Surprise phone call -- college basketball!

Andy got an unexpected phone call New Years’ Eve - his baseball coach called to see if Andy Hall would be willing to fill in on the basketball team for a few games, since they were short handed. When he told me about it, I asked him if he wanted to, and he said, yes, but didn't know if it would work. A phone call determined that it would mean going back to school a week earlier than originally planned, actually on his birthday, Jan 3rd.

But what an opportunity! The Raiders have one of the best winning traditions in junior college basketball. They are coached by the legendary Gene Bess, who has averaged almost 28 wins per season in his 39 years as head coach and has lead his teams to 20 Missouri Region 16 championships and 29 national junior college championships.

So, we took care of the remaining things he needed to do and Dan drove him back to school on Sunday for a 3 pm practice. He practiced the next day with them before joining them on a road trip to Alabama, where they played Jan 5th. Andy got 8 minutes of playing time and really got the attention of the announcer, who really seemed to enjoy the novelty of a baseball player on the team, and talked about him alot, even asking the head coach about him after the game.

He got to play again Saturday night in a home game. Even though that means a 2 1/2 hour drive for us, Dan and I made the trip, and it was well worth it, because the team is really fun to watch. It was a conference and region game, so pretty important, but after they built up a 20 point lead at the half, they gave Andy lots of playing time, and he got a couple rebounds and scored. It was amazing how many people seemed to be especially rooting for him. In fact, after the game, several people, when finding out who we were, told us how glad they were to have him on the team. We shook hands with both the legendary coach Bess and his son, who seems to be the head coach during the game. Andy tells us that the elder coach's knowledge of the game is amazing, and that he is very involved in the coaching.

The biggest compliment to Andy, however, is that the basketball coaches told him he could continue to play with the team as long as he wanted. But baseball started today, and he decided that since the basketball team really didn't need him anymore, he would just do baseball. We're disappointed, because it was so fun to watch him play basketball again (tonight's game was a blow-out -- something like 130-40, so he would definitely have gotten to play), but we think he made a wise and mature decision.

So it was a brief, but fun interlude!