View from the cheap seats

A weekly perspective on sports

It was a pleasure for me to see Bob Tess, my former Marathon freshman boys basketball coach and algebra teacher, between the Marathon varsity girls and boys home doubleheader against Prentice on Friday.

We reminisced about needing to wake up early in the morning for weekday freshman boys basketball practices, which were at 6 a.m. in the main Marathon High School gym. Marathon High School only had one gym when I attended school in the 1990s, therefore the only time available to practice was before the school day started. The more experienced varsity and junior varsity boy’s basketball teams got first dibs on practicing inside the main gym after school.

I remember my father waking me up at 4:30 a.m. on very cold winter mornings so we could eat breakfast together. He dropped me off at basketball practice on his way to driving to the dairy farm my uncle and him operated together. I’d have to agree with Bob Tess when he told me on Friday he and I had to be dedicated to playing basketball if we were willing to wake up early in the morning to practice.

Tess joked to me it took him 15 years of coaching Marathon freshman boys basketball before he got an afternoon practice.

Fans attending the Edgar varsity boys basketball team’s home win against Athens last Thursday reacted with excitement when the bench players received time on the court at the end of the game. Fans certainly got a rise over any time Edgar foreign exchange student Petar Bezhoski from Macedonia, a country located in the Balkan Peninsula in southeast Europe, had the basketball in his hands.

It just so happens Joe Schilling has a junior son, Cole Schilling, on the Edgar varsity basketball team this season. Joe and I rode the Marathon boys varsity basketball team bench when we were in high school, but we brought a ton of energy onto the basketball court every time our head coach, Jack Culhane, gave us an opportunity to play at the end of blowout victories.

Now Joe’s son, Cole, is on the Edgar varsity boys basketball team’s bench and the home fans get excited when he receives playing time at the end of games, just like it was for Joe and I back in the day.

I am hoping to attend Maddy Lang’s eighth grade girl’s basketball game this Thursday at St. Mary’s in Marathon. It’ll be nice to make a return trip to my alma matter, St. Mary’s, where I at one time played on the middle school boys basketball teams.

There’s been a tremendous outpouring of support thus far for Maddy Lang from residents in Marathon and all of central Wisconsin during her fight against acute B-cell lymphocytic leukemia. I will have a sports feature story on Maddy in next week’s newspaper.