BT Titans: Hellbound

I used to go to a small Catholic middle school in Great Falls, Montana called Blessed Trinity. We had about 14 students in our graduating class, so we're talking like Class C equivalent if it were a high school.

Anyway, I played basketball there in a small parochial league that included a couple other Christian schools, academies, a team from the Air Force base, and a few small surrounding community schools in the area. At least once every year, though, we'd have to play the Montana School for the Deaf and Blind.

We had our first game against MSDB when I was in the sixth grade. I don't know why, but I was pretty much expecting it to be a silent game. Instead, there was lots of grunting and incoherent yelling and what not...even at each other, which I found kind of odd.

And they weren't very good. We knew going in that MSDB was a perennial cellar dweller in our league, so the first half of the game was pretty rough. We'd be intercepting passes, stealing from the forward who apparently couldn't dribble, etc. But that was the weird part. Every few plays, the guard would come down the right side of the court and yelp really loudly. The forward, who never moved, would throw his hands up in the air as the guard then lightly toss the ball toward him. Our center at the time was James Hackethorn, a six-foot seventh grader who would easily step in front of him, grab the ball and send it down the other way. It was way too simple.

At half time, our coach told us we were doing a great job, playing solid defense, and hitting our shots well. "Oh, by the way, no more stealing passes from their forward. I talked to the other coach and it turns out he's totally blind. So from now on, if you could just step back, let him try to catch the ball and find the hoop, that'd be great."