RICK NOLAND GOES TO PRISON --- AS A BASKETBALL REF

by Rick Noland

Originally published in the CHRONICLE TELEGRAM, April 5, 2011

I’ve watched “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Escape from Alcatraz” and “The Longest Yard” on television. That’s about it as far as prison experiences go.

Now my adrenaline-rushed body, filled with butterflies, is leaving my cozy, comfortable condominium in Medina, getting into my car and, 25 minutes later, making a left-hand turn off state Route 83 and into the Grafton Correctional Institution.

My assignment: Referee a basketball game between a prison team and a visiting squad put together by former Medina County resident Jeff Andrews, who now works for Rock of Ages Prison Ministries.

My pay: $25 -- and a memory that, I hope, will last a long and healthy lifetime.

I am told to get there at 5:45 p.m., which will afford me time to clear security prior to the 6:15 tipoff. One of those people who feels late if I’m not at least a half-hour early, I arrive at 5.

Now, I have driven past the Grafton Correctional Institution several times a week over the past two years en route to Elyria, where The Gazette’s sister paper, The Chronicle-Telegram, is located. Often, I’m with fellow sportswriter Albert Grindle, whose noisy 1972 Buick Riviera usually draws a number of waves from inmates walking in the exercise yard closest to Route 83.

But this is the first time I’ve driven “in” to the facility. Immediately, I am struck by just how immense the place is. (A later check of Grafton’s website informs me it is 1,782 acres and contains approximately 1,500 inmates, virtually all of them classified as low and medium level.)

Since my only directions are “turn left off 83,” I’m not exactly sure where I should be going, so I follow -- and follow and follow -- the road all the way back to the visitor parking lot. Forty-five minutes early, I sit in my car and wait -- and wait and wait.

Finally, another car pulls in, this one with my two fellow officials. Then another, this one driven by former Medina High boys basketball coach Keith Sooy, who is on hand to watch a handful of his former players on the visiting team.

The first visit to Grafton for all of us, we decide to walk into the nearest building, which indeed is the security check-in point. I immediately head to the restroom, my nerves -- and the 20-ounce Coke I have just finished -- getting the best of me.

The woman at the front desk is extremely cordial, but two problems arise. One, my fellow officials arrive wearing only their black referee shorts, and visitors are not allowed to walk into the facility without long pants. Two, the mild-mannered Sooy, who never received a technical foul in his lengthy coaching career, has medication in his coat pocket.

Fortunately, one of the officials has a pair of work pants and a pair of sweatpants in his car and heads back out into the cold -- the land is flat, and the wind is extremely brisk -- to retrieve them. Sooy leaves his medication at the front desk. I make trip No. 2 to the restroom.

Eventually, we clear security and are joined by Andrews and a number of his incoming players, including Medina High products Dontaie Anthony, Paul Glass, Lonnie Neal and A.J. Hawkins. We are all handed visitor passes -- and good-naturedly (I think) told not to lose them if we want to get back out.

Accompanied by a prison chaplain, we go through one locked door, wait for it to close, then exit through another locked door and into the yard.

There are dozens and dozens of inmates mulling about, wearing blue pants and blue hooded sweatshirts. A number of them tell the incoming players they’re going to lose. Everyone is smiling (I think).

After walking several hundred yards, we enter a building marked “Recreation Area.” The door opens, we walk in and … wow!

There must be 300 inmates crammed into this tiny gym, but it feels like 30,000. The prison team is already warming up. One guy is 6-foot-7 and 270 pounds. Another is 6-9 and can’t weigh 200. Music is blaring. The noise, made louder by an ever-present echo, is almost deafening.

There are three or four rows of bleachers on each end of the court. They are crammed with inmates, and the ones sitting in the front row have their feet are so close to the end line I can only pray I don’t step on someone’s toes.

Opposite the scorer’s table, running the length of the court, is a huge fence, behind which is a workout room filled with guys who could be on the cover of Muscle & Fitness magazine.

In desperate need, I don’t see a bathroom. Trip No. 3 will have to wait.

Starting lineups are introduced by a public address announcer who is so good he should be working at New York City’s famed Rucker Park. Even the officials are introduced. The first gives his name as “Andy O.” The second says “Pat.” Ever the conformist, I quickly settle on “Rick.”

There is a quick prayer, after which two security guards quickly huddle the only three guys in striped shirts and tell us to let them know if anyone, players or fans, says or does anything we find offensive. They’ll handle things, they assure us. (Secretly, I wish I could take these two guys with me for a fourth-grade AAU tournament.)

The game begins -- and the noise increases. My mouth is so dry I feel like I’m in the Sahara Desert. A minute or two in, already dripping with sweat, I blow my whistle for the first time and call a foul on the prison team that results in two free throws. There is not a single word of complaint.

A few moments later, the lightning-quick Anthony, The Gazette’s MVP for boys basketball in 2005, breaks a defender’s ankles and the place goes nuts. The PA announcer, who is functioning more like a play-by-play man, goes Joe Tait circa 1973.

The game, fast-paced and physical but remarkably clean and well-played, is a battle of contrasting styles. The visiting team, smaller but quicker, goes up eight behind solid 3-point shooting. The prison team, bigger and stronger, battles back by pounding the ball inside.

During timeouts, Andy O, Pat and I huddle and agree we are having the time of our lives. We are relishing the experience, but we are also simply officiating a basketball game between two good teams with a great and appreciative crowd on hand.

