Churchball: The Final Year?

Another season of churchball has come and gone. Churchball is the annual event of awesomeness that brings joy to the cold and drab winter. I’ve been playing in the annual church leagues since I was 12. I may be retiring after this past season.

I remember my first experience playing churchball. My team has never been dominant, but I remember busting out for almost 20 points (at least that is how I remember it in my brain) back in the deacon leagues.

Once I turned 14, I was able to play in the highly competitive church leagues that were composed of 14-17 year olds. Each season after I would get cut from the high school team, the church leagues offered a bit of an escape from the harsh reality of how good I really wasn’t.

One of my happiest basketball memories was hitting a game-tying three pointer to send a game into overtime back when I was 16.

During my college years, churchball was transformed into intramural basketball at BYU (since churchball wasn’t offered). I remember the excitement of coming back to school after Christmas break to sign up a team to compete from January until March.

My freshman team, I put together a sweet team that actually made it to the Final Four. The irony was that the team was so good, that I eventually ended up riding the pine, even though I was the one that hand-picked the team. After that incredibly awkward experience, I made sure to pick a small enough team that I would get to play as much I wanted to, but those teams were never any good.

Fortunately after my college years, my singles stake at the University of Utah still participates in the annual rite of churchball, so once again I had something to look forward to after Christmas. We had some good teams these past five years, but we always seemed to choke like the Utah Jazz in the playoffs.

In 2009, our team was so bad! We lost every single regular season game and finished like 0-8, including two games where we lost as the opponent hit a buzzer-beater to win the game.

We entered the tournament in last place as the No. 9 seeded team. We were able to have a play-in game last week with the winner facing the No. 1 team in the stake if we won.

Needless to say, we finally won a game, and I was able to sink my first three-pointer of the season as the time expired at the end of the third period. Later that night, we faced the top-seeded team and we actually were able to have a lead after three quarters. In the final period, the better team won, but they were the worst bunch of jerks I had seen all season. They treated us with such disrespect (in their defense, they had beat us by 30 the first time we played them) and were talking trash even though they were losing most of the game.

In the end, we didn’t finish the game strong and ended up losing as they caught fire in the 4th quarter. It felt good to see my team finally play up to our potential in the final night of the season.

It’s been a good run, but with my 30th birthday approaching, I’m soon going to join the old man leagues, and that’s not going to be pretty.