With 16 seconds remaining, the score is tied in the state Class 3A semifinal basketball game: St. Pete Catholic 40, Boca Raton St. Andrews 40.
SPC has possession. In the time-out huddle, coach Mike Moran outlines a strategy, hollering over the din at the Lakeland Center. His star, Aaron Holmes, would ordinarily be the guy to take the last shot, but he fouled out with five minutes to play. Center Ed Rolax, the team's second leading scorer, has been similarly disqualified.
Moran points at a 5-foot-10, poofy-haired senior with a headband and blood oozing under bandage strips on his cheek. At 10 seconds, he tells him, make a move and win this thing.
I know the kid. Known him since he was 3 years old. The coach has allowed me to follow the team's state championship bid up close — in the locker room, sitting on the bench, crowding into the huddle during timeouts — so I'm able to look right into Grady Jorgensen's eyes. They're calm. That's good.
But Moran knows, his teammates know, I know and Grady knows that this is not his usual role. He's a hustler, a scrapper, the team's best defensive player, a streaky outside shooter (who hasn't shot well today, in the cavernous Center). Grady is not a one-on-one marvel, the kind of player who routinely blows by opponents with a dazzling crossover dribble to pull up for a jump shot with guys draped all over him. Moran would love to have one of those playmakers right now, but he's sitting on the bench with five fouls.
The buzzer sounds, the team breaks the huddle, and the ball is passed inbounds. After a couple of passes, Moran points urgently at Grady, telling the team to get him the ball. He receives it not far from the half-court line, puts down a dribble, drops his body low and crosses over to his left. The large contingent of St. Pete Catholic backers in the stands let out a deafening roar.
Grady Jorgensen was a skinny, tow-headed little kid when I started playing on a men's league team with his dad, Bob. We became close friends, and so did our families.
Along with playing ball as often as I could, I coached my son Dan in youth leagues. When Dan was in eighth grade — his last year in organized ball, it would turn out — I had a team woefully short on talent.
So I called Bob and asked about getting Grady on my roster, and Bob agreed to schlep his oldest son down from Seminole as often as necessary. Grady was a seventh grader, still skinny and tow-headed, but quick and tenacious. He wasn't going to get us 20 points a game — maybe six or seven — but I was glad to have him.
I stopped coaching after Dan stopped playing. During my 10-year tenure on the bench, I also helped out for a year at St. Pete Catholic, as an assistant to J.V. coach Ken Heretick.
I've been an avid SPC supporter since, and when Grady joined the team, that just intensified my interest. One of my favorite things about having coached youth-league ball has been watching the varsity careers of kids I worked with. Of course, Grady tops that list.
He's also the last. Now that he and a couple of other SPC guys, Anthony Janicki and Trent Williamson, have ended their careers, I have no one left to follow. It's kind of bittersweet.
This was St. Pete Catholic's year. The team had made the two previous state Final Fours, losing in the semifinals each time. They were battle-tested, undaunted by the surroundings, confident. Plus, they'd won two overtime contests to get to Lakeland.
The day before the game, the St. Pete Times ran a feature on Grady. Talked about how other teams' fans teased him about his hair, called him Shirley Temple. Talked about his toughness, how he had a bit of a mean streak.
I knew about that first-hand. One day, when Grady was probably a freshman, Bob and I and Vince, another guy from our adult-league team, played the kids in a game of three-on-three out on the street in front of the Jorgensens' house. The dads were puttin' a pretty good whuppin' on the kids, and talking smack to boot. I got the ball and drove to the hoop. Grady ran over and knocked me hard to the pavement. Bob said, "Hey, don't kill Mr. Snider." But he was smiling. I was too.
You know that feeling you get before the Bucs attempt a last-second field goal, or your favorite club is going for the win in the final seconds? That anxious tingle, the shortness of breath? Well, when you personally know the player, when you coached him, multiply the feeing by googol.
And so it was with me when Grady went for the game winner. As he veered to his left, an opponent jumped in his way and bumped him. "Foul!" I screamed in my head, but knew the refs probably wouldn't let the game end at the free-throw line.
The ball came briefly loose, Grady scrambled to recover it, then charged hard toward the goal. He got bumped again, but continued his dribble. Cut off near the foul line, he started to spin back to his right for the jumper.
Here it comes, I thought. Just as Grady started to rise, a St. Andrews kid shot through and stole the ball, then blasted down the court with about three seconds left. No, no, don't let it end like this! I thought, frantic.
Fortunately, a St. Pete Catholic player stole the ball back. The game went into overtime. But, playing undermanned, SPC went down 53-42.
In the cold concrete of the locker room, kids sat on chairs wearing sad, vacant stares. Moran, his eyes misty, tried to console his team, and put most of the blame on himself.
Walking out of the building, I put my arm around Grady's shoulders and said "You played a helluva game." "No I didn't," he murmured back. What could I say to that? Hitting the last-second shot in the state semi would have been the defining highlight of his career. Instead, the ball got stripped away.
I wanted to tell him that the initial sting would go away quickly, and that even decades later, amid the occasional twinge of regret over the loss, he'd look back and be proud that he'd put in all the hard work, been part of a successful team, and had the coach call his number in the most crucial of circumstances.
But I didn't. I'd experienced similar disappointments as a high school and college athlete — and still find myself reliving them from time to time — but somehow, in a weird way, they've become good memories. Trudging toward the bus was not the time to share this with Grady, though. It was something he'd have to discover for himself.
This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2006.