really should have been crying at that moment was junior Karen Schuler, who was now going to have to be the full-time point guard of the team and with the knowledge she was not going to contribute nearly 20 points a game.

As Babiak was taken off the court for what would be the last time in her high school basketball career, heading over to nearby Community Memorial Hospital, I knew -- and I think Hughes and South fans knew -- that South's season was not going to be the same. Babiak was the engine that ran this automobile and without her, South didn't really stand a chance.

There was an emptiness within that South gymnasium for that moment and for the rest of that game for that matter. And I remember there was a sudden heaviness ... not of hatred, but a slight bit of anger ... toward Smead, who was only trying to do her job at that moment, but in her clumsy way of doing it, had just put a damper on South's season. I could feel it in the gym for the rest of the night, especially after Schuler came in and missed both free throws.

The game went on from there and that bit of anger grew even more as Southern went on a 13-0 run to make it 17-2 in the first quarter with Jones taking advantage of not having Babiak all over her like white on rice with eight points in the run. South stopped the run by putting a full-court pressure on Jones and Tantillo and went on an 8-0 run to make it 17-10.

Sadly, that would be the closest South would get from there. Leslie made the adjustments for her young ladies and by the third quarter, the game got out of hand. By the end of the game, Southern had put the finishing touches on a 66-40 rout. By far, the rest of the game was very unmemorable. Jones had 22 points, most of which came on long-range jumpers, while Smead had 14 points and eight rebounds and Caufield had six points and seven rebounds. Reserve Kristen Stohrer added eight points off the bench.

Maloney ended up leading South with 14 points, while Izzie had 10 points and Schuler had six points after stepping in for Babiak.

But all that was trivial. Broken wrists don't heal that quickly and not only was Hughes having to face the reality she didn't have her superstar guard for the rest of the season, but Christiano was not going to have his centerfielder for her senior softball season. Without her that spring, South had a good season, but certainly could have had a better season. The Indians went to the OCT semifinals that spring and who knows if Babiak were in the lineup how well they may have done against Lacey in a 13-12 loss.

Meanwhile, Hughes and her Indians had to move on from this particular game. Unfortunately, they had to move on to a date the very next night at Lakewood ... and it didn't go so well. Lakewood was in the middle of a second state South Jersey Group III title in three years and blew out the Indians. To add insult to already hard-luck injury, Walters scored her 1,000th career point in that game.

Babiak would eventually return to track and field and have a successful season with a pair of wins in the county meet that spring. She would go on to play tennis at the Jacksonville University and graduate with a degree in marketing. In 1996, she was working for the American Hockey League team in Baltimore and she let my dad and I into the old Civic Center in downtown Baltimore to see the place that the old Baltimore Bullets played basketball back in the day while we were down for an Orioles game the night before. It was good to see her. Shortly after she showed us around that morning, she got the call to work with the marketing department with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Ultimately, she got to do the same thing, but this time head the department, with the Houston Texans franchise as they were getting of the ground. And we were in contact my first couple of years with the Palatka Daily News since I got to cover the Jacksonville Jaguars in the same AFC South division and asked her if she ever came back to Jacksonville. She said she really didn't really travel with the team, but in January 2004, she got to help out the NFL with whatever the league asked her to do in preparing Reliant Stadium for Super Bowl XXXVIII when the New England Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers.

The next year, it was Jacksonville who got to host the big game and to do a column on what a franchise or a city had to get done to make a city presentable for a Super Bowl, I called up the one person with experience who can tell me what does happen. Now Kim Phillips, she answered the phone and gave me 45 minutes of wonderful time. It was a good conversation as we caught up on what was going on. She had not given me any indication that she was leaving the Texans, but she did.

And that conversation in early February 2005 was the last time I talked with Kim Babiak Phillips. I'm sure a lot has happened in eight years, but I do miss her. She may not have been the best athlete I ever covered, but she certainly was one of my favorite people I got to know in these 28 years.

She was worth the time and effort to go see play and cover ... even with a busy schedule to manage.

The basketball game that may have cured what ailed me

There are times that fish made in restaurants and I didn't get along. I stick now to the occasional visit to McDonald's for a fish fillet sandwich or Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips if there are any within a reasonable distance or good ol' Red Lobster. None of them have done me wrong over the years.

These days, I make my own fish meals, usually a good grilled salmon or simple tuna fish from a can. I still love clams and scallops and won't ever deny myself shrimp of almost any kind.

But back in my "reckless" days, any fish was not off limits to me. I was a fan of the old all-you-can-eat clam strips meal at Howard Johnson's restaurant. And I used to enjoy going to Friendly's in Toms River for the clam boat and occasional fish sandwich.

And thus begins this tale of literal woe for me. On Friday, January 14, 1994, my new girlfriend and I went to the nearby Ocean County Mall for dinner and a movie. We stopped in at Friendly's on that particular evening and I ordered the fish sandwich they made there. All seemed fine afterward and we went to the movie at the old cinema around the corner within the mall. We came back to my folks' place and both of us fell asleep that night in my small bed.

The next morning -- Saturday, January 15, 1994 -- we both woke up and I was feeling sluggish. She knew I had to be at work in the afternoon, so we spent the morning together and then she took off for her home in Monmouth County. But I couldn't shake whatever it was that I had. Usually at the Observer at this particular time, I would come into work around 4:30 p.m. and if there were games to pick up during the day, I'd do that. At this particular time, I was the girls basketball writer for the paper, and the highlight of the day/night for me was the big Class A South match-up between two very good teams, Southern Regional and Toms River North, with the game at North that night. It would be the first meeting this season between the two big-time rivals.

But at 3 p.m., I started feeling worse. I couldn't shake whatever it was I had. It was so bad that by 4 p.m., I was wishing whatever I had went away. At that point, I called up my boss, Mike, and explained to him that I was not up to taking phone calls, but I was up to covering the basketball game right around the corner from me at North and could I just forgo being in the office where I felt miserable. He knew I was very good for the time he was there at being loyal and dependable. So he gave me a pass and told me he'd see me after the game.

By 6 p.m., the pain was becoming so bad that I was starting to feel nauseous. I spent quite a bit of time upstairs in the bathroom trying to induce my vomiting. That's how bad it was. Problem, though, was I couldn't do it. That's when I knew there may be a problem for this one evening. Or at least that was my best hope -- that this wouldn't linger for days.

I knew at 6:30 what the culprit was in the past 24 hours since I hadn't eaten anything else before or after. The only thing I could do was tough it out -- and so by 7 p.m., I was off to make the three-plus mile trip to Old Freehold Road to Toms River North's old gymnasium to watch this battle of titans.

North's Mariners of long-time coach Ray Cervino were the defending Class A South champions and were led by a dynamite group of players, starting with junior guard Sandy Bisogno and junior center Dana Simonelli and included sophomore forward Kristen Herzer and 5-foot-7 freshman phenom Melissa Fazio. Southern coach Kathy Snyder had been coach of her team one year longer than Cervino of his. She, too, had a dynamite group of young ladies playing like guards Jodie Davis and Kirsten Sciallo, a good forward in Jamie Bogdol and the Rams, too, had a freshman phenom with a lot of potential in 6-1 center Candice McCallum.

On paper, this was looking to be a tremendous battle. But they were polar opposites of one another. For North, there wasn't a jailbreak they didn't enjoy making -- if Cervino had given Bisogno, his point guard, the green light the entire 32 minutes, she'd have run opposition defenses ... and her own team's offense for that matter ... ragged. North averaged 67 points a game in compiling a 5-3 record. Southern, on the other hand, didn't quite have the talent to go up and down the court quite like North did, so they had to slow it up -- and I mean slooooooooooow it up. They were averaging 26 points a game defensively in getting out to a 7-0 start and a Christmas tournament championship.

In other words, it was the proverbial "something had to give."

But in North's case, they were having to deal with an angry coach, who watched his talented Mariners stink up the entire court in a 69-59 loss two nights earlier against Middletown North. So let's just say Friday's practice the day before the Southern game wasn't a very pleasant one.

One team concentrating on playing better defense, the other team concentrating on playing defense by never allowing the other team to have the ball for any amount of time.

Yeah, this one had the potential of being bad in that regard.

I didn't know it was going to be this bad when McCallum and Simonelli jumped center to start the game.

North won the toss and brought the ball up the court. Herzer took a Bisogno pass and scored to make it 2-0.

And Southern took the ball down the court and proceeded to take a lot of time off the clock. No shot clock. No warnings. Nada. North just allowed Southern to dribble around or hold the ball. You'd thought Dean Smith was making a 1970s cameo in the North gym the way Southern was going to work the four corners. Somehow, Taragh Maples scored to make it 2-2. And with one more North basket in the first quarter, it was 4-2 in favor of the Mariners.

The second quarter began with Southern doing more of the same -- holding onto the ball, not allowing North to do anything with it. But nothing was coming from it. Allyson Sieka, another North sophomore forward, delivered a basket to make it 6-2.

And under Snyder's command, Southern continued to slow it down until the Rams found what was an "appropriate" shot. They drained the clock to under 90 seconds left before halftime when Davis found the right moment to put up a 3-point shot.

"Noooo! You can't do that! Noooooo!!" 

Swish. "Greaaaat shooot!!"

It was now 6-5 and after North missed another attempt at the basket, McCallum rebounded and got the ball back to Davis. This time, the Rams decided to drain about 35 seconds off the clock before Davis, all of a sudden feeling frisky as hell, threw up another three-point attempt.


Swish! Southern led, 8-6. And when North could not hit a shot at the buzzer, that was the score at halftime.

Southern 8, Toms River North 6. It was a battle of Ocean County titans and Snyder and the Rams successfully slowed it down to a crawl like no one ever saw before or since.

And the way I was feeling at that point physically, if they had put a working toilet bowl right next to the scorer's table, I think I may have been successful in getting rid of what was ailing me.

The Rams and Mariners had succeeded in taking basketball back 50 years in those God-awful 16 minutes. Only two Christian schools with little talent could equal that kind of a first half and I guarantee you, the Christian schools would put up more shots than Southern and North had put up in that first half.

There was no way in hell I was going to be watching a 16-12 game and then having to write about it. Without saying a word, I was clapping hard, my way of pleading and willing Southern to play a little more offense ... and pleading and willing North to get some kind of groove going to make this game seem a little more, well, enjoyable.

I don't think in my 28 years of covering athletics have I wanted something as dull and tedious as this game to be a little more exciting. The first thing Cervino did coming out of the locker room was to drop out of the 2-3 zone his team was playing and go man-to-man so they could open things up more. Yeah, it was a little bit of a risk to do that, but deep in his heart, I think Cervino knew his team had better overall talent than Snyder's Rams.

It didn't work at the start as McCallum scored her first basket of the game to begin the third quarter. But at least North got Southern out of that "hold-the-ball-for-minutes-until-you-go-into-REM-sleep" mode. And Cervino had Bisogno and her teammates push the envelope, taking the ball to the basket and drawing fouls -- much to Snyder's consternation toward the officials over the fouls her girls were not committing but yet they were getting called for. Both Sieka and Herzer drew fouls and each hit both free throws to make it 10-10. And on the inbounds pass after Herzer's free throws, Fazio came up with a steal and fed to a driving Bisogno for the layup that gave North the lead back at 12-10 with 6:07 left in the third quarter.

Now that was what I was waiting for. And unfortunately, it was not what Southern Regional wanted to see. North was able to outscore the Rams, 8-4, the rest of the quarter to build a 20-14 lead by the end of the period, the last two points coming after McCallum fouled Bisogno on a 3-point shot at the end of the period.

Southern never truly got back into this game. North took advantage of Southern's fouls, some more questionable than others, and would finish the game a gaudy 22-for-27 from the charity stripe. Maples hit a basket with 4:33 to go to cut Southern's deficit to 23-17. But 17 seconds later, Sieka had three layup opportunities, the third one going in to make it an eight-point lead.

McCallum hit a free throw to make it 25-18, but that would turn out to be Southern's last hurrah. Herzer hit two free throws and then completed a three-point play with 1:18 to go to make it 30-18. Fazio hit two free throws to finish out the 32-18 win that solidified North as the team to beat in the division and handed Southern its first loss of the season.

Another highlight of this night was having to interview both coaches afterward. While Cervino was succinct about where things fell into place and how he was proud of his girls for bouncing back from that terrible first half to win the game, two nights after that terrible exhibition against Middletown North, the always-outspoken Snyder was far more direct about the fouls being called on her team that eventually led to Bogdol and McCallum fouling out.

"The officials stunk." Yeah, I heard about it from her athletic director, Kim DeGraw-Cole, a few days later that she probably shouldn't have said that and that I probably shouldn't have written it. But in all my years I knew Kathy Snyder, she was never backing down from what she thought.

Still, Snyder wasn't going to throw complete blame solely on the people calling the game.

"We will take full responsibility for the loss. We should've been as good as North, but when you miss free throws (the Rams were 2-for-6 from the line in the fourth quarter), you don't help yourself."

Herzer scored 10 points and had six rebounds, while Bisogno had eight points. McCallum was held to six points in this one.

I struggled back to the office, still feeling like crap. And once I got the story written and boxscore from the game put together for the scoreboard page, I helped out where I could before leaving for the night. The next day, the stomach virus went away and I was able to go to the bathroom and didn't have to put my face into the toilet.

North won this game because they were, by far, the more talented team. Southern's scrappers could only hang with North for as long as they could before the Mariners took them to task. And in the return battle a few weeks later at Southern, North won that game, too, and eventually captured the division title again.

But there would be a third battle between the teams. That would come in the NJSIAA South Jersey Group IV Tournament quarterfinals on Thursday, March 3, 1994 at Southern, the second-seeded Rams holding a better overall record than the seventh-seeded Mariners on the cutoff day for the state tournament. I was off from work that night, so fellow writer Steven Falk got to cover the game, and I took the game in as a spectator.

Southern stayed with North the entire way. North held a 39-36 lead with mere seconds left in the game, but Southern had the ball. Snyder diagrammed a play that threw North for a loop -- they sent McCallum out behind the 3-point arc. With Simonelli jumping out at her, McCallum launched a shot that hit nothing but net. Simonelli was called for the foul and McCallum sank the free throw to finish out the four-point play and when North's last-ditch prayer was not answered, Southern had come away with a shocking 40-39 win. I can still see Snyder running on the court hugging her freshman center in what would become McCallum's defining first moment of her young career and I can still see the tears streaming down Simonelli's face, mainly somewhere between sadness and shock.

North's promising season was over and Southern moved on. The Rams ultimately would lose to a talented Vineland team in the SJ IV semifinal two nights later. But the scripts both teams would begin writing the next three years would be remarkable. In 1995, Southern Regional reached the SJ IV final, but lost to Washington Township. In 1996, North beat Southern, 36-27, to win the SJ IV championship after Southern once again threatened to slow things up, holding North down and taking a 15-9 lead at halftime. North would go on to play for the Group IV championship, losing to Elizabeth in the final. And in 1997, Southern returned the favor on North, beating the Mariners in the SJ IV title game at Toms River East for what would be Snyder's first-ever SJ championship in her long and illustrious career. Southern, led by McCallum as a senior, would ultimately lose to Ashja Jones-led Piscataway in the Group IV semifinal, a year after North had beaten Piscataway in that same game.

That North-Southern rivalry was at its absolute best in that four-year period and was easily the best Ocean County girls basketball rivalry I got to cover.

And to think it began with something so terribly not close to basketball that I could have easily thrown up ... which was something I so badly wanted to do on that January 15, 1994.

The moment I knew the Memorial matmen were for real

My last semester at Ocean County College in the winter/spring of 1986 was yet to start. It was a new year, and I was excited about the things to come. And I was excited about the assignments I got handed to me during the holiday period at the Observer.

I saw the finals of the Jaguar Classic boys basketball tournament at Jackson Memorial High School. I got to cover the WOBM Christmas Classic final when Southern Regional's Steve Lally sunk a halfcourt shot at the buzzer to beat Toms River North and give the Rams the championship. And on the Saturday before that, I got to cover the Neptune Wrestling Classic at Neptune High School.


Coach Tony Caravella's Brick Memorial wrestlin' Mustangs were there and they were expected to dominate a field that wasn't exactly powerful and mighty. So in all fairness, I couldn't really gauge how good this team was. I knew they were coming back defending Shore Conference Tournament champions after Dean Kanabrocki's "bear hug 'heard round the Shore" tied up Tim Rioux and gave the Mustangs the title over defending champion Toms River East. And most of the wrestlers on that club were back, including Kanabrocki, Dean Albanese and Bob Martin, a 169-pounder who had high hopes of going all the way to a state championship.

But dominating a group of teams that didn't strike the fear of God in Memorial's eyes wasn't all that scintillating. It just felt, well, "blaaaah." Yet, it was a story and it got in the paper and no one complained and I guess it was all right, yadda yadda yadda.

A week and a half later as 1985 was now 1986, I draw the assignment to go see Brick Memorial wrestle again. OK, fair enough. I'll see them a second time and maybe the team or teams they face will be a lot more intimidating.

Turns out, one of the teams they were going to face was a fellow Top 10-ranked school in New Jersey called Delaware Valley. So, yeah, I'm hyped up. I couldn't wait to go!

"Where am I going to see this?"

"Delaware Valley Regional High."

"Where the hell is that?!"

"Somewhere in northwest Jersey."

Suddenly I wasn't so excited about a road trip. Monmouth County, sure. A little further than that, I'm still OK.

Out in the hinterlands, what the f**k!!?? What did I do now to draw this assignment from hell?

The only thing I had to keep telling myself was that once I got there, I was going to see this great match taking place last on the day. It was an all-day quadrangular event that started around 1 p.m., would start up again with two more matches at 3 p.m. and finish up with the two other schools there, St. Augustine Prep and Seton Hall Prep, wrestling at about 5 p.m., then followed up by the finale at about 7 p.m.

So really, I didn't have to be there for Brick Memorial's mow-downs of the other two schools. I just had to make sure that I was there for the big one and could get the results of the other two matches Memorial wrestled in. Fair enough. So I set out at about 2 p.m. on that Saturday afternoon, January 11, 1986. I had gotten directions to Delaware Valley via the cops in the little village of Frenchtown. Yup, that's where I was going ... Frenchtown, N.J. I was highly doubting anyone was saying, "Oui" and "Bonjour," but was feeling amused nonetheless.

My aim was to get to DelVal by just after 4 p.m. That should be no problem. One of the keys to this ride, though, was to find Route 29, which runs alongside the Delaware River. And I was pretty sure the directions I had were accurate. How I interpreted them was another story, though.

Back in 1986, I-195 that sliced across the state from Trenton to Wall Township did not directly hook up with I-295, and so I would have to exit off in Hamilton Township and weave my way through Yardley, then ultimately, I'd pick up I-295 heading north. When I-295 turned into I-95 heading south, there was the exit for Route 31, one way takes me into Trenton, the other takes me north toward Flemington. Well, since I had not done any coverage of any events at that particular time in Flemington, I thought, "This should be interesting." And so I took the exit for Route 31 north.

It's a lot of pretty scenery, but my goal was to look for Route 202, which if you took a left turn and headed south would take you directly onto Route 29. Well, somehow, I found the exit before I found New Hope, Pa. and veered right and headed north. Route 29 is even more a beautiful route as you drive alongside a mountain that overlooks the Delaware River. My goal was to get into Frenchtown and my directions stated that once I found the road I was to get to, I was to turn left.

That's right ... left. Eight miles later, I hit said road. And stupid me made a left turn -- over the bridge onto Route 32 ... into Pennsylvania. Nope, that wasn't where I was going and my boss later referenced the same scenario (in about the same area) that killed NBC news woman Jessica Savitch in 1983. Thanks a lot!

Unlike the rainy night that took Ms. Savitch's life in a canal, it was a beautiful day and I could see clearly that I wasn't supposed to be in Pennsylvania. There were no tolls, so I immediately found the first intersection I could turn around at and went back over the bridge.

Hmmm, maybe it was a right turn I was supposed to take. And it was. I was on Everettstown Road in Frenchtown, but with my directions already screwed up, this was not going to be as easy as first thought. I ended up asking someone at a gas station where the school was and how far I was from it. Turns out I was still a long way to go. Once I was pointed in that direction, it became pretty easy to find the school.

But the school itself is out in the middle of nowhere. Literally. DelVal High is literally out there in farm country. Still, I didn't care at that particular moment. I was here at last and thankfully at just before 5 p.m. right before the sun set. I just had a feeling I was going to have to take an alternate route to get back home since the route that got me here in the first place felt like a half-day misadventure.

I came to this meet lacking a notebook or a notepad. I didn't have one available and there wasn't a spare one in my Chevy Chevelle. But I had a large 11x17 piece of paper and a clipboard. This was all I was going to need on this day. The one side of the piece of paper was going to be used to copy down the results of Memorial's three matches, bout by bout, as well as notes that I took from the people I interviewed afterward. The other side of this piece of paper was to literally write my story, then to dictate it to either Chris Christopher, our main writer, or Greg Darroch, our assistant sports editor, when I was done. I had secured the phone in the athletic office at DelVal with a little persuasion since the team's very well-liked coach, Vince Fitz, was going to be there awhile anyway.

