North
Dakota State University -- NDSU Agriculture
Communication7 Morrill Hall, Fargo ND, 58105-5655, Tel: 701-231-7881, Fax: 701-231-7044
agcomm@ndsuext.nodak.edu
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North
Dakota State University -- NDSU Agriculture
Communication 7 Morrill Hall, Fargo ND, 58105-5655, Tel: 701-231-7881, Fax: 701-231-7044 agcomm@ndsuext.nