Lincoln High School’s 2003 State Basketball Championship Run, 15 Year Anniversary Edition (Part I)
(*Author’s note: It’s been 15 years since the Lincoln High School Boys basketball program won a Nebraska State Championship, a massively formative event for my life-long love of sports. This is Part I of a lightly edited repost that was initially written for my blog back in 2013. Parts II and III soon to follow. Enjoy.)
PART I
The Lincoln High Links won a State Basketball title 15 years ago. The echoes of that victory still reverberate somewhere deep in my sports fandom. That title, even though it occurred during my sophomore year, attached itself to the narrative of my formative years at Lincoln High, a time period in my life that has truly become more gilded in my recollections the older that I get.
It was a three game stretch in the early beginnings of spring, when the prairie pilot light of summer has only just been lit, and the icy fist of winter is loosening into a palm.
Was I on the team? Not a chance.
I retired willingly after the boys of the Freshman “B” team took home the city title in 2002 and that was truly the ceiling for my basketball skills. Does it seem slightly ridiculous to still hold such a fond spot in my now semi-adult heart for a high school game from back when “Ignition (Remix)” by R. Kelly was noted as “my jam!”? Say what you will, but these were important times in a burgeoning sports-centric mind.
I knew from an early age that I wanted to go to Lincoln High. My parents had decided that they loved the multicultural aspect of both of their sons attending a high school that had a veritable United Nations of different cultures, races, and ideology. My brother was two years older than I was and he proudly sported the red and black. I would soon follow suit.
From the moment I watched my first Lincoln High basketball game, I was hooked. I had loved basketball from the moment I first started following the NBA in 1996 and, seeing how good the teams were from Lincoln High — their speed, toughness, and a large amount of hero worship for the guys who I knew were the epitome of cool at the place I one day wanted to become cool– I quickly became one of their biggest supporters.
I watched in agony as they were bounced from 2002’s state playoffs by their arch-rival Lincoln Southeast. It was a painful display of the rivalry between both schools that I would come to embrace and to love throughout my years of high school.
This out-and-out fanaticism for the basketball team certainly didn’t lessen when I found myself a sophomore at “The High.” If anything, it gained in momentum. I attended home games, cheering wildly until my vocal chords had been Fran Dreschered. I attended road games, jubilantly howling like an injured baboon until my voice sounded like Bobcat Goldthwaite. Any games I could attend that year, I did.
The team had amassed a gigantic following of fellow die-hards like myself. Chanting, swaying, we would jump up and down until the bleachers appeared ready to collapse like a decrepit building on the San Andreas fault. And those were just for regular season, middle-of-the-week games. When it became clear that The High was headed to State once more, the stage was set for a massive, recklessly crunk, exodus of near-hooliganism to find its way to the Devaney Center.
You see, at Lincoln High, basketball was a great uniter.
It took sectionalized groups and gave them a common interest. It took the marginalized, the outliers, and put them in a crowd of students who, for four quarters, all knew exactly what it was that they similarly desired: a victory.
Stereotypes were shed, biases sidelined, and “in crowd” was lost to the gymnasium-filtered air. A mass of black and red, shoulder to shoulder, lungful to lungful of screaming pride.
Lincoln High was never a bad school, but it suffered from a reputation around town as being full of “thugs”. This feeling of persecution, of misconceived judgment but those with their noses too high in the air to get a good view of the actual place, only served to ratchet up the intensity when the Links found themselves headed to the Bob Devaney Sports Center for State Tournament games.
Make no mistake, it was Us V.S. Them (*Author’s note: capital letters intentional.)
There was a great rising motion occurring, the week of the tournament. A soft-malleted crescendo beginning in the hallways and parking lots. Subtle, at first, but gradually building from echo to white noise to simmering hiss. Like prairie thunder in the distance or the electric charge in the air after scuffing your socked feet across a carpet in dry, dry winter months.
It was the school. It was preparing to shift. That week Lincoln High felt like a carefully laid beartrap being pulled back to lethality. It was cranking, cranking, and being delicately positioned. We were anxious to hear the jaws snap viciously forward, but first we had to sit through another Spanish class.
I realize, at this point, that this may seem entirely too dramatic; too prosaic. I get that. But you have to understand that, during this time, this was about to be the biggest sports events of my life. I had too much pride, too much passion invested in Lincoln High sports to take this moment lightly. Lincoln High sports represented not only me. It represented us.
I wanted desperately for that “us”, that “we”, to emerge at the top of the heap. I wanted the band to look good, I wanted our student section to “win” by outcheering and out-taunting the opposition. I wanted the kids who carpooled into school together in rusted out death-on-wheels vehicles to show that this book wouldn’t be judged by its cover, but by its heart and passion, and fight.
All of these complicated, intrinsically Lincoln High feelings were tied to the impending showdown at State. Yes, I knew it was only a game. Yes, I knew that if we lost I would be completely fine. No, I didn’t care about rationalization or logic. It was high school sports at their core and, I would argue, at their best.
First up for the team was playing Omaha Central. The same Central that the Links had beaten in the playoffs the year before, a game in which their coach had lost any semblance of cool and ended up getting at least one technical foul. The Eagles ended up scoring another “T” at some point in the game and I remember being completely blown away by how poised and collected the Lincoln High bench was.
Emotions may have been running high, but head coach Russ Uhing was unflappable. He was serene. He was Lake Placid on a windless day. Central’s coach was Lake Placid re-runs on the SyFy channel. Uhing was a single candle-flame on the edge of a Spa’s bath, windlessly unflickering. Central’s coach was a dude smoking bath salts.
It was a grudge match from the start. It was another proud school, with a storied past and a currently checkered reputation, and the game came right down to the wire.
The Links had to hit free throws in order to send the game into Overtime, where they eventually emerged victorious, winning 68–61. In a change of pace from the previous year, no technicals were handed out. Uhing was as calm in his team’s victory on this day as he always was. Phil Jackson, on his most mellow pipe-ful of Ganj while watching the sun set over his Montana ranch, couldn’t have been more Zen than Russ Uhing.
The team had survived and advanced. They were moving on. We were moving on. I was about to get my parents’ permission to skip class. All was right with the world.
TO BE CONTINUED…
(Link to part II, Link to part III. Get it? Link? Thank you very much, I’ll be here all blog.)