Yes, this was the era before laptops and handy-dandy Tandys. This was the era of dictation. Ugh!

Once I had contacted Caravella and assistant coach Denny D'Andrea about getting the results I needed from the young lady manager of the team on the blowout wins over Seton Hall Prep (69-0) and St. Augustine Prep (59-12), I was pretty set for the big match of the night. The St. Augustine-Seton Hall match went quick with St. Augustine winning its only match of the afternoon, 34-21.

Now the mats were being cleared and less than 15 minutes later, the lights dimmed down. It wasn't as dramatic as the opening ceremonies of a Phillipsburg High Stateliner match or the Hollywood-produced "Vision Quest" lineup intros, but it was still effective. DelVal fans were raucous and ready to rumble like their wrestlers were. And the Brick Memorial faithful who came to the match were just as fired up. And back in the day, they traveled well.

This was finally the moment of truth, the time to find out if Memorial was for real. The lineups were read. The announcer had done what he was supposed to do to get the crowds fired up. No national anthem ... unlike today where it's played like three or four times at an event. It had been played once already and once was freakin' enough!

It was time to wrestle. First up for Memorial was 101-pounder Tony Nash, who was 8-1 up to this point in the season. His opponent was a kid named Neil Day. And Nash made him kneel all day. Nash put on an exhibition that was stunning. By the time the six minutes were up, Nash had won via a superior decision.

OK, that's just one match. Now came 108-pounder Dan Pulsifer. He went up and down his opponent without much resistance to the tune of a major decision. Same thing for 115-pounder Joe Block. Up, down, over, around, inside, out. Another major decision. It was 13-0 after three matches.

Suddenly, the raucous home crowd wasn't so raucous. Finally, though, it had something to cheer about at 121 pounds when Rob Godown defeated Chuck Marotta by decision. But it was 129-pounder Scott Kirsch who got the three points back with a 13-6 decision in an exhibition of duck-unders and pretzel-twisters against Scott Tettmer, making it 16-3.

Five matches down and Memorial was being businesslike in its approach. Getting those three wins early from Nash, Pulsifer and Block was huge and their best wrestlers were still yet to come.

The 50-50 match involved Ed Feyko of Memorial against Jack Raymond of Del-Val at 134 pounds. The winner of this match was going to gain some momentum for his team. For Del-Val, this was huge. But Raymond could not get the best of Feyko and Feyko walked away with a decision.

This was bad news for Pete Bonilla was up now. Bonilla was a transfer student from Southern Regional High's program and there was always question as to how a talent like Bonilla just suddenly appeared out of nowhere at Caravella's doorstep in the kid's senior year. Miraculous, indeed. Some relative lived in the area so that was the supposed "in" for the kid.

Well, Caravella and D'Andrea weren't turning away very good wrestlers and Bonilla made his mark at the 140-pound weight class by pinning Lance Cyphers in 1:56, making it 25-3. And Fitz was without one of his best wrestlers, 8-1 Rick Savacool at 147 pounds, who supposedly had a bad boil and was not allowed to wrestle. That was a big break for unknown Joe McCabe, who pinned backup 147-pounder Matt Shenberger with a textbook cradle to all but make the match a done deal at 31-3.

There were still matches left. Alabanese came up at 157 pounds and faced another top-notch wrestler in Jamie Wicks. It was a war between the two of them, both exerting as much energy as they could give. In what turned out to be more a defensive battle than anything else, Wicks out-pointed Albanese, 6-4, Albanese's second loss of the season in 10 matches.

With three matches to go, the Mustangs had a 31-6 lead and the win was clinched. But there was the 169-pound bout between 7-1 Martin and Jim Slotterback. Martin came out aggressively, looking to put Slotterback on his back and down in pin position quickly. It looked like Martin was on his way to doing so. Then, out of nowhere, I learned why a sport like wrestling is not always a slam dunk when it comes to the competition.

Martin tilted a little too much into a bad position and Slotterback caught him. Within a matter of five seconds -- that's really all it took ... five seconds -- Slotterback had Martin in the perfect cradle, put him on his back and had him pinned in just 82 seconds. I can still see the scene, even through the darkness of the gym with only the lights shining down on the mat. The DelVal side was jumping up and down for absolute joy. The Memorial side just sat in silence. Their golden boy and best hope for a state title basically got caught and pancaked.

Said Caravella after the match, "He's not good off his back. Last year, he was never caught on his back."

It was about the only major hurrah the Terrier fans had that evening. DelVal's Kelly Wicks was given a forfeit win at 187 pounds and Kanabrocki pinned John Stains in 1:23 to finish it off.

Brick Memorial 37, Delaware Valley 18. And it wasn't a narrow escape either -- it was a resounding win, one that took the air out of the room of those DelVal fans.

If I had not known two weeks earlier in that meet in Neptune, I sure as anything knew that these Mustangs were for real. I talked with Kirsch, one of the senior leaders of the team and one of the more vocal Mustangs on the club. And I talked with both Caravella and Fitz afterward. Fitz was in awe of what he saw across the mat. Caravella was in awe of what he saw from his own guys.

"I think we've proven we're the best in the state," Caravella told me afterward.

They made their point and it was pretty loudly, too.

The crowds had dispersed and I was in the athletic office scratching out my story. The problem, though, was trying to do it with the lead I wanted to write it with. I finally had written the lead and story and was ready to dictate it over the phone to Chris. He took all three agates from the matches Memorial wrestled that day. In the middle of that dictation, though, Fitz walked into the room and said he needed to get out of there as soon as possible and apologized.

I figured I could find a pay phone somewhere and call collect. Fitz gave me some places to call from, but the problem was, it was not exactly warm that night, temperatures in the upper 20s.

I asked Chris to give me about 20 to 30 minutes to leave the school and find a pay phone. It took closer to 20, but I had backtracked to a gas station that not only had a pay phone, but one where I could make a phone call from inside my car. Anyone else remember those phones long before cell phones ruled the day?

Once I got settled in, I connected with the operator and asked to call collect to my office. Chris answered the phone and accepted the charges, and I was able to dictate my story to him from the heated confines of my car. I think it took 10 minutes, but he had everything from me and about 9:35 p.m., my night was over and I was able to get home around 11:30 that night.

By the way, I would see that bridge in Frenchtown one more time a year later when my then-girlfriend and I crossed over it and headed north through the Delaware Water Gap area on Route 32 toward Route 22 and ultimately to Dorney Park for her 18th birthday.

Three days later after that match on January 14, 1986, I was at Toms River High School North for a Class A South boys basketball matchup between North and Brick Memorial. Memorial's boys basketball team was also in the middle of a divisional championship season. I'm sitting near the press table like I did in the early stages of my career when two Memorial wrestlers showed up and decided to say hi to me. It was Kirsch and Albanese who were there to support the basketball guys.

Scott Kirsch was so happy to know that his prowess was in the paper as well as his team's success that he told me, "We don't want Earle covering us ... he's out. We want you." Now it was all flattering that he felt that way and that I did him justice with the two matches I covered in those three Saturdays. But I told him he was going to have to accept John Earle Livingston, our wrestling writer, and that he would do just as good a job covering his team as I would. I had other people and sports to cover.

But it made me feel good, I do admit. And by the end of February, Memorial had that magical season, finishing unbeaten, winning the Shore Conference Tournament with relative ease, then winning the NJSIAA South Jersey Group III and overall Group III state titles. They would finish the year as the No. 1 team in the state. And two of their wrestlers -- Block at 115 pounds and Martin at 169 -- would go on to win state championships that year as well.

It is still the most dominating wrestling team for one season I ever witnessed. And I was glad to see it when it truly blossomed on a January Saturday night where one wrong turn landed me in Pennsylvania momentarily.

In the hinterlands. It truly felt like it.

A bitter cold but memorable (Mariner) weekend

I had been warned a day or two in advance. All I hoped for was that I wasn't going to be out in the bitter cold of late November New Jersey on two consecutive weekend days.

The weather reports I had heard on the radio and saw on television were a bit mind-numbing ... and toe-numbing and finger-numbing and lips-numbing. The temperatures were expected to be unusually cold that particular weekend ... highs (at best) being 11 degrees on Saturday, November 21, 1987, but "warming up" to about 20 degrees the next day.

Well, I was already planning to be at Trenton State College that late Sunday afternoon while the sun was still shining for the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association South Jersey Group IV field hockey championship game between Toms River North and Morristown. That had already been confirmed just a couple of days earlier when North's Mariners made Notre Dame look absolutely foolish on a slippery, muddy Bordentown High field in a 4-0 romp in the Group IV semifinal matchup.

To anyone who has never had to cover a sporting event in 20-degree weather or less, it's something you don't put on a Christmas wish list. And usually, the temperatures in mid-to-late November in the Garden State are in the mid-to-upper 40s, still somewhat comfortable.

Twenty degrees and less than that was not making me feel any better. And so I knew my fate on Sunday. After all, I'm going to take 20 degrees over 11 any day. Mama didn't raise no fool.

The problem, though, was I may still have to cover a high school state tournament football game, which, thankfully, had both games involving our local teams, Point Pleasant Boro in SJ Group II and Toms River South in SJ IV, at home. And my boss was double-staffing both games. Somewhere in the middle of his thinking, I did my best to persuade him from sending me out into the cold both days by just reminding him gently that I was the one going out there alone to Ewing Township on that Sunday to watch North's field hockey team go after a state title.

I was also keeping an eye out on the state girls gymnastics championship that day and one of our young ladies, Toms River North senior Janice Rogers, was going after a state title. So if I could reason to my boss' sane side, I could talk my way out of doing a football game and freezing my ass off a second day.

Wouldn't you know it -- it worked!! I talked my way into not covering either football state tournament games. Instead, I did offer my services to come into the office on that Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. to start doing the little things and get that state tournament gymnastics meet over the phone.

So I left for the office just before 3 in the afternoon and headed to one of my favorite places to eat on a Saturday at that particular time -- the Poor Boys sub shop in the strip mall on Route 166 just past the entrance going south on the Garden State Parkway. I got to know both Richie and Rob, the store owners, over the course of the last couple of years and one of them owned the store in Toms River, while the other owned another store in their hometown of Howell. Not only were they very friendly guys, but the help was very friendly, too, especially Karen Schuler, who was working at the store on this particular Saturday afternoon. Karen was a senior at Toms River South and a very good three-sport athlete in tennis, basketball and soccer, so I knew her and her younger siblings Linda and Doug.

"I'll gladly take being in, thanks," she deadpanned. "You couldn't catch me outside for a football game in that (weather)." I agreed with her considering she knew I was going to be out in this cold the next day covering the field hockey state final.

I did reach my destination before 4 p.m. and did my normal routine of collecting agate and sending it out for paste-up at the end of the night (this was loooooooong before the days of computer layout when we basically did everything by dummy sheets, pica poles and proportion wheels).

