Leaving Charlottesville for a few days always makes me happy to come home. I’ve been in Marion, IN visiting family for the past week and I missed Charlottesville so much while I was gone. I felt like I was a part of that movie, Hoosiers, about Indiana basketball. My family loves that movie. When you’re driving through Indiana, in the fog and all you can see is cornfields, it’s a little surreal. Indiana is where my parents and grandparents grew up. My grandfather died last week, he was 94, so my family met in Indiana, to celebrate his life and the way he lived…all the way till the end, to its very fullest. I’m going to miss him.
My family went to an Indiana high school basketball game during my visit. The arena fits more than 5,000 fans! It’s incredible. It was between rivals Marion high school, where my mom went, and Mississinewa. Marion hadn’t lost to Mississinewa in over 50 years, until Saturday night. I’ve never seen anything like this high school basketball game, and it was louder than any game I’ve been to at the JPJ. The pep club would yell whatever they were thinking and fill the arena with noise. I couldn’t help but laugh when they would shout things like “The ref is like an elevator he gave us the shaft!,” or “he’s a mid-get,” (when the Mississinewa guard would shoot free throws, I felt bad for him, but even with the arena screaming at him, he never missed, they would also shout “he’s so litt-le” and “he’s a hob-bit”) and “take his whistle” (when they wouldn’t like the ref’s call.) It was neat to see a little of why my dad gets into basketball so much. It would be hard not to coming from an environment like that!
Another funny thing was that the game was supposed to start at 8, but the Colts game started at 8, so they moved the basketball game up an hour and a half so everyone could get home in time to watch it. There were so many Colts jerseys in the crowd it was hard to tell if the fans were for Mississinewa or Marion.
