Every September on the first day of school at St. Leo’s in lovely Leominster, MA, you could count on one thing: the initial homework assignment would be to write a paper detailing how you spent your summer vacation. Heck, at that point the good Sisters hadn’t even cracked open a fresh case of metal-edged rulers to discipline us and here they were already handing out homework! I won’t bore you with the details of what I did for the entirety of this summer — believe me, it was no great shakes — but rather, I want to share with you how I spent my just-concluded, annual family trek to Stone Harbor, NJ.

For over 20 years (with a couple of exceptions for pregnancy and a trip to Hawaii), Mrs. Swampy and the Swampettes and I have loaded up the ‘Family Truckster’ and headed for the Jersey Shore for a week in August. People here in Michigan look at us like we are a little goofy when we tell them where we are headed. The Great Lakes are, indeed great, but they ain’t the ocean. I grew up 45 minutes from the salt water and Mrs. Swampy was raised in Pittsburgh, where literally half the populace heads east to heed the siren call of the Atlantic come summertime.

Stone Harbor is the perfect vacation spot for the Meadows family: it has great beaches and restaurants, which we all like; superb shopping for the ladies, and a week’s worth of hoops for yours truly. It took me several years to figure out why I never saw anybody my age playing basketball at the 96th Street playground in the afternoons — they all hooped first thing in the morning, i.e. 7:00AM. That’s right, I got my sorry butt up and on the court a full hour before the time I normally arrive at my office, just to play hoops. And I loved every minute of it!
The reason I enjoyed it so much is that I have been playing 4-on-4 half-court with many of the same guys for over 12 years now and gotten to know them pretty well — as well as you can when you only see somebody for 1 out of 52 weeks. The ‘dean’ of the group is Frank who is 68 and still gets up and down the court well; Jack is a HS basketball coach who is full of stories; Dan is a younger guy with boundless energy and plays inside and outside equally well; Bob is an attorney who ‘retired’ from our game this year due to a bad back, but showed up one morning anyway; Nick is an ex-Marine; Mark a Veterinarian; Rick looks like he’s a CPA and brings his 2 HS-aged sons with him now. There are other guys like Mike, who must have played football at some point in his life…and Glen who is a teacher…and Joe who has a deadly turnaround set shot…and a bunch of others. And then there is Charlie.

To say that Charlie is the largest human being I have ever played with or against is an understatement — he is just huge, there’s no other way to put it. Charlie is 6’9″ and wears a size 18 shoe. But, it’s not his height that catches your attention, it’s his girth. Charlie must weigh somewhere between 350 and 400-no lie. He can bang with the best of them and can also stroke the 3. The words “matchup problem” were invented to describe covering Charlie.

Needless to say, I played a lot of games with a bunch of different guys over the course of a week, but one day in particluar stands out in my memory. I got there at 7:00AM and was the first one to arrive. Next came Kyle, a 6’5″ kid who will be a junior at Pittsburgh Central Catholic this year. Then came Jimmy, a really solid two-way player in his early 40s from Short Hills in northern Jersey who chose to vacation in Stone Harbor to “get away from the New Yorkers.” Jack, the basketball coach (who is older than I am) came next and filled out our team. We played the next 4 guys who showed up. That’s our unbiased way to pick teams — first four to show up vs, the second four. By the time we finished there were over 20 guys there, so there were halfcourt games going on both ends. We won our first game handily and then had to play against Charlie, his son Chip (who is 13 and wears a size 13) and two other guys. Kyle used his quickness to blow by Charlie and tapped the ball away from the big fella instead of trying to bang with him on the boards. We all chipped in offensively and won again. We kept on winning until our last game, when a team with fresher legs finally beat us.

What made this squad memorable was the chemistry…I’ve known Jack for 10+ years, but neither of us had ever played with Jimmy or Kyle before that morning. All four of us passed the ball crisply, all four of us played good defense and we all shot extremely well, even me. We picked each other up. To beat a team with a huge 6’9″ guy by featuring a skinny 6’5″ HS kid took teamwork. It was a beautiful thing.

I view this annual week of seaside hoops as my own personal training camp. Training camp for what, you might ask? The rest of my life, I guess. I’m not a runner…lifting weights bores me…riding in a golf cart will never be considered aerobic exercise. So this is how I stay in shape. Years from now, I don’t want to ask myself the question “did you get old because you stopped playing basketball or did you stop playing basketball because you got old?” The way I figure it, if I never stop playing, I’ll never get old.

Which brings me to the question that is probably on every Flyer fan’s mind right about now: how did the boys in Red and Blue spend their summer vacation? Thanks to the wonders of the Internet we have a pretty good idea-KW tore up the Cincy league, while Mark Jones did the same back home in CT. Sean Finn and Sammy did some damage in the Worthington Summer League. The new guys looked good in Miamisburg. Doug Scott will sit out and Frank Iguadola will take his spot. Chris Spears is the first member of the class of ’03 to commit and OP is on the prowl for the best PF he can find to fill the last scholarship. They are a talented bunch for sure, but what is gonna make or break this team is chemistry. The early reports say that Doug Scott absolutely loves his new teammates. Considering he isn’t even eligible to play until 2003, that can only be interpreted as a good sign. Lets hope the guys can have a season full of connective chemistry like Jack,

Kyle, Jimmy and I felt on the blacktop at Stone Harbor one bright sunny morning last week.

That’s it “From the Swamp.”