Once I believed I had enough out there to work with, I just waited to hear from North coach Laura Meszaros, who had taken over the program just the year before. Janice Rogers was a tremendous talent as a freshman in the 1984 season, but she decided to not come back and compete with North the next two years, concentrating on her club gymnastics, which I never really got a straight answer as to why she did so. But she was back as a senior and dominant.

And she was part of a quintet of dynamite Shore area gymnasts that I called the Fab Five, an amazing collection of talent that would not only dominate at the Shore Conference meet, but would do well in sectional and state meet competition. There was Rogers. Then there was Amy Woomer of Ocean Township. There was Jan Dalziel of Neptune. There was Jen Levie of Holmdel High. And the other senior in that quintet other than Rogers was a Howell High School hotshot talent named Bonnie Bernstein.

Yes, thaaaaaaat Bonnie Bernstein, who was about to take her talents to the University of Maryland.

At the Shore meet, Rogers and Levie tied for first place in the all-around, but Levie won on a tiebreaker.

It was 6:30 p.m. and our writers had come back from Point Boro and Toms River South, one each writing a main story, the other writing a sidebar. Both South's Indians and Boro's Panthers had won and advanced to the state sectional final in two Saturdays. I sure was hoping it wasn't going to be as cold as it was that day.

Then I get a phone call transferred to where I was sitting. It was Laura Meszaros calling. Coach Meszaros, whose mother, Jean Garretson, I knew as a Spanish teacher at my alma mater, Toms River East, and whose brother Ricky I had known as a good baseball and basketball player at Toms River Little League and then again at Toms River North, was very good about getting details to me on what was going on. So I was hoping for the best for her prized senior.

"How did it go today?"

"It went very well."

"Oh? How so?"

"She won the state title."

There was a pregnant pause on the phone. I had to collect myself for the moment. I was about to write this amazing story about "the comeback kid" who literally walked back into her school's gymnastics program, dominated during the regular season and finally came out on top in the biggest meet in the end. She won her state title by .05 points over Levie, getting her revenge from the Shore Conference meet.

A state title involving a North female athlete. This doesn't happen everyday. And now, this young lady could possibly be the opening act for what would be an amazing finale. Could this be the weekend of two North state championships, one an individual all-around state title and one a team title, and both involving female athletes?

Yeah, this doesn't happen too often anywhere. And it was halfway home in happening. I wasn't there at Somerville High School when Janice Rogers made history that afternoon by winning that all-around state championship. I would've done anything to see the look of satisfaction and maybe surprise on her face. It would've been definitely worth it.

But I bargained to get out of a state sectional football game on a day when temperatures hit 12 degrees and the wind-child was about minus-10. A witch's teat had nothing on this very brutally cold day. But I was about to endure a day like this, maybe a little warmer, the next day.

The trip in my 1977 Dodge Aspen to western New Jersey to a college I had never been to before on Sunday, November 22, 1987, was an hour long and I remember just cranking the heat up as much as I could. It had been just a year earlier that I was at nearby Rider University to watch Central Regional lose to Northern Highlands in the NJSIAA Group III field hockey championship in temperatures that were close to 60 degrees.

And surprisingly, the sun was strong enough to make the brutal cold not feel so brutal. But I came into the stadium wearing a T-shirt, a sweatshirt over that and a heavy jacket that had a hood on it and was wearing gloves, which would make note-taking a challenge. I had to pick my points to write when I could.

I arrived moments after our photographer, Tom Spader, got to Trenton State. If you thought I was dressed warmly, you should've taken a look at him. He looked like he was bundled up for an expedition to the upper Northwest Territories in mid-January. He was going to be there for the whole game like I was, getting either a celebratory state championship shot or a kids-breaking-down-in-tears-in-defeat shot.

The Mariners came into the game with a 20-0-3 record. They were dominant in their matches for most of the season and the close ones they found a way to win -- like superstar Kim Bush's overtime rocket shot of a penalty corner at the top of the circle to beat Shawnee for the South Jersey Group IV title that slammed into the back of the net behind the goalie so hard that the sound of the ball hitting the supporting wood of the cage could be heard all over Toms River North. Bush, Katie Vignevic, Christy Emmert and Dawn Ostrowski led the offense, while the defense was guided by Mary Bendel, Sue Gerbino, Krista Saponara, Kerri Gallipoli and goalkeeper Linda Kurtyka.

And I knew Morristown, who came in with a 16-4 record, was very good. But I walked in believing North was going to win this game regardless. You just have a feeling about a team or someone and you ride it a long way like I did with this special group of Mariner ladies.

There were two things that I felt could keep North from their anointed place in history. One was complacency and believing too much they could just show up to that TSC field and throw their sticks down and Morristown would just roll over for them. That didn't happen. The second one, though, was how long North's players would have to wait in the sub-freezing temperatures to play. The first two games of the day both went into overtime, including Shore Regional's overtime tie with Delaware Valley that meant the two teams would share the state Group II championship. It was at the Shore Conference Tournament that both Shore and North played to a 1-1 tie and shared that title.

So what was slated for a 4:30 p.m. start was agonizingly dragging on. And even though temperatures hit 30 degrees, that still wasn't making me feel any warmer. I wound up going back out to the car to keep warm until I knew there was little time left in the next game before North played. At least those girls were going to be out there running around. I wasn't going to be so fortunate.

The next state final got done, I got out of my car and, by then, the sun had disappeared. Now the temperature was 25 degrees and it was complete darkness at 6 p.m. for the final championship of the day. My plan was to watch the first half upstairs in the open press box, then do the second half on the field. Going to the bathroom beforehand was going to be a key factor. So as I'm upstairs standing in the press box feeling like a Popsicle, the game got underway.

North put immediate pressure on Morristown's defense and on goalie Chris Giviskos. One of the two greatest talents I've ever seen on a field hockey field (the other being the great Christie Pearce Rampone at Point Boro in the early 1990s), Bush weaved her way into the Morristown circle and took a shot that Giviskos made a save on. But the ball wasn't cleared out and Ostrowski put a 10-yarder in past the goalie off the rebound to give North a 1-0 lead and send the North faithful in the press box off in a fairly loud cheer just 3:38 into the game.

So much for non-partisanship in the press box. By the way, across the field on the other side, the school was building a bigger and more comfortable press box for the next season. It wasn't available to us media types yet, so this open-air press box was the best anyone could do.

The Colonials were staying in this game as best as they could, but the defense of Gerbino, Gallipoli, Bendel and Saponara, all seniors playing their final game, was making things very difficult for any offensive surges. Exactly 14 minutes after Ostrowski's goal, the Mariners added on to the lead.

Bush took a feed from fellow senior teammate Vicki Trotman and put an 8-yarder past Giviskos to make it 2-0. It was textbook pass-and-shoot for the pair who looked like they had done it all season long. It was Bush's 35th goal of the season and the Ohio State-bound star broke the county record for goals in a season first set by Toms River South's Chris Forrester in 1984.

But the celebration of the second goal was short-lived. Just two minutes after Bush scored, Morristown answered back when Sherry Smith delivered a penalty corner pass and Julie Jacobus rocketed a shot past Kurtyka at the 19:19 mark.

North made it out of the rest of the first half alive holding a 2-1 lead. Suddenly, this state championship that I had them winning in my head going into TSC hours earlier wasn't going to be as easy to grasp as I thought.

I left the comforts (whatever comforts there were) of that press box and headed down to the field. I covered dozens of field hockey matches over the years at ground level, so this was nothing different other than the turf was pure carpet, something I had never experienced before. The balls took off like jet propellers with one good solid hit. I wasn't sure how much more offense North had in it on this cold night, so it was up to that stellar defense to protect the lead.

North's defense had given up just eight goals in 24 games. I believe the defense had it in them for one more solid, 30-minute effort. And with 10 minutes left, Morristown was starting to feel a bit frisky, getting closer and closer to Kurtyka. But each time it looked like the Colonials were going to have something, a stick from either Gerbino or Gallipoli or Bendel or Saponara or, in the end, Ostrowski, was there to knock that chance away. And it was dicey back there -- one small mistake like a stick obstruction in the circle would constitute a penalty corner chance and the Colonials had gotten their goal on a penalty corner on this cold night.

Morristown could never get a good shot the rest of the night. Whatever threats it did have would go over the end line and give North the ball. The clock stopped on the scoreboard as usual with two minutes left, meaning the timekeeper had to get up from her spot at the table to follow the head official up and down the field counting down every 15 seconds how much time there was left. Then it got to 10. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

The whistle sounded. The screaming began.

The North second state title of the weekend was official.

Coach Becky Miller had been the Mariners' mentor for 18 years and was stopped from a state title in 1980 in the Group IV final. Now she, assistant coach Debbie Dietrich and the Mariner players were enjoying this once-in-a-lifetime moment. The smiles were wider than a river as they got a chance to collect that state title. And at that point, all I cared about was making sure my tape recorder was working. Thankfully, it did. I talked with coach Miller, Bush and Saponara. They talked about that "dream of getting to the mountain top," the same way Martin Luther King Jr. did a generation earlier. I ended up using that as the lead to the story I was about to write a couple of hours later.

Saponara, who I would do a feature story on 10 1/2 years later when she worked at ESPN as a football producer, was just elated beyond all elation.

"Everyone is friends," Saponara started. "Of course, we all have our conflicts here and there, but we all pull together and we did it."

Yes they did. They did do it.

I turned the tape recorder off and headed back to the car. It wasn't until I got to the Great Adventure exit on I-195 when I finally and completely thawed out. Tom had gotten back to the office, developed his pictures, dropped those black-and-white bad boys off on our assistant sports editor, Greg, and had left.

I got in about 35 minutes after Tom had gotten back and banged out the story in less than an hour (it's harder to type a story when you're relying on a tape recorder giving you that exact quote you are looking for and you're hitting the 'forward' and 'rewind' buttons a lot). I can still see the picture of North's winning moment on the very front page of the newspaper as Kurtyka and coach Miller held up the state championship trophy. It still is emblazoned in my mind.

That whole weekend is still emblazoned in my mind. And here's the coincidence of all coincidences. My two top athletes in their respective sports -- Ms. Rogers and Ms. Bush -- shared another thing in common that I found out weeks later when I had to interview them individually.

The same exact birthday! Both young ladies were born on February 25, 1970.

Two state championships. The same school. Two female programs. The two top female athletes in their team's sports who win state titles have the same exact birthday.

Amazing. Suddenly, I forgot it was that brutally cold that weekend.

OK, maybe not so much the latter. I think a chill just went through me again.

When your first time on a golf course is far memorable

Growing up, golf was a fascination of mine. The problem, though, was that I am left-handed. And if you ever saw me swing a golf club right-handed, you thought I really had a handicap.