At one point, Anthony, who finishes with 32 points, tries a crossover move, but I blow the whistle and call him for palming the ball. Instantly, I am the most popular person in the Grafton Correctional Institution, though I privately wonder what the reaction will be if I have to make the same call at the other end.

As the game progresses, we make a few calls that are questioned, some by the visiting team, some by the prison team, but the reactions are no different than at any game at any level. If anything, the players and spectators are more knowledgeable and seem to realize some calls can go either way.

Heading into the final seconds, the visiting team holds a two-point lead, but the prison team is shooting the one-and-one. The first is good, but the second is short.

Glass, an All-Gazette choice in 2006, is eventually fouled and sinks both free throws to put the visitors up three. The prison team, out of timeouts, fails to score and the game ends, the visiting team winning 69-66.

Another brief prayer is held, after which players and coaches from both teams -- and more than a few spectators -- thank Andy O, Pat and I for coming in.

We tell them all we are equally grateful for having had the opportunity.

THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF A ONE-LEGGED MAN IN AN ASS-KICKING CONTEST.

In early August a young guy drove the lane on me and I went up to block his shot.

Well, in truth, my intent was not to block his shot.

Even in my wildest basketball fantasies --- usually played inside my head during the moments before I fall asleep --- I could not believe in my ability to jump high enough or quickly enough to stop him from shooting.

My secret intention was to hurl in his direction a massive wall of old-man fat, so overwhelmingly sweaty and repugnant that the gross consequence of my enormity crashing with a giant slurp against his young athletic body, would repulse him so badly that he would never again think of attacking the bucket while I lurked beneath it.

It almost worked (as it has so often in the past).

And then the strange sensation in the foot. Something collapsing, without pain, but like a paper cup folding inside itself.

I’ve played basketball for 47 out of 55 years and until August, nothing had ever stopped working that really should be working. Busted fingers, smashed nose, a few dozen stitches, pulled muscles, a perpetually banged-up ego --- all those are a matter of course --- but I knew right away that the time of the game-threatening injury had finally happened.

The medical community quickly brought all of its formidable diagnostic powers to bear on the case and --- more than four months later --- concurred. Broken ankle. By that time the goddamn thing had healed. Hell, when Suzie Dimpleman left me for that fat-assed Rudy Gustafson in 8th grade it took longer than THAT to heal a broken heart!

Still --- any brush with on-court mortality is sobering. The aftermath (tendons that will never work right again) means that athletic ability that was already headed in the general direction of the crapper, just took one significant stumble closer to the Big Flush.

That presents a dilemma of the truly male variety. For months now I’ve been weighing the downside of publicly whining like a Nancy-boy --- an approach that generates a certain amount of sympathy but almost always is followed by the hushed, judgmental whisper of: “pussy.”

Conversely, to suck-it-up, man-up, tough-it-out, and play-hurt, is no bed of wild flowers either. If guys don’t know you’re hurt they just assume that you are a shitty basketball player --- an assumption that also generates exactly the same hushed, judgmental whisper of: “pussy.”

This is a Catch-22 in which “pussy” is the common denominator. A fact that sounds like it should be a good thing but ain’t. A Catch 22 within a Catch 22!

Fortunately, all of this came into perspective when our Over-50 STILL HERE team organized to compete in the 2011 Buffalo Master’s Basketball Tournament. The advance scouting report of our squad went something like:

“D-Rex thinks his heart situation is better but we’ll have to see how his stamina is. Rock is starting to get the use of his arm back but his shoulder is still dinked up. Bart has had only one usable arm for five years and god knows how long since he’s had ten fingers. J.T. has a bad quad right now. Eddie’s ass muscle is still broken from three years ago....”

Get the idea?

The fact of the matter is --- let’s accept --- that at NO time is any old man playing the game of old man basketball EVER without something wrong with him.

That doesn’t make it easier --- treachery and basketball IQ only go so far in competing against a 6 foot 7 twenty year old --- but it does create a perspective that enables one to continue despite the whispers and the head shaking and the noses turned up at the combined odor of Ben Gay and dust from the tomb.

Just the other week, a handful of us went to Johnny Malloy’s for a quick rehydrating beer after a noon pickup game. Five hours later, I bent my elbow to engage a sweet therapeutic pint of Guinness and my shoulder tweaked. My girlish squeak of discomfort attracted the attention of one of the others who asked me if I was OK. That was my open invitation to discourse about the woes of a torn rotator cuff and the agonies that no one but I had ever experienced in the long history of sports injuries. That in turn gave a few of the other drinkers an opportunity to relive their own shoulder injuries. At one point I believe X-rays were produced from someone’s gym bag and studied by the light of a neon Budweiser sign. During all of this one guy kept quietly sipping his beer. Finally, when we had exhausted our own litany of medical phenomena, someone turned to the quiet guy and asked:

“How about you --- how you feeling today?”

“Well,” he replied, “I have a little pain that’s always in this one shoulder. Got it banged playing football.”

We old guys were thinking: “Hmmmm. That’s all you have? Damn young guys --- no great stories to tell.”

“Oh,” he continued, “and my other shoulder gives me a little problem from where I took a bullet when I was with the Marines in Iraq.”

With that we old guys returned sheepishly to our beer...all our shoulders feeling just a bit better.

OK. I learned a lesson. I may try to limit my complaining about aches and pains.

But let me tell you this:

If you’re young and fast and can jump high --- and if you make the mistake of driving the lane thinking it’s going to come easy --- watch out for something that looks like 275 pounds of cosmic jelly blurping and farting through space.

You’re going to get old man fat all over you.