George Ferguson Column: Hoops marathon was well worth it

If I'm seeing basketball's in my sleep, there's a good reason for that. If I'm hearing chants of "Go Bears Go" or "Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar, all for the Hawks stand up and holler," I have a good excuse. And if I'm hearing the screeching sound of a whistle being blown right in my ear, I don't need to wonder why.

All of those things are happening to me because of marathon basketball day that was last Thursday.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not complaining. Days like last Thursday are why I love doing what I do. But make no mistake, it was indeed a marathon of basketball. One that I won't soon forget, well until the next one anyway.

Last Thursday may have started out like any other day, with me laying out that morning's sports pages, which were full of District 9C basketball. But, by 11 a.m. I realized it was going to be anything but a normal day.

Right off the bat, the Chester/J-I/North Star girls first-round game at the 9C tournament was exciting, and went down to the wire. It was a fun basketball game to watch, with two teams, who are rivals on the court, but, because of proximity, are friends off of it, going at each other. And it was the perfect way to start one of the longest days of my entire career.

Three more 9C games would follow before I handed the reins for the night session of the 9C over to Chris Peterson. But, with four stories already written, I, and my laptop were nowhere near done.

After a sausage McMuffin — yes I love, love that McDonalds serves breakfast for dinner now — and my fifth large pop of the day, so much for my cutting back on that stuff, I found myself inside the Armory Gymnasium for what were two very important Frontier Conference basketball games.

At that point, I was pretty tired, but, because of the quality of games I was about to see, I wasn't tired of hoops yet. Instead, I watched as the Montana State University-Northern men and women took down their rivals from Great Falls, in two really good basketball games.

I was also following Twitter the entire time, as I wasn't about to just forget what was going on back at the Havre High gymnasium in the 9C tournament, or over at Havre Central where the Blue Pony girls we replaying Browning. Instead, I was following all of those games, while keeping an eye on other games of interest around the state.

Yes, my hoops marathon wasn't confined to the two gyms I spent more than 10 hours in Thursday. Thank goodness for the advent of social media.

And while most people would have breathed a sigh of relief when the final buzzer sounded on the Lights' win over UGF at around 9:30 p.m. that night, I was just getting started. While the games were over for the day, in which I covered six in all, and the HDN managed to cover 10 total, my day or night, or morning, or whatever it was, was really just getting started, because what was still to come was putting it all together for all of you to enjoy on Friday afternoon.

Needless to say, that much hoops, and everything else going on in our world of sports, kept me up until about 4:30 that morning. And while I won't tell a lie, I was certainly exhausted, I was fine with that. It's what I do and I love doing it. The 9C tournament, high school basketball in general, and the Lights and Skylights, who are playing great right now I might add, are why I love my job as much as I do, and, because I know how important all of it is to our community, I wasn't going to skip any of it. I wasn't going to blow any of it off, and I wasn't going to take short cuts either. We were going to cover it all, myself, Chris and Roger Miller, no matter how late we had to stay up, and no matter how sore our backsides were from sitting on plastic bleachers all day.

In the world of sports journalism, that's just what we do, and we were glad to do it.

And, of course, there's a lot more to come. There's a lot of basketball yet to be played this season, though not much of it will be played here in Havre at this point. No, for the most part, the rest of the high school season will be spent behind the wheel of a car, and we're glad to do that, too, because we're so lucky to have the quality of basketball we do around here.

But, Thursday was a rare day for sure. And while marathon most aptly described what I went through that day, looking back on it now, now that I'm not so tired, fun is the word I would choose. It was a day and night, and morning of hoops, and it was fun.