But affording a set of clubs was a whole different subject. They are fairly expensive and when you're out on your own for the most part and you are paying bills far before indulging in things you want to buy and enjoy, you just grin and bear it knowing that someday, you might have enough money to get your own clubs.

And so through the 1990s, I simply was biding my time, first living in my native New Jersey, then in the Florida Keys. It was in the summer of 2000 when I drove up to New Jersey on vacation to see my folks. The girlfriend I was living with had just started with her new job and she didn't want to just jump into a vacation, so she stayed back while I visited. In early August, I drove up that way and spent nearly two weeks in Jersey, but I found out from my cousin Robin that my uncle Sam's golf clubs were just sitting in a closet and she was looking to get rid of them. She had heard I was looking for clubs.

The catch -- they were left-handed! My uncle had passed away in 1996, so they hadn't really seen the light of day since. I made a vow on the Friday before I came back into work in August 2000 that I would stop by her house in Jupiter on my way home and pick the clubs up. Now keep in mind, these were much older clubs. If you put these bad boys up against the current crop of clubs, they'd be choked to death. I didn't care if they were a few decades old -- these were now my clubs. And I gladly accepted the gift from Robin.

The problem, though, was this: Outside of the Key West Golf Club, there weren't many golf clubs to play on and KWGC was a bit on the expensive side. So again, even though I had these clubs, I had to wait my turn.

During the fall of 2000, I got to escape to the mainland a few times for high school football games involving all three of our county teams, Key West, Marathon and Coral Shores. But none of those trips were going to involve playing golf at all. It was a matter of time logistics.

So when November 2000 came around, I knew we had two schools going into the state tournament with Key West and Marathon qualifying in the 3A and 1A classifications, respectively. Marathon was hosting Miami Country Day school in the first round, so I knew the guy working at the Marathon bureau of the weekly paper that was part of our company at the Key West Citizen was going to do the game. That was a given. Unlike Marathon, though, Key West did not win its district title, which meant in its region, the Conchs were going to be a wild card. They were 7-3 for the season and finished third in District 16-3A behind state power Glades Central of Belle Glade and Cardinal Gibbons of Fort Lauderdale. And so I was expecting the inevitable to take place.

And it did -- the Conchs were going to open up the state 3A tournament in the beautiful town of Rockledge against the mighty Raiders, who would be the threat to Glades Central's dynasty in this particular year's playoffs.

This particular week was about preparation. I had done a preview of Key West's team and talking to coach Greg Kremer, who was proud of his guys and was looking for a long run in the state tournament. Then I wound up talking with Rockledge coach Chuck Wood, who was building a pretty darned good football team in the middle of Brevard County. And to culminate all the previews, I had made a deal with my assistant at the time. I told him I would give him Saturday off if he would work for me on Thursday night.

The game was Friday night, November 17, 2000, and I didn't want to just take a seven-hour trip to Brevard County, only to turn around and come home that night. That would be beyond ridiculous. He agreed to work for me on that Thursday and was actually pretty relieved he didn't have to work Friday and Saturday.

So after taking care of some odds and ends at both work and around the apartment, I kissed my girlfriend goodbye in the late afternoon after she got home from work and I grabbed my golf clubs. I think I had found a time to actually play. To get from Key West to Florida City takes two hours and 50 minutes. If you're getting there a lot quicker, people will suspect that the cops are not out on the Overseas Highway. It was 8 p.m. and I jumped on Florida's Parkway until I got into Fort Lauderdale, where I switched up on an exit there, drove down a bit, and got on the entrance way onto I-95 on Commercial Boulevard. By the time I finally reached Exit 191 for Wickham Road. It was about 11:45 p.m. and believe me, I was already tired from the nearly seven hours of driving I had done. So the only thing left to do was drive to the hotel I was staying at -- the Days Inn on Satellite Beach on A1A, located across the street from the ocean.

I arrived at my hotel room at around 12:10 in the morning. I finally checked in and put my stuff down and five minutes later, I was back in the car and heading back toward McLarty Stadium where the game that night would be played. I had gotten good directions so off I went until I got to the stadium. It was a nice-looking stadium and the lights were very much on. Why? Because the "guests" were having a two-hour practice that night before they headed to their hotel rooms to sleep and get ready for the big matchup.

I had told coach Kremer that I would try to make the practice and watch the team work out. Well I did get there and they were going at it ... yes, even at midnight. Kremer then calls me over to him and says, "You want to see the best part of being here?" "OK."

"They went out of their way to make our quarterback feel special."

On the lower parts of the field, the words "The Rock," as in the nickname for Rockledge, were drawn out beautifully. Kremer's quarterback was James Osborne -- whose nickname was "Rock." I can still remember chuckling over that reference. I can still remember Kremer and defensive coordinator (and school athletic director) Pat Freeman confident about how they felt the team would do later that night. I left McLarty Stadium around 1:15 in the morning and headed back to the hotel room to retire for the night.

By 11:15 a.m., I had checked out of the room and had a lot of time on my hands. That's when I knew I was going to finally have that time to take up a sport I so wanted to, but waited just after my 34th birthday to do.

This was a good day to go golfing. It was bright sunshine and temperatures were in the upper 70s. I headed toward the local K-Mart to buy some golf clubs since I had none. Then somehow managed to find my way to the golf course that I was intrigued about playing. It was Baytree National in Viera, a suburb of Melbourne and not far from where my game was that night. It was just after 1 p.m. and to be honest, I had no idea how long it would take me to play this "fascination."

I paid the $40 to go out for the afternoon, they gave me a cart and I was on my way.

No, I will not go ad nauseum on each and every hole of this golf course. Let's just say for a first-time player, every hole was a challenge. I'd hit a good shot, then follow it up with a bad one, then another bad one. And let's just say almost every hole ended in a "snowman." Except that's not how I score. I literally count every last shot.

Good thing this was a Friday and no one was really behind me. I nearly lost all my golf balls that day. I compensated by finding some lost ones while searching out my ball in the woods of this course. To most people, this round would be a nightmare. To me, I didn't really care -- it was my first time playing and I wasn't holding anyone up and no one was certainly holding me up. I went out alone and came in alone.

It took me over 4 hours to play all 18 holes on the approximately 7,250-yard course. Some holes took longer than others, I do admit, but ultimately, I finished the course before it got completely dark by about 5:30. I got back into the clubhouse and showered and got out before 6 p.m.

For the record, I shot a 183. That was my first-ever time on a golf course and I survived it ... with my uncle's older clubs. But I had fun. I didn't lose that perspective. I knew at the end of the day that I wanted to play again. It would just take me some more time to find the right occasion to do it.

I jumped back into my car and headed over to the Perkins Restaurant located on Wickham Road near Murrell Road, where I was about to go back north on again to get to McLarty Stadium. I remember having breakfast for dinner that night and getting out of there by 6:45 p.m. for the 7:30 start.

The parking lot was already packed. I found my way into the stadium as easily as I did the night before when there was nobody there except the Key West High football team practicing. I weaved my way through the crowd to get to my normal perch for the game in the press box on the Rockledge side of the field. And there was quite a bit stirring for the game with lots of Rockledge supporters and the one writer who was there from Florida Today. 

I can still remember Rockledge coming out onto the field for the game against the Conchs. If coaches Kremer and Freeman were feeling confident the night before, I was not so sure they would feel that way before game time. Rockledge center Adam Wallace, a senior, was 6-foot-4 and 278 pounds. And Clifton Nichols, a junior two-way lineman, was 6-3, 307 pounds. Another lineman, senior Chris Stone, was 6-3 and 278 pounds.


Key West had a lineman named Aaron Barker, a sophomore who was 6-7 and 285, and senior Chaz Jimenez was 6-1 and 285, but that was it. I was hoping speed may rule the day in the Conchs' favor.

That wasn't going to be the case, though. Not by a longshot. Rockledge had too many stud skill players and were slowly and methodically whipping up on the Conchs. By the time halftime came, it was 31-0. The competitive phase of this state tournament matchup was over. And once Rockledge scored two more touchdowns, the rest of the game was played with a running clock.

Rockledge won the game handily, 45-0. I had seen Rockledge play and just a month before, I had seen Glades Central beat up on Key West in Belle Glade, 33-0. I was convinced Rockledge was the better team and it was only inevitable the two teams would hook up for the region championship in two weeks from then (they did and in the final, it was Glades Central which won the game, 20-17).

I got my interviews and was on my way back when I ran into Osborne, who had gone through the wringer in this one. He and some other players were more concerned about getting home and getting to basketball practice for coach Bill Butler the next morning.

Yes, the next morning. The Conchs were soon to open up their basketball season and some of the football players were missing out on practice. Key West was not going to get home from this game until 5:30 in the morning, but yet, their players were going to make it to an 8 a.m. practice. That, I thought, was the ultimate in devotion for a program.

Since I had made a commitment to my assistant to work by my lonesome on Saturday and give him the day off, I started heading back to the Keys around 10:30 that night. Then on some high school scoreboard show on the radio, I heard the score of the Rockledge-Key West game and the one announcer replying, "I'm pretty sure that wasn't worth the long ride."

Ouch!

I stopped in Fort Pierce off of I-95 and made a phone call to Marathon High coach Jerry Jones. I told him I would do so, and so it was at about 11:40 p.m. I reached him to find out his team had beaten Miami Country Day and was moving on to the next round of the playoffs.

I had something to look forward to the next couple of weeks.

I got back onto I-95 to an exit that would ultimately hook me up with Florida's Turnpike into Florida City, through the 18-mile stretch below that and into the Keys. By the time I got back into Key West and my apartment, it was close to 6 in the morning.

Good thing I didn't have coach Butler's basketball practice in a few hours. I woke up in an empty bed by around noon since my girlfriend woke up early and had some errands to run. I ultimately showed up at the office by 2:30 p.m. and wrote my game story and put the sports section out by my lonesome that day and night.

On the 10th anniversary of my first time playing golf, November 17, 2010, I took that Wednesday off from work and headed south from my home base now in Palatka. And yes, I played that same challenging course at Baytree, a much more "seasoned" golfer than I was that day 10 years earlier. I caught a deal in which I played the course for only $27 that day. And it was still challenging as hell and yes, I lost balls left and right, but it only took me three-plus hours to play this time and I improve by a whole 34 strokes ... I shot a 149.

That was like a celebration to me. And I did by meeting my ex-girlfriend, who I dated between 2008-10 and had broken up with only four months earlier, and her little boy that evening for dinner at Sonny's in Titusville. We had a good time -- little did I know it would be the very last time I would ever see her in person since she passed away in June 2011.

