Denker: Youth basketball is a way of life in the State of Hockey

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I attended eight basketball games in two days on the first weekend in March this year, which is more sporting events in a weekend than I ever attended as a professional sportswriter. Back then, games came with a press pass and a pregame dinner banquet, and I got paid to go.

Now, I pay to go, standing in line in the outer ring suburbs with other bleary-eyed parents at 7:29 on a drizzly Saturday morning in March, trailing behind our school-aged kids with a duffel bag full of snacks and multiple water bottles in hand.

On the last weekend of February and throughout March, Minnesota Youth Athletic Services (MYAS) hosts the Grade State Basketball Championships, also known as the largest youth basketball tournament anywhere in America. You’d be forgiven for being surprised that the State of Hockey has also become a national leader for youth basketball.

Here in Minnesota, youth basketball is a way of life for thousands of families all across the state: from Zumbrota in the southeast to West Fargo in the northwest. The Grade State Championships, which include several competitive tiers in each age level — grades three through eight — for boys and girls, pit plucky rural kids from places like Stewartville, Sauk Rapids and Sartell against seasoned city and suburban kids from Minneapolis, St. Paul and the greater Twin Cities.

The past four seasons since my eldest son started playing in the league, he and his brother have competed in many of the same gyms and tournaments where I played traveling youth basketball as a kid growing up in the Twin Cities. Already, my two sons seem to have surpassed their mom’s athletic abilities — and hopefully they have better attitudes, too.

I won’t pretend that the Grade State Championships are all smiles, high-fives and cherubic children. There’s plenty of parental posturing, dads living vicariously through their sons’ success, and moms yelling at the referees and each other — not to mention the odd spectacle of grown adults paying hard-earned cash to watch children play a game.

And I know well that the long, dim hallways to gyms and ice arenas in schools and community centers across America are littered with broken dreams and battered bodies. As a sportswriter, I told stories of young men whose brains function like 80-year-old-men, from too many concussions suffered in youth football and hockey games. I’ve interviewed athletes who dedicated their high school and college lives entirely to a sport, only to suffer career-ending injuries and have nothing to show for all their hard work, finding themselves aimless and alone.

Still, every year around this time in March, my eyes get watery when I hear the opening strains of “One Shining Moment,” and the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments begin. In recent years, it has been even better because now the women’s tournament is finally getting the coverage and respect those athletes have long deserved.

I feel the same way when I walk up to the Grade State youth basketball tournaments — even when it means eight games for two sons in one weekend. Even when my husband coaches one of those teams, which means I rarely see him during daylight on long winter evenings.

Sitting on the shiny wooden floor in the gym at Park High School in Cottage Grove earlier this month, waiting for my son’s team to play, I had the chance to watch all kinds of other teams from other parts of the state. I watched a young coach from Anoka, dressed in a maroon suit and a silver tie, comfort his teary players when they lost the championship. I saw a thrilled squad from Prior Lake engineer an improbable comeback after scoring just a few baskets in the entire first half in one of Saturday’s opening rounds.

I saw younger siblings toddling around, held by the hands of their older brother’s teammates, grinning and drooling and delighting in the joy of older kids. I watched games of hide and seek, community members serving hot dogs and nachos and sports drinks at the concession stand, profits going to benefit community sports organizations.

I couldn’t help but think that this was part of what our country actually needs more of — not less. More time in person with people we don’t know. More time learning to win humbly and lose graciously. More willingness to listen to impartial referees and obey their rulings, even when we disagree. Less time yelling at each other through screens (maybe face-to-face yelling is healthier? Maybe?). More mentoring of kids by adults who aren’t their parents and aren’t paid to be with them.

I realized something else, too, when I watched multiple teams levitate off the bench in the wake of a championship victory, bouncing off of each other with exuberance no matter the score or the tier. And I realized the same thing as I looked at the other end of the court, where little boys hung their heads and wiped tears from their eyes, and accepted hugs from their coaches.

Every time, the winners came back down to earth, the losers picked themselves up off of the floor, and both teams walked to the center of the court to shake hands in line. If any kid didn’t want to, eventually their coach gave them what for. There was something bigger at stake here than their individual joy or displeasure. After all, that’s what team sports are all about.

These kids don’t know it now, but someday, no one knows exactly when, this is all going to end. Most of them won’t play varsity sports for their high school teams. Some will. Even fewer will play college. A tiny, infinitesimal fraction might someday play professionally (even though almost every single third-grader here will tell you he’s going to be an NBA player when he grows up). But even for those who become professional athletes: Someday, it’s all going to end. Most of us don’t get to choose when. We get cut from the team, or we get injured, or we pick another passion. Maybe they get traded. Or their body shuts down. Or it becomes too much mentally.

Someday, in an instant, for all of us, it will be the last game. The beauty of sports — even for me to this very day as a very much former basketball player and former sportswriter — is that sports teach all of us the value of now. To live in this very moment, this one shining moment and give it everything we have. To sometimes sideline our will — what’s best for us — for the betterment of the team. To learn to play a role, and not always the starring role.

If you’re lucky, someday you’ll get to look back and remember that one game that made it all worth it. That one shot. One steal. One block. One friend. One coach.

Parents and grandparents who put aside their own schedules and desires to come and watch you play; who seem ever-and-always present until one day they’re not there anymore.

What you’ll remember most isn’t the screaming anonymous fans or the stats: it’s the love.

If you’re extra lucky, like me, long after you quit the high school basketball team, someday you’ll walk up to a court to play pickup basketball and ask: “Who’s got next?” And the person who answers you might just end up being the father of the children you stand and watch on the sidelines and cheer on at the Grade State Championships of the future.

So by all means, let the madness continue.