A little unfortunate, but it’s a game that needs to stay

Last Tuesday’s gathering in The Castle between fans of cross-state rivals Clinton County and Pickett County was good for both programs, and both communities.

At least for just over 63 minutes of good basketball action.

Beginning with the girls’ game, Clinton County fans spent 32 minutes cheering their Lady Dawgs on as they battled a very nice, hard-hitting and well-coached Lady Bobcat squad.

Wasn’t much of a contest, frankly, but at the same time, the performance of our Lady Dawgs against a clearly more talented Lady Bobcat squad gave glimpses of truth toward what I’ve been saying here for awhile – our girls are starting to get it.

Despite finishing with a running clock and eventually taking it on the chin in the form of a 70-23 whooping, Clinton County fans, and players, seemed to realize that the better team had won – and were leaving with an impressive 15-0 season record still intact.

Then we sat back down for boys’ action.

High spirited, hard fought, lots of cheering and a pretty good called game by the officials for the most part (says here, apparently says differently by some others), the game was an up and down, back and forth contest that saw the Bulldogs in control for the most part.

Although the Dawgs were clearly the better team in this season, the Bobcats were to be commended in that they never gave up the hopes of bouncing back and overtaking Clinton County – as they did threaten to do several times down the stretch.

But Clinton County remained in control of the lead, and Pickett County chose to commit fouls down the stretch in a failed attempt to stop the action and turn things around.

That’s when it all went down the tubes, so to speak, at least briefly.

Fouls got rough, tempers flared and then came the cheap shot that resulted in benches clearing, fans screaming and even law enforcement reportedly accusing officials of losing control.

An ejection of a Bobcat followed, a couple of technical fouls, some coaches finger pointing at each other and after awhile, we played those final 15 seconds out and everyone shook hands and the Dawgs added a nice double-digit win (72-61) to this year’s record.

It really wasn’t that big of a deal, or at least it wasn’t allowed to manifest into that big of a deal, thanks to the law enforcement, game officials and coaches who were able to get a hold of the players and diffuse the situation before it got worse.

Hey, we’re dealing with 16, 17 and 18 year-old males in a contact sporting event here. Believe me, in the past nearly four decades of covering these contests, I’ve seen worse – a lot worse.

When it was all said and done, fans began to intermingle on the floor and visit – many are kin, either by blood or marriage, who have crossed the state line and now live just a few miles apart. Some are old friends who played ball against each other in seasons past, others are business acquaintances. Personally, I fit all of those categories and yes, I’ll even claim to being half Pickett Countian – my Mom was always proud of her Lady Bobcat roundball days.

After I left the floor, finished with some visiting of folk from both sides, and began to leave the parking lot, I heard WANY broadcaster Sid Scott II note that perhaps people were hanging out in the gym later than usual for the wrong reasons. Sorry Sid, from my vantage point of talking and laughing with fans from both sides on my way out, that wasn’t what was happening.

Game was over, cooler heads prevailed, and hopefully, our school officials will be able to show the public that they too can demonstrate that cooler heads can prevail when it comes time to put together the 2017-18 basketball schedule.

Clinton County needs this game.

Pickett County needs this game.

Both the schools, and the communities and the fans.

Big gate, big action, good lessons for the players and nice chance to see some old friends and kin we don’t get to see as often as we might like.

Yep, we had a little fisticuff at the end – and unlike the outlook of many school officials when they view this in our current day and age, turned out it wasn’t that big a deal.

Don’t let it become more than it was.

I’ll see you in the gym!