Baytree National, a course designed by the great Gary Player, will always have a place in my heart, even as difficult a course as it is. It was so enjoyable that I even forgot I had a football game to cover that night for a few hours.

Come to think of it, the golf game was far more memorable than the details of that blowout of a playoff game.

The misquote that almost ended my career

'Twas the third month of covering high school football in my first fall at the Ocean County Observer and the assignments, let's just say, were sometimes good (I got to see Brick High School three times) and sometimes bad (I saw Manchester enough to want to commit myself to therapy they were so bad).

In other words, I couldn't complain, even if the assignments sent me far away from Ocean County at times (East Brunswick, Edison, Rumson, Manalapan, West Long Branch, Holmdel). And if it wasn't to those exotic places up north from where I resided, it was to the southern end of Ocean County I would go ... Exit 58 on the Garden State Parkway, aka Tuckerton.

And so on Saturday, November 10, 1984, that's exactly where my boss sent me to cover my next football game. It was nearing the end of the season. As a matter of fact, it was the next-to-last game of the year with only the "traditional" Thanksgiving Day games left. Pinelands Regional High aka the school located off of Exit 58 on the GSP, seemed like a trip to upper Monmouth County or lower Middlesex County. You just kept driving and driving until you finally got to your destination.

I left just after 11:30 in the morning to head to the Parkway, down to Exit 58, then onto Route 539 and  Nugentown Road until getting to Pinelands Regional High School. The first thing that struck me in the first-ever visit I made to the school was that the parking lot was pretty big -- and the school looked pretty new, opened for business in 1981 for the first time. But then I looked in the distance ... the football field seemed like an eternal walk away.

But it was there and once I got to the gate and showed my press pass and got a program (oh how I miss going to high school football games and collecting a program with a copy of both teams' rosters in them), I made my way to the Pinelands side of the field, up into the stands and toward a pretty spacious and open press box. It was not being occupied by any adults on this sunny afternoon.

Yes, this space was run by the students, one was doing the scoreboard, one was doing the public address system. Now I don't know if the principal or athletic director Dick Lawrence had this in mind, but the kids who were doing the work were very efficient. And the P.A. kid, whose name I never asked but he was certainly friendly enough and maybe a year or two younger than I was, was helpful. And he was good at his craft.

Pinelands, dressed in mostly green and some gold, came out onto the field with head coach Bob Gillece. At the other end was Manchester in their light blue uniforms. By now, this was about the third time I had seen the Hawks play football for first-year coach Tom Faulkner and by now, I was pretty convinced they might not win another game this year as they came in with a 1-6 record, one win less than Pinelands at 2-5.

If two teams were ever meant to be on the same football field with one another, it would be these two. In the case of Manchester, the Hawks' biggest problem was scoring, plain and simple. For four stright games, they had been shut out. If they had a free pass to go to the end zone, they still wouldn't find it. It was that bad.

And the two teams were moving the ball with neither team having any luck against the other. Then Pinelands got the break it needed when a Phil Patricco punt was short and the Wildcats started at the Hawks' 30. A procedure call pushed them back to the 35, but from there, it was a 13-yard Lester Peschko run, followed by a 9-yard bootleg by quarterback Todd Lawrence, the athletic director's son, for a first down at the 13, then two plays later, Lawrence hit receiver Pat Anthony with a bullet right between the numbers. Zing! Right in there. And just like that, Pinelands had a 6-0 lead. But Patricco blocked the extra-point kick.

This would prove to be pretty important in the end, though with the inept offense the Hawks were running for nearly half a season, a 6-0 lead seemed safe for the Wildcats.

I can never forget the efficiency of how well the two younger kids were running the scoreboard and the PA while chatting with friends who would come in and out of the press box. Compared to them, the timekeeper and my almost 18-year-old self had to be over the hill. But it was an enjoyable time.

At the end of three quarters, a 6-0 lead still seemed safe to the Wildcat fans. The makeup of this Manchester team was very young. Quarterback Tony Lubischer was only a raw sophomore, but you can see good things taking place with him.

For now, though, the Hawks were not going anywhere. The Wildcats' defense stiffened each and every time. And it was becoming frustrating to watch the Hawks' offense sputter time and time again. It got so bad that I was wondering if they were going to score another point this season.

And I was believing that I had a 6-0 game to write about when I got back to Toms River. Pinelands got the ball back with just under seven minutes left and got a couple of first downs. They got the ball into Manchester territory, but were slowed down ... again. They were faced with a fourth and 2 at the Manchester 42. This may have been the time to bring the punter in to pin the sputtering Hawks deep.

But Gillece was feeling lucky. He called a timeout and then sent Lawrence back to the huddle to give his teammates the play. They went up to the line.

Remember, they needed two yards, not one.

As Lawrence got the handoff, I'm thinking, "He's not going to make it." Something inside of me said he was going to come up short in this instance. Sure as anything, Lawrence hands off to running back Dave Cilantro, a sophomore, to get the yards. There's no push from the Wildcats offensive line. Cilantro gets taken down and I look across the field at the yard marker. Then I look back at the ball on the field. The chain gang gets called upon. I knew he was short. Sure as the marker got put down with the ball fairly tucked behind the yard marker half a yard short my beliefs became true.

They should've punted the ball away! What was the coach thinking?!

The young dudes up with me in the press box were as equally stunned. Even if the punter punts the ball into the end zone, Manchester is still taking the ball from its 20. The Hawks had nine first downs up until this point, but they couldn't sustain a drive all afternoon. Now giving them the ball at their own 41 felt like encouragement.

Except Lubischer had thrown an incomplete pass and two runs totaled minus-2 yards. It was now fourth and 12 from their own 39 and the time was ticking down to under three minutes left. Everyone at the field knew the play was going to be a pass. So as Lubischer dropped back again to find his target, he looked one way, then another. He found receiver John Arvanitis and hit him perfectly. By the time the Wildcats put him to the turf, the Hawks had a first down at the Pinelands 43 after an 18-yard pass play.

Momentum was slowly building. But Manchester still needed to score a touchdown, and the end zone was feeling like a trip to the other side of the planet. Lubischer and Arvanitis combined for 14 yards on runs for yet another first down at the Pinelands 29. The Hawks were smelling the end zone. However, they got in their own way again with a 5-yard illegal motion call.

So with just under two minutes left, the Hawks looked in a bind. Then they called for a pass play. Lubischer dropped back and had a decent rush come after him. Just as Pinelands defenders reached him, he let his pass go in the direction of tight end Joe Romans. Romans was being covered well by defensive back Adam Boneski. Boneski got a hand on the ball and deflected it.

The deflection, though, popped up into the air. As if a Hollywood script writer needed a scenario falling into his or her lap, Romans grabbed the ball out of the air and scampered the rest of the way for the tying touchdown with 1:43 left in the game.

Now there was this little thing left called the extra-point kick. John Kerns, who obviously had not done much kicking between goal posts the past four weeks, was summoned to do the honor. But as if he didn't miss a beat, he nailed his kick and the ball went through to make it 7-6.

There was elation heard from the other side of the field from the Hawks fans. It was as if a month's worth of frustration had been let loose with one touchdown and extra-point kick. I soaked it in, but after a bit of time, was wondering why I didn't see anyone get ready to kick off for the Hawks. My eyes became afixed to the Manchester sideline. Down on the ground was Kerns. He was holding his arm.

"What is a kicker doing holding his arm?" I thought to myself. Nonetheless, he had to be taken off the field on a stretcher. In a season in which not a whole lot went right for the Hawks, even when something did go right, it had bad circumstances tagged along with it.

Now I had a question to ask Faulkner after the game. I saved it in the back of my head. There was still 103 seconds left to tick off and Pinelands had enough time to do what Manchester just did. They got the ball at their own 23 and moved up the field, picking up three first downs. They had the ball in Manchester territory inside their 40, but time was running out. They got to the 35, however on fourth down, Lawrence's 16th and final pass attempt came up short with 18 seconds left to play.

And it was over. Manchester had survived, ending a 243-minute streak of not scoring in a 7-6 win. All was good on the other side of the field. The Hawks players were happy, even more so they were happy that the guy who was doubting they would score another point this season was there to report about it. They were reservoirs of information on each and every bit about the three hours that had just elapsed on that Pinelands field. They couldn't shut up. It was exhilerating.

But I still had to ask Faulkner, a man in his mid-to-late 50s, what happened to his kicker after he kicked the extra point through. And here's what I thought I heard:

"In the excitement of what happened, I grabbed him to embrace him and accidentally broke his arm."

I never even questioned what I thought I heard form Faulkner because he was in a slightly melancholy mood, even after victory. So I grabbed what I had and headed back to Toms River to write the game story up. Wrote it up, including that quote done in an indirect manner, and got the story done in just over an hour. By 8 p.m., my boss told me to go home. I still had things to do, but he was adamant -- "You're done ... go home!'

OK, I'm not arguing. By the time I rolled back home, I walk in and hear, "Sur-priiiiiiiiiiise!" Apparently, my mother had planned a surprise 18th birthday party for me three days before my actual birthday and some of my friends were there. I liked the gesture even though I was never a huge fan of surprise parties and still am not to this day.

The next day, I had to head to Asbury Park to cover the Jersey Shore Marathon on what was a dreary, gloomy, yucky, rainy Sunday. Wrote my story when I got in and left to go home.

Now it is Monday, November 12. I had gone to school that afternoon at Ocean County College, came home, and then by 6:30 p.m., went into work at the Observer, like I normally did.

I go in and immediately, I'm getting funny looks from my co-workers.

"You may have a problem," I can still hear fellow writer Chris Christopher tell me.

"Oh? What problem?"

"Did the coach really break the kid's arm?"

"That's what he said to me." I wasn't blinking at that moment.

Then, the assistant sports editor, a guy I had no love for practically from the day I met him four months earlier, asks me what happened and tags a sarcastic, "Were you over at the concession stand getting a hot dog?" for which I defiantly answered, "No!" ("No, asshole!" was not quite in my vocabulary at this particular time.) I explained for the third time in that half hour what happened. By this point, he says I should call the coach up and get a clarification as to what happened and that I should write a correction.

Now all I'm thinking is that this might be the last day of my sportswriting career just 127 days into it. How can I be so stupid?! I've already brought shame to the profession, to my co-workers and to the family name. I am certainly not making it out of this building without turning in whatever it was I had possession of that night.

So I called up coach Faulkner and he answered the phone. We started chatting.

"Did I really misquote you, sir?"

"I think you did."

"My apologies. I didn't mean any harm. I thought I heard you say you had accidentally broken your kicker's arm."

What he explained made a heck of a lot more sense than what I both heard and wrote.

"When he came off the field, he was hugged by his teammates and somewhere in the pile, they accidentally broke his arm," he said.

"Wow," was what I answered back on the phone. "Sounds like a freaky thing."

