Bits & Pieces

Anger Management

By Kim J. Harmon

Anger.

I find it amusing how many times I have seen two basketball players nearly come to blows after tangling on the floor for a loose ball. One gets a couple hands on the ball, the other gets a couple hands on the ball, and a brief tug-of-war ensues which inevitably ends with one or the other ripping the ball free just as the referee whistles for a jump.

So many times – more often in girls than in boys and more often in middle school – it seems the two players are right on the edge of throwing hands over this little altercation … which has nothing to do with either of them and everything to do with the ball.

It’s part of the game! It’s like two young kids wrestling for a toy and one rips it out of the other’s hand because, darn it, it’s mine!

I know, with the physical nature of the game frustrations tend to build up but, still, fewer people seem to get all bent out of shape over a hard foul than grappling for a loose ball. It’s kind of funny – wrestle for a loose ball and then go nose-to-nose with someone or get whacked on a drive to the basket and calmly walk to the free throw line.

Odd.

In the same regard, I find it amusing that the tension level seems to be so much lower in wrestling. There, two kids are tangling for as much as six minutes, using all kinds of holds and causing a fair amount of pain and, yet, when the whistle blows the two wrestlers immediately stop and disengage without so much as a glance at their opponent.

The sport is so much about strength and balance and leverage that it seems to me wrestlers are merely trying to solve a logistical problem rather than trying to beat down an opponent. The same does not necessarily hold true in other sports.

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I’m always making bad decisions … bad decisions when it comes to decided which game to go to.

Almost every day there are conflicting games on the Newtown High School schedule and when I grab my camera and notepad I have to decide which one I want to go do. I factor in the importance of the game and the expected outcome, but more often than not decide purely on time constraints and geographical location.

But more times than I can count, I’ve gone out of town for a game only to see it turn into a blow out while the game back home turned into a thriller.

I thought I made a similar bad decision on Tuesday night when I decided to make the long ride to Choate-Rosemary Hall in Wallingford (only about 30 minutes from home, like Newtown) for a Newtown-Sheehan hockey game.

Back here in Newtown, the girls’ basketball team was hosting New Milford in the first round of the CIAC Class LL state tournament and a win would put them in the second round against Hamden on Wednesday night.

In Wallingford, the hockey team was closing out its finest regular season and preparing for the SWC Division II-III playoffs on Thursday.

The hoop girls had beaten New Milford pretty handily during the regular season.

The skaters had fallen to Sheehan, 3-1, during the regular season.

So I went to Wallingford and after a first period that saw Sheehan take a 3-0 lead while out-shooting Newtown, 20-5, I thought I had blundered. I had a brief thought about hightailing it back to Newtown to catch the basketball game.

But I stuck it out.

And I was treated to a thriller.

Down 5-1 entering the third period, the Nighthawks rallied with three goals … the last with 44.3 seconds left to play. With 13 seconds left, the ‘Hawks had the puck in the crease and tried to pound it past the Sheehan goalie to no avail. And then, with three seconds left, a shot from the left circle was deflected in the air, glancing off the goaltenders’ glove and dropping onto the crossbar just as the horn sounded.

Like I said, a thriller.

It turns out, the basketball game was a thriller also … though it probably shouldn’t have been.

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It’s nice to be able to sharpen my focus again on Newtown sports.

I have to admit, I was a bit distracted for the last month or so – especially last week – getting prepared for my performance in the Cheshire Community Theater’s production of Black Coffee.

I was Tredwell, the butler, and if you find it hard to picture me as a proper English butler it’s only because you haven’t heard my British accent … such as it is. I’m thankful, because it was a nice experience and I never would have been able to do it without the help of people like Kathy Nowak, Darla Kraft and Jake Burg.

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In the paperback version of Game Of Shadows by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams there is an afterword which indicates that all all of the evidence aside - circumstantial or otherwise - which suggests Barry Bonds was heavily into the use of performance-enhancing drugs, a simple matter of measurement proves his hat size grew by one-quarter and his shoe size went from a 10-1/2 to a 13 while with the San Francisco Giants.

I’m not making any accusations, but it does seem pretty odd that a man in his mid- to late-30s would find his head and feet still growing. Doesn’t it?