Friday, Dec. 10, 2004 | 9:59 a.m.
Nick Christensen covers high school athletics for the Sun. Reach him at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at [email protected].
"ACK! ACK! ACK! ACK! ACK!"
That'll wake you up.
Having not been to many high school girls' basketball games up to this month, I actually jumped out of my seat the first time I heard that noise, thinking a loud, obnoxious tropical bird had somehow slipped into Basic High School's gym.
Instead, it was a Basic guard, inches from her Bishop Gorman opponent's face as the Gaels' girl tried to dribble around the perimeter.
The shrill, rapid-fire cawing didn't seem to distract the Gaels' girl too much more than forcing her into a stern wince, but it continued.
"ACKACKACKACKACK!"
It happened again the next time back down the court, with even more rapid-fire intensity than the last time. It was the up-close-and-personal equivalent of fans with balloons sitting behind the glass backboard as a player attempts a free throw, but quite a bit more irritating.
This doesn't happen at all basketball games, as some girls' coaches in an informal poll this week said they'd never even heard of it. But it happens at boys' games, as a Faith Lutheran player made a low gutteral noise centimeters away from the Vo-Tech forward he was guarding this week, again, on the perimeter.
And boys also tend to be a bit more chatty when opponents are shooting free throws. There's no better time to discuss offensive adjustments or remind the big post guys to box out than when your opponent is lining up from the charity stripe, right?
"BALL! BALL! BALL! BALL!"
It came across more like "blah, blah, blah" -- it was so rapidfire -- as another Basic defender tried to throw off the guard on the perimeter as she attempted a pass. This seemed a little more logical to me.
And, said veteran Durango boys' coach Al LaRocque, who also is involved with the Trailblazers girls' program and has two daughters on the team, the "BALL!" scream is meant to communicate with teammates -- and, maybe make opponents jump a bit.
"Girls by nature just seem to chatter more, I see no reason why that wouldn't carry over to a basketball game," LaRocque said. "They're just trying to create a verbal distraction. In girls basketball you don't have as many fluid ballhandlers, each team may have one or two but they don't have three or four or five. The goal is to rattle the ballhandler."
Western girls coach Mel Washington said the effectiveness of trying to rattle the ballhandler (or just their skulls) varies based on the team his girls are playing.
"If the point guard or wing is distracted easily, you go for that, you always try to find your opponents' weaknesses," Washington said. "There are only 10 girls out there on the court, and when you're on offense, you can't hide. You can't hide at all. If they have four girls that are strong and one that is weak, the coach always tries to find that weakness."
Like at a recent Green Valley-Centennial game, when one player broke into "SHOT! SHOT! SHOT! SHOT! SHOT!"
Of course, the poor girl who had that screamed into her face at point-blank range probably thought someone slipped through the school's metal detector -- after all, nobody could be shooting the basketball if she was dribbling it. It worked -- the ballhandler stumbled a bit.
LaRocque said the fact that girls are using the scream-in-the-face technique is actually another sign of how much more coachable girls are than boys.
"We teach our guys to talk -- we can't get them to keep their hands up much less talk," LaRocque said. "They're just more coachable. They talk more on defense. Guys think it's all about them."
Up to a week before this season started, LaRocque was slated to be Durango's girls coach as well as the boys. He said a friend told him he'd find coaching the girls relieving.
"He said you're going to love coaching the girls, because coaching girls now is like coaching guys was in the '70s," he said. "There's a lot to say for that. What happened in the '70s, the kids listened to you, it wasn't all about their parents, the And-1 tapes, fights in the NBA, it wasn't about all that. It was about learning basketball and doing your best."
LaRocque's got a point. The leading boys' scorer right now averages more than 30 points a game. The leading girls' scorer is at 18 points, with a teammate right behind her at 17.
When Centennial's girls' team (9-0) scored a state-record 109 points on Wednesday, the Bulldogs' leading scorer had 26 points, and nobody else was above 18. That's teamwork.
"ACK! ACK! ACK! ACK! ACK!"
So it's shrill. But if that's the sound of quality basketball, of which I've seen quite a bit the past two weeks, I'll take it.
On the other hand, if I drop my soda because I'm startled, well, don't say I didn't give fair warning.
archive