"Yeah," coach Faulkner said back. "I've been coaching a long time and never seen anything like that before."

Here the coach was supposed to enjoy what was his team's second triumph of the year, and I made it miserable. But all the while, he never raised his voice to me, he never berated me or denegrated what I wrote. He said his peace, explained what happened and when I apologized for the confusion, it was as if nothing happened.

That man made me feel better after I certainly hit that low point in my very young career. I wrote the correction and it appeared in the paper the next day. All was well again. I got to cover Manchester's last football game at home against Monsignor Donovan on Thanksgiving Day. It was a Donovan win. Manchester finished the year at 2-7. Right after the season, Faulkner, who at one time was the head football coach in the 1970s at Jackson Memorial High School, stepped down, never to be a head coach again. I never again saw or heard from him.

A man named Bob Hunt took over the next year and the Hawks improved as they gained more experience as a team.

To this day, I don't take any quote for granted. If there is something that even sounds remotely odd, I ask the person just so I make sure I heard what he or she said.

Because regardless of whether the team won or not, no one wants to feel terrible about something you wrote -- especially when you're wrongfully misquoted.

The most bizarre quarter of football ever witnessed

When the 2007 high school football season started in Putnam County in late August, I was excited.

The team that I would see most of the season was expected to have a big year. Crescent City had moved a number of its players up from an unbeaten junior varsity team and a good amount of the talent that was on the 3-6 team in 2006 was back. I had, in my opinion, the best of the Putnam County football world.

And the Raiders jumped out to a strong start in their season, so yes, I couldn't wait to see more of the team as they were expected to blow through their district and regular-season opponents without much challenge.

Well, somewhere in late September, all that changed. Our Interlachen High correspondent was having personal difficulties in some capacity, I can't honestly remember, and he was not able to cover the games the rest of the season. So that left me and my boss in a bind. How were we going to handle the rest of the season?

Fortunately, we had a news writer that just came into the fold a month or two earlier and he lived in Volusia County. He had done some sports writing, so my boss thought, "Heck, let's get him to do the home games at Crescent City and we'll figure out what to do with the team when it goes on the road."

So it was settled. He all of a sudden got to see the best team in the county play football.

And I got shipped to see the worst team in the county.

Not just the worst team in the county for 2007. Maybe the worst team ever. Nope, let me amend that -- maybe the worst team I've ever covered, period.

To tell this story about the 2007 Interlachen High football team, I have to start with the end of the 2006 season when the Rams had a good year -- for Interlachen High standards, that is. The team went 4-6 and finished the year on an up note with a victory at Branford High School.

The team won 11 games between 2003-06, which if you compare it to the period between 1998-2002 when the Rams went a combined 1-49, that's like a dynasty. They were not good, but for the talent level they had, a 4-6 record was sensational. And the key to this was their head coach, a jovial but no-nonsense guy named Bobby Humphries, who is one of the best people you will ever meet. Not only does he know his stuff, but he's pretty damn funny, too. He was slowly turning this program around after being a laughingstock at one point.

Unfortunately, he wasn't turning the program around fast enough. Less than two weeks after that victory in the finale against Branford, the school principal fired him as head coach. Eleven wins in four seasons, which in Interlachen standards puts them on the same level as say, Lakeland or St. Thomas Aquinas, was not good enough.

At the time, I said it was one of the worst decisions ever made by an administrator. I've had to change my opinion on that since -- it is the worst decision ever made by a school administrator. I'll cut to the chase -- between 2007-09, the Rams won exactly one football game. And outside of a 6-4 2010 season in which one of those wins was a forfeit triumph because of an ineligible player playing in a game for a team that beat Interlachen, the Rams haven't been very good. As a matter of fact, the Rams have won one game since the 2011 season.

Total that up, that's a record of 8-52 since 2007 and 2-48 not counting that 2010 season when the Rams had the county's player of the year -- a transfer from Palatka High School named Kion Williams. I can still hear their coach at the time, former NFL player and Palatka High standout Willie Offord (now Palatka's coach) telling me in the 2011 preview how the team was determined to prove they weren't all about Kion Williams that season ... and then they went on to an inevitable 0-10 campaign.

Now with half a 2007 season to go, I was going to be:

A) not covering a team with the potential of going 10-0 in the regular season.

B) covering a team that had a hard time stopping people let alone scoring.

C) f*cking miserable.

The new guy in charge at Interlachen High was a really good guy named Mike Sinor. Now Sinor had been a coach at a couple of other places, one being Fernandina Beach High. So this was no Johnny-come-lately taking over the reins at IHS. He had a plan to make things work and improve the team's standing in the area, which I was a proponent for. Honestly, he really, really tried hard to make things better.

There was one problem -- he didn't have the personnel that could run it properly. The makeup of his team was more physical with a dash of speed. He was trying to implement the run-and-shoot offense, which is exciting for fans and writers like myself to watch. However, you need a quarterback that can find his targets and you need the targets to catch the ball. And with practically nobody in the backfield, you need to kinda, sorta get rid of the ball in a hurry since the other team knows what you are going to run.

Now keep in mind, what coach Sinor was running was the run-and-shoot with a running back in the backfield on occasion. And when your running backs you put in the backfield are baby bulls, that whole "speed" thing kind of goes out the window.

This was a recipe for disaster, but I knew they could score some points with that offense.

However, those points were going to come after they had fallen behind by so much because their defense was just flat-out terrible. They couldn't stop me even if I wasn't running downhill. You could drive an 18-wheeler through the Rams' defense.

And so with losses during the season to Jacksonville Providence and Yulee, teams IHS had a chance to win against, they were looking at yet another winless season. The same pattern would happen in each and every game that I got to cover involving the Rams -- the other team would jump out on them, take a huge lead, and then with a running clock, the second team would have to do mop-up against IHS' first team and if IHS scored, that was like a victory.

So as predicted, the Rams were 0-9 going into the finale -- and a Friday, November 9 date with a playoff-bound Lafayette High School from the town of Mayo. I kid you not -- someone named this town Mayo. My bet was on a chef who didn't think "Ketchup, Florida" or "Mustard, Florida" was up to standard.

The Hornets had a young man at quarterback named Chad Hempstead, who had broken numerous career records at Lafayette, most of which were held by the most famous player in program history, former University of Florida quarterback and current Jacksonville University head coach Kerwin Bell. Hempstead could have gone anywhere as a college quarterback, though I don't believe he ever did. He also had an All-State receiver to throw to in Jamaal Reid.

Layafette was 8-1. And with Interlachen at 0-9, this had every look of it as the ugliest football game ever.

So like a good soldier who holds his nose to clean up the carnage that has been stinking for the better part of three or four days, I was off on my ride up US-27 to head to the town of Mayo (hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, ha ha ha). But for this last game, I actually didn't mind. First, I knew what the result of the game was going to be, the only thing left for me to fill in the blanks with were the final score and details. Secondly, I had signed up a month earlier to run in the Hog's Breath 5-kilometer race in Destin, a beautiful town on the Panhandle overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.

So basically -- win-win on this night.

But as the daylight disappeared and the night time came to northern Florida, one thing became apparent -- it was gettin' pretty cold. By the time I arrived at Mayo around 7:10 p.m. for a 7:30 start, my car's temperature gauge read 49 degrees.

And, of course, what was I dressed in -- a light jacket over a sweatshirt and wearing a pair of shorts. You should've seen the looks I was getting from the students as I walked in from the parking lot toward the field, let alone the adults. I found my way upstairs to the press box at Lafayette High and it's pretty darn crowded with lots of supporters of this team.

I told those who wanted to know that I was covering the game for the Palatka Daily News and since I don't believe they knew where Palatka was, I was sensing well before kickoff they were feeling sorry for me. I couldn't blame them, either, since I knew what the outcome of this game was well before the opening kickoff.

I also think they were amused by the fact that I was wearing shorts on a night where temperatures were dipping into the low 40s, maybe beyond that. I call it "Jersey Tough." As I explain from time to time, northern Floridians know the temperatures can drop toward freezing, but only northerners who live in northern Florida like myself can stick it out and handle the cold without much complaint.

Basically, I knew what to expect -- a lot of "polite" trash-talking from the fans of the local team. OK, so that being said, the kickoff takes place just around 7:34 p.m.

In the first 105 seconds of the game, the Hornets pounced on a fumble by quarterback David Sinor, the coach's son, and Hempstead found Reid for a 24-yard scoring pass. Blade Herring's extra-point kick made it 7-0.

Well maybe the second drive will go better! David Sinor went back to pass and got pressured. He threw the ball into Reid's arms. From their own 33, the Hornets drove 67 yards on six plays as Hempstead was slinging the ball to open targets. He capped the drive with a handoff to running back Eric McIntyre, who barreled in from 10 yards out.

OK, so maybe the third drive will be the charm! Nope. The Rams were forced to punt and when Quell Brown got tackled on a punt attempt because the offensive line didn't do a very good job blocking up front, the Hornets were really set up for business at the Interlachen 5-yard line. Hempstead hit Jonathan Anderson with a 5-yard scoring strike and the end of the first quarter came with the Hornets holding a 21-0 lead.

Yeah, this game was already over. But the second quarter provided more memories in a high school football coverage lifetime than I could ever admit.

It was 7:59 p.m. The game was moving along fairly well.

But 45 seconds into the second quarter, Lafayette scored again as Hempstead hit Matt Milton for a 10-yard scoring strike to make it 27-0 after Herring missed the extra-point kick. Then three plays later, Sinor was picked off by Brooke Laminack, who took the ball back to the Rams' 43. Didn't take long from there for the Hornets to once again stuff the ball into the end zone as Hempstead hit Reid in stride for a 26-yard touchdown that made it 33-0.

There was 9:07 left before halftime. By now, the Rams had figured out they weren't going to win this one. So they decided to open up the "book of trick plays." During the season, coach Sinor had his son throw everything at defenses -- from hook-and-ladders to halfback options to anything that can be conceived in the dirt on the sidelines during a blowout. He later said to me that "after awhile, we didn't care about the scoreboard."

So on the next Rams possession, David Sinor threw a pass to sure-handed receiver Eric Andreasen, who pitched to a trailing Brown for a 28-yard gain total. And the drive culminated when Sinor pitched out to back Tysir Williams, who floated a perfect strike to receiver Romeo Thompson for a 38-yard score to get the Rams on the board at long last. Jamal Leonard burrowed in for the 2-point conversion and it was suddenly 33-8.

And there was still 6:55 to go in an already plodding second quarter. But wait, the best was yet to come.

