Shooting in the gloaming

By Ed Piper

The local news note the other day (U.S. Women's Amateur match play ends in darkness, Aug. 9) reminded me of my own pulling my car up next to school basketball courts in my hometown and shooting baskets in the illumination of my headlights.

In the playoff Aug. 8 at San Diego Country Club, headlights and cellphone lights were used to help competitors move along. Eleven started the playoff for eight spots. Five were still left when darkness was finally called, competing for the remaining four spots. They had to start the next morning at 7 a.m. to eliminate one golfer.

In my hometown of Camarillo, I used to drive onto the courts and shoot at night. I did this a handful or more times. Maybe many times. Later in my shooting days, which are long past, I wasn't quite as mobile as I had been as a young pup, so I merely went for free-throw streak records.

It could be quite dizzying, looking up at the same basket from the same foul line, tens of times. I broke a hundred in a row, pushed it to 114 or 119.

You had to go run and get the ball after it went through the hoop each time. But the advantage was, there were no distractions, no one to bother you.

I did this at Camarillo Heights, I believe the second-oldest elementary school in Camarillo. It is in the Heights, which take you up Anacapa Drive from the main drag, Las Posas Road, up an ascent above the city.

That school was where my brother and I, newly moved to Camarillo from the only home I had known in Long Beach, were thrust onto the play field for youth baseball tryouts in April 1964. Our family had moved due to our dad's work transfer only two months before, on Tuesday, February 11. I remember the exact day we moved. We were allowed to miss school our travel day, Tuesday, and the next day, but our parents put their foot down and said Steve and I had to go to school Thursday, February 13. Our sister got a break, being older and in the eighth grade--she didn't have to enroll until Friday. Lucky girl.

Then, on the shooting frontier (this was long before there was a three-point arc--I could have been good behind that), at Monte Vista Intermediate School downtown, I got busted one time. I never did vandalism or drive untowardly, like on the grass fields to make doughnuts. But a Camarillo city policeman came and told me I had to leave. Oh, well.

I don't know how well I was shooting that night. Probably pretty well. One of my strengths as a basketball player was my ability to shoot outside. But again, I never made a three-pointer, because at that time they only existed in the ABA (now defunct) back then, and people thought they were kind of like a circus shot. They probably associated it with the ABA, which was a minor league compared with the established NBA, with inferior talent and unbalanced competition, although superstars like Dr. J and the Ice Man, George Gervin, played in the NBA. (That was because of money--they could get enormous contracts in the bidding wars between the two leagues.)