February 25, 2019 / Events & Milestones
It's a Family Tradition: Sports photography in Yoder, Torrington and Goshen County
Ever since I was a kid, basketball dominated the winter months.
My dad ran the clock for our local high school games and watching and enjoying the Cheyenne Central Indians was something ...
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Ever since I was a kid, basketball dominated the winter months.
My dad ran the clock for our local high school games and watching and enjoying the Cheyenne Central Indians was something we often did as a family. Mom would sit on the side with the adults. One sister played in the band, two sisters stood in the student section and my brother hung out with the other preteens. My godfather was an assistant principal, and every so often I’d get to go stand at court level with him, under the basket. I’d watch the Indians swing the ball around the perimeter, setting picks and working the ball in down low.
I’d also spend part of the game sitting in the student section with my big sisters. I’d wave my pompom, jubilantly yelling “Who did it? He did it! Who did it? He did it! Who did it? He did it! DON’T DO IT AGAIN!”
For years, I dreamed of someday wearing that red and white jersey and having my name called in the starting five.
That particular goal never came to fruition. I played basketball in elementary school and junior high but rarely made it off the B-team. By my teens, I was more interested in showing horses and pigs than I was improving my skills to the varsity level.
But basketball was more than dreams of glory. It was being with my family and spending time with my dad. Occasionally it was just him and I at the game. I could sit wherever I wanted as long as he could see me from the scorer’s table. I’d make marks in my program, keeping my own version of the box scores so we could talk about it later. I could always sucker him into a few dollars for the concessions stand and a post-game recap on the ride home.
“Did you see the way their center worked her defender? She’d use her hips and pivot around to create open space,” he would say as he cuffed my head on the walk to the car.
My family also supported the University of Wyoming Cowboys. I grew up in the halcyon days of Fennis Dembo, Erick Leckner and my favorite player, Jon Sommers. I once took the six blocks between my house and school at a dead run so I wouldn’t miss a single moment of the Cowboys playing Loyola Marymount in the NCAA tournament. (They lost, by the way. 119-115. Yes, I still remember the score.)
My love of the game never left me. I still love to watch basketball, especially basketball played well. Gritty defense, skilled point play, a player standing under the basket taking a charge…that’s what winter months are supposed to be made of.
I never really thought about it before, but I think that’s why I loved the sport so much – because my family enjoyed it together. Basketball has now become OUR family’s winter pastime. We’ve had so much fun watching the Southeast Cyclones, Torrington Trailblazers and EWC Lancers. I get the added bonus of practicing sports photography, and we all get to enjoy the sense of community fostered at our local games.
Come spring, I’ll be back among the pheasants and the geese and flowers. But until then, it’s more basketball than babies on my blog. It is a family tradition after all.
Teresa