Unfazed, Lafayette took the ball on its next possession and drove it 58 yards on seven plays and capped the drive with fullback J.D. Richardson powering into the end zone from 13 yards out. Herring's kick made it 40-8 with 4:03 still left to go in the first half. And nearly an hour has ticked by since the second quarter began. And worse, this just happened to be Lafayette's homecoming game! So imagine how the fans sitting in the stands freezing their behinds off were feeling at this point.

Apparently, the Rams didn't care. From their own 40 on the next drive, quarterback Sinor dropped back and hit Andreasen with a 9-yard strike. Within a second, a speeding Brown came in and took Andreasen's lateral. And Lafayette defenders couldn't catch Brown. Touchdown. Jessie Thomas' extra-point kick made it 40-15 with 4:03 left before halftime.

This was a Lafayette team that was about to become 9-1. But if they can't stop trick plays when they have seen them on tape, I definitely wasn't holding out hope for their playoff chances at all. C'mon guys, you can't be this gullible.

Lafayette's answer -- just keep scoring. Thomas squibbed an onside kickoff and Lafayette pounced on the ball. And just like they had all night, the Hornets answered with another score in two plays -- McIntyre, who would finish the night with 179 yards on 11 carries, rumbled 49 yards to the Rams' 3 and then finished it off himself with a run on the next play. Herring's kick made it 47-15.

All this supposedly happened in just 11 seconds. The clock read 3:52 before halftime. And I was starting to get antsy. No, not because it was cold. I wasn't feeling cold. I had a deadline to deal with and I had set myself up to type my story and send it from a Hampton Inn in Perry, which was still 30 miles away.

It's now 9:02 p.m. Yes, the second quarter was insanely taking an hour to play. C'mon guys! Let's move this one along!

Interlachen had moved the ball to its 40, but Sinor went back and found Reid again instead on a sideline pattern. Oops! That's not the kind of interception you want against you when the defender catches the ball and has no one other than the quarterback in between him and the end zone.

An extra-point kick later, it was 54-15. And there was still 2:59 left before halftime. I look at my watch. It's 9:06 p.m. How much longer is this going to take?

So the Rams get the ball back again -- and they're moving the ball into Hornets territory without the help of a trick play! Amazing. However, Sinor tries to find Thompson on a fade toward the end zone. It was Lafayette's Chris Padgett who jumped up to make the catch. He came down with the ball at his own 1-yard line. A bad break for the Rams indeed.

Now the Rams have the Hornets at their own 1. Maybe this might be the moment they make a stand and get the ball back and maybe threaten to score one more touchdown before halftime. Well those thoughts started to disappear when the Rams were detected for an illegal substitution, pushing the ball up to the 6.

Then they totally disappeared. I can still see Hempstead going back in a five-step drop behind the goal line and firing a pass toward the sideline to a streaking Reid. Catching it in strike, Reid was not going to be caught.

Ninety-four yards later, it was 61-15 with 1:15 left before halftime. Hempstead's night was over by halftime. In his final regular-season game, he was 7-of-9 passing for 183 yards and five -- yes, five touchdown passes.

But the Rams got the ball one more time before halftime. Sinor threw to Andreasen out in the flat, but Hornets defenders had it covered and the receiver lost 6 yards on the play, back to his team's 28. Sinor called a timeout with four seconds left. What trick play could the Rams have up their sleeve to end the half? I couldn't even imagine after all I saw in over an hour in the quarter.

So Sinor gives his son the play and goes back to the huddle. They break the huddle to go into the run-and-shoot formation of two receivers on both sides of the line. Whatever this play is better be good.

Sinor goes back to pass and he's being hurried to throw the ball by ferocious Hornets linemen. His smallish frame lets go of a heave toward the middle of the field as he gets buried under them. Two defenders -- Reid and Laminack -- have their eyes fixated on the ball. This is going to be an interception. One of these guys is going to have the ball and the half will mercifully be over.

Reid touches the ball. It tips to Laminack. He can't catch the ball as he tips it. You wouldn't believe what happened next.

Thompson somehow came up with the football! Seriously! Once the ball was secured, he had nothing but green field ahead of him as he raced 72 yards for the touchdown on the final play of the half. I looked at the field to see if there were any yellow flags on the ground. None.

I did something I have never done in my career.

I uncontrollably laughed my ass off. The Lafayette faithful in the press box were probably not too amused, but I really didn't care about their feelings at that particular moment. It was only appropriate that the most bizarre quarter of football that I had ever seen in my career ended with a Hail Mary that was tipped by not one, but two defenders and landed in the arms of the receiver they were trying to cover.

The score at halftime was 61-21, the score of routs at the ends of games, not halftime! The second quarter ended at 9:17 p.m. It took 1 hour and 18 minutes to play those 12 minutes. In other words, it took six and a half minutes to play each minute! And when the dust settled, I had added up the damage in that one quarter alone.

The two teams combined for 61 points and 519 yards -- in the second quarter alone! For a one-sided laugher, it was pretty darned entertaining. But there was already talk at halftime from the Lafayette folks about "breaking the scoreboard" ... or scoring 100 points in this game. No foolin'. They were already talking like it was a done deal.

But I knew far better than those oafs did. Why? Two reasons: First, Lafayette had a bench and the coach wasn't going to risk injury to his main players and he was surely going to give the backups a chance to play. The Rams' defense may have been horrendous, but it wasn't going to give up 39 more points to a second team. And two, even though coach Sinor wanted to play the third quarter in normal fashion and not have a running clock with a 40-point deficit already, he was going to have to deal with the mercy-rule running clock in the fourth quarter anyway unless his team found a way to get the deficit under 35 points.

With the homecoming ceremonies over and kickoff for the second half at 9:40 p.m., the Hornets' coaching staff was right on cue -- they were playing the backups. Offensive lineman Nathan Broughton was put in the backfield and he scored on a 1-yard plunge to make it 68-21 going into the fourth quarter.

Then in what would be David Sinor's final quarter as IHS quarterback, he hit Thompson for a 48-yard strike to finish the scoring with 8:55 left in the game.

At 10:26 p.m., the game ended mercifully. The shivering fans were finally leaving and I had interviews to do with IHS players and coach Sinor, who took the whole game in stride. He was proud of the fact his kids never quit, adding, "We scored more points on their defense than any team did this season. That team shut out three others teams, held three others to one touchdown and three other teams got two touchdowns. To score four touchdowns against that team, I felt we did very well."

OK. If he said so. Of course, stopping the other team might have helped, too. And I'm pretty sure the Hornets saw more trick plays on them than they did the entire season. It was about 10:40 and I needed to get to Perry to start typing a story.

Thirty miles on mostly desolate US-27 can feel like the loneliest ride in the world. And believe me, no one was happier to see the town of Perry more than I did by about 11:15 p.m. I had already made plans with the hotel management at the Hampton Inn on US-19/98 that I needed their Wi-Fi to do my story on my laptop, which they were more than happy to accommodate me.

But I was under the gun by now. The boxscore of this game took over a half hour to do! In spite of all the interceptions he threw and his 10-for-23 performance, young Sinor threw for 267 yards. Thompson caught three passes for 158 yards. Overall, Interlachen finished the night with 343 yards on offense, 312 in the air. But Lafayette had 472 yards of offense. The teams had combined for a mind-boggling 815 yards of offense with 519 of those yards in the second quarter! Again, just an insane 12 minutes that stretched out over 78.

I sent the agate just after midnight. Describing this game was a totally different story. So putting fingers to laptop keys, I went at it. It took 30 minutes to craft this so-called "masterpiece," but it got done. And by 12:40 a.m., I had sent the story to my boss. I had to wait now. He was working along with our night news editor, who would help out with doing the scoreboard page I normally do on Football Friday nights if I was out of the office and at a game. I sure miss him doing that for me these days.

It was almost 1 a.m. My cell phone rings. My boss says we were good to go. I didn't want to spend too much time telling him about this game, though he had heard my reports during the game via cell phone conversation and knew it was just a wild evening -- and second quarter.

By 1:15 a.m., I was out the Hampton Inn door and on my way to Destin. But the ride to Destin isn't exactly around the corner -- even from where I was. And I was slowly fading as the ride to Exit 70 on I-10 was becoming nauseatingly boring. Never being in this part of the state before, I simply guessed my way into Destin and then finally found the hotel at 5:45 a.m. EDT -- four and a half hours later (I had made a stop at McDonald's along the way and had driven on US-27 into Tallahassee, then weaved my way on US-90 until getting onto I-10, so it took some time).

As I rolled up into the parking lot at the Motel 6 on US-98, all I cared about was just getting into my room and falling asleep. But now I was going to have a new obstacle in my way. The overnight manager was in the middle of doing the audit at 5 a.m. (that's what time it was in the Central Time Zone then). So she couldn't check me in for another 45 minutes.

Now I'm angry. I had a race to run at 3 p.m. CDT on November 10. As I said in a much quieter tone than John McEnroe once said, "You can not be serious." She was, but she made me a deal -- if I came back at 5:45 a.m., just over 50 minutes time, I not only could get my room, but I could get it for free.

Yes, I always have admired that word -- free! So happy, but tired, I agreed to come back in 50 minutes. I schlepped over to the Waffle House to have some carbs for breakfast, even though the race was not for another nine hours or so. I thanked the waitress for allowing me to hang out until I got back down the road to the Motel 6 where at that point, the overnight manager kept her word and I got in to my room about 5 minutes later, turned on the television and fell asleep with it on at just around 6:20 a.m.

I woke up at around 12:30 p.m., two and a half hours before the race. By this point, the only thing I care about eating is a couple of bananas. I got to the race about three blocks from the hotel, got my racing stuff, went back to the hotel, pinned my number for the race to my shirt, headed back and at just after 3 p.m., I was racing. I finished in 25 minutes and 20 seconds, which I was very proud of since it was one of the fastest races I ever did for 5 kilometers.

By about 5 p.m. that afternoon, I finally could relax. I spent one more night (for the $40 rate) at the hotel and left Sunday afternoon to go back to Palatka after what was my "birthday weekend." But what memories I took from the previous two days.

Five days later, the same principal who had fired Humphries then fired Sinor, who never was allowed to have a second season to prove his offense could work with better personnel.

Yes, the Humphries dismissal is still the worst ... firing ... ever.

The 2007 season was a lost one for Interlachen's football team at 0-10 as the Rams were outscored an unfathomable 488-110. But the last game, for as excruciatingly long and bizarre as that second quarter was, had one other benefit for myself -- the story I wrote took second place in its division for "General Excellence in Sports Writing" for the Florida Press Club.

I made lemonade. Or chicken salad. You can use whatever analogy there is to use.

The 2007 season ended with Crescent City going 10-0 in the regular season as I thought it would, but the Raiders lost in the first game of the state tournament to pesky Clearwater Central Catholic, 23-0.

But my boss got to cover that game. I didn't. My season was over.

It ended in an exciting fashion -- just as it started.