aves make the NBA Playoffs nothing to me. Boring and commercialized beyond
belief. The fact that our own Phoenix Suns have been eliminated because they
couldn't play defense... Well
chaussures saucony pas
cher , they all should have learned from the Phoenix Indian School
Braves. At the property that is now Indian School Steele Park, northeast of the
intersection of east Indian School Road and north Central Avenue, was the
Phoenix Indian School. Now I know the name of the park is the Steele Indian
School Park, but to those of us who were once part of the Phoenix Indian School,
it is, we think, Stolen Indian School Park but that's a whole different story.
The property of the Phoenix Indian School was once much larger than the 75 acres
sold off by the federal government another promise broken to Indian people, of
course, to private commercial interests with the proviso that they remand a
certain portion of the land sale for a public park. But this is about the
Phoenix Indian School Braves, and not politics. (Now, for those who are
recoiling in horror that I use here the name Braves because the name is not now
politically correct, I dee-double dare you to walk up to an old graduate of the
Indian School and tell them that the name Braves is, these days, an impolite
pejorative, and should not be a part of the contemporary vocabulary. I suspect
you will come away, at least, with a moderate-to-devastating bawling out, or, at
the most
chaussures saucony
soldes , a punch in the nose.) Because the Braves were our team.
Oh, now I know I didn't attend the school. But Dad was an employee of the
school, at various times, the head basketball coach, sponsor of the Indian Club
and teacher, and most recently, the librarian. But I was a campus brat, the
child of Indian School employees who lived on campus. We participated at the
periphery of student life and smack-dab in the middle of faculty and staff life.
We the students, the faculty, staff and brats were the supporters, athletic
(You've heard the joke) and otherwise of the teams. Our teams. Now our football
team after the 1930's and 40's weren't so much to brag about. Before then, we
were a power to be reckoned with. We played much teams from much bigger schools
including the Phoenix Union Coyotes, the Tempe Normal Bulldogs (which later
became Arizona State College at Tempe, and still later, Arizona State Univerity
of VOTE YES ON 200 fame.) Our Braves once also called the Redskins regularly
beat these teams. One story told by the late M.R. Bill Hagerty, history teacher
at Phoenix North High, was that, one year in the Thanksgiving game, the Phoenix
Union team was sweeping the end
curry
2 father to son , the ball being carried by a large boy who later
became a judge in our state. One of our boys, whose name is now unremembered,
was throwing aside their choice of designations, now our blockers and
interference men, until he came to the ball carrier. Our lineman reached over
and picked up the ball carrier and simply stood there with him, holding him like
the back was a baby, until one of the officials decided to end the play. Do you
remember that, Your Honor? Mr. Hagerty asked. How could you forget? the judge,
smiling, said. But, then the Arizona Interscholastic Association came up with a
plan and a deadly device that affected all Arizona high schools, but probably
the Indian school more than the others. This dirty little device was called the
birth certificate. It may have been okay with the Lord for 20 and 30 -year-old
guys to play high school football, but apparently not with the AIA. So,
afterward, our football teams were regularly beaten by other schools, but not
our basketball teams. Ah, yes. Our basketball teams. They were the run-and-shoot
Braves decades before the NBA caught the concept. Our game would have made Hank
Iba and ol' Coach Wooden run screaming in terror into the night. The names of
the run 'n' shooters are legendary among Indian School old timers: Chico and
Edison Johnson and Arnold Bilagody and Roy Calnimptewa and . . . and Joel Querta
. . . and . . . and . . . so many others. Especially in the years of Coach
Joe-Joe Famulette. Our tactics were simple: Run and shoot the ball, steal and
shoot the ball, run and shoot the ball
curry
one father to son , steal and shoot the ball. Our strategy was
similar: Run and shoot the ball, steal and shoot the ball. Call a quick time
out, run back on the floor before the other team. Run and shoot the ball. Get
the idea? In these days of so-called power players, our guys could've run Kobe
Bryant and his expensive shoes into the floor. He would have to call a lot
shoestring-tying time outs. And maybe our Phoenix Suns would beat them soundly,
but the Braves would have had their fun. Our Dan Majerle would be able to keep
up with them, but I have to wonder about the rest of them. In the days before
they built the new gym, attending a Phoenix Indian School home game could a
dangerous but always an exhilarating experience. The gym was an old WPA project,
put together from concrete, block and mortar and cold water in the showers. The
seats were painted planks set atop about 12 tiers of concrete set around the
interior of the gym. After World War II, the gym was painted the same battleship
gray of the fleet, leading to speculation that the school got a special deal on
the surplus after the Navy finished painting the Missouri and the Hornet and the
Midway. A former sports writer for our local rag, Jim Dobkins, once noted the
floor was so small, and the space so tiny between the court lines and the first
row of spectators, that you might accidentally find yourself in the game if
things got wild. Well, there are those who I am certain believe