All my life I want to be a Panther…
Work, work… oh baby, work, work!
— A.V. Cheer from 1980s
From early on the Boonville High School gym was a temple to me, a sacred place. At night it would glow like a signal fire, and if you were in a car driving past and held your breath you could hear the hollow thump of a dribbling ball, or the plaintive atonal shrieks of tennis shoes scuffing on the hardwood. I couldn’t wait for my turn, to get inside and run and shoot and be part of it, whatever it was.
First it was watching my dad and Uncle Ken scrape and sweat through various men’s league teams and pick-up games with and against the local boys: Gene Waggoner, Gary Waggoner, Tony Summit, David Summit, Leroy Perry, Chris Rossi, Jed Steele, Coach Jim Mastin from Mendocino, Danny Huey, Charlie Hiatt, Steve “Turbo” Blackstone from Ukiah, Rick Cupples (whose girlfriend used to read paperback novels in the empty stands), and a host of others whose names I’m sure will come back to me in the days to come, standing on a corner waiting for the light to change, or flipping channels late at night wondering where all the time has gone.
Perhaps the greatest single game I ever saw was at the old Pomolita Gym in Ukiah. It was Gene Waggoner’s five against a team led by Ukiah native Kelvin Chapman, who played second base for the New York Mets for several years. As local sports fans know, Chapman was also an unbelievable hoops player, having been an All-American point guard at Santa Rosa Junior College before getting paid for hardball. And Gene, who starred at the University of Mississippi, could fill the iron like nobody’s business, a master of a dazzling array of playground junkball shots, Boonville’s own Pete Maravich.
A true gym rat, Gene was a shooter and a scorer who regularly played several hours a day, and thought nothing of driving three hours to some cold and dusty gym, usually with G.P. and me crammed into the backseat of his V.W. Beetle, for a pick-up game against ragtag foes. That long ago night at Pomolita, Gene and Kelvin were both unstoppable, and went at each other jumper after jumper, twisting lay-up after darting steal and breakaway. It was poetry. It was rhythm. It was the game the way the game was meant to be played. And I knew if I wanted to be within a thousand miles of Gene and Kelvin, I had to practice, and keep on practicing. I had to learn the fundamentals, to understand how a team works.
Luckily for me (and hundreds of other Boonville kids), there was Junior Panthers, the stellar youth basketball program founded and expertly run by Paul Hughbanks and Ron Penrose. Paul and Ron co-captained a tight ship, two hours each Tuesday and Thursday night spent on dribbling, ball handling, two-handed chest passes, free throws, defense, keeping one eye on the ball and one eye on your man (or woman), over and over again. If you were lucky, you were asked to join Rodger Tolman’s tournament team, which traveled to Mendocino, Leggett, Covelo and everywhere in between to play other pee-wees.
Rodger taught us even more discipline and fundamentals: how to look to pass first, how to bounce pass, how to cut off the baseline, how to box out, how to box out in our sleep, how to judge where the rebound is going to by the angle of the shot, how to follow-through on our own shots so that the ball has a nice rotation and practice and practice and then some more. Things got easier after fifty or so attempts. Hitting the outlet man and filling the lanes became second nature. We had pretty good teams even then, with Jerry Tolman, Aron Evans, Eric June, Danny Pardini, Olie Erickson, Ronnie (son of Ron) Penrose, Steve Fortin, Richie Wellington, Jeff Burroughs, Brian Roberts, G.P. Price, and myself. We thought we were pretty cool in our red and white uniforms. We even had red wristbands. And if there was ever a more glorious endeavor in the annals of humankind, we wouldn’t have believed it.
After Junior Panthers, we graduated to Jeff Miller’s Junior High squad. Miller was another strict if affable teacher, and had us going to tournaments from Crescent City to Knightsen.
One evening, we were coming back from the Delta in the school’s old GMC jitney, with Miller driving. The fog was so thick Miller forbid any one of us from talking. Of course, that made us all giggle, which increased Miller’s annoyance, which made us laugh more. I’ll never forget inching through the impenetrable fog with Miller’s white knuckles on the steering wheel as he tried not to run off the road — though at five miles an hour we probably wouldn’t have been hurt too badly.
By thirteen, G.P. and I were the managers for the boys’ varsity, coached by Gene Waggoner. We had matching brown t-shirts and swept the floors during time-outs, and at half-time cut oranges to give our hardy warriors that winning energy. Gene instilled in us the desire to, above all, win the Redwood Classic. He made it seem like it was the most important thing since the Battle of Stalingrad, and maybe it was.
But despite our desperate yearnings, Gene’s early squads couldn’t get over the hump, even with Don Summit, Terry Hughbanks, the 7’0” Charles Davis, the 6’10” Randy Yates, John Stevenson, Brian Wyant, et al.
The brick wall those guys ran into was Mendocino, coached by legendary taskmaster Jim Mastin, whose hard-nosed ways made Vince Lombardi seem like Deepak Chopra. Mendo also had talent galore with Mark Moulder, Kevin Young from Deep Comptche, a kid named Satterfield, and of course Dan Doubiago (who went on to play offensive line for the Kansas City Chiefs). As good as the Panthers were, Mendocino was a little better. After watching our heroes lose to the Cardinals yet again, G.P. and I vowed that one day we’d win the Redwood Classic.
Fast forward several years and Gene is still coaching the boy’s varsity team, only G.P. and I have graduated from towel boys to players. We are pretty good, ranked number one in the state in Division B. We beat Ukiah (with 1,600 students) that season, not bad for a public school with a hundred kids total. We had worked hard, playing in summer leagues and pick-up games and practiced daily in the hot August sun. G.P. and I used to run down Anderson Valley Way singing pep songs, dreaming of winning the Redwood Classic… and suddenly we were there.
I think it was against Ferndale or South Fork in the championship game, and the clock was winding down and we were going to win the thing that no other Panther team had won since 1967. All the car rides, all mornings opening the gym with Rodger and Gene and Jeff Miller were worth it. The winning was nice, but the camaraderie, the group achievement was the best thing. We started playing together at a very young age, and the core group stayed together, and the heavens opened up and smiled upon us.
Every year the Redwood Classic brings together sixteen teams from all over Northern California. Enjoy it, kids. Enjoy the pageantry and the warm-up cheers and the smell of popcorn mixing with the floor wax. Enjoy the improbable shots and upset victories and precision teamwork when it happens. Enjoy your youth and your sweat and your friends both in and out of uniform. Enjoy it all while you can, whether or not you play or know someone who plays or just like to watch like Chauncey the Gardener, because it’s the Redwood Classic, and this is the heart of a small town, still beating loudly after all these years.
And speaking of memories, here are more Panther hoops stars I neglected to remember before (and forgive me for duplications or leaving the many more worthy out, whose only sin is that I don’t know them): Adam Bjorquist. Joy Kinion. Randy Yates. Robert Mailer Anderson. Gary Waggoner. Miles Gibson. Tony Sanchez. Ryan Parrish. Sarah Christian. Tonya Daniels, Graciela Torres. Erica Wallace. J.J. Thomasson. Christina McFadden. John Stevenson. Paul Hughbanks. Ron Penrose. Jeff Miller. Rodger Tolman. Deputy Squires. Harold Perry. Dick and Jane Warsing. Gene Waggoner… and those countless untold parents and guardians and coaches and scoreboard operators and referees like Brad Shear and Jeff Campbell and Paul Jack who made our youths special with their time and patience and encouragement. You taught us the beauty of the game and the honor of the team. And we are forever in your debt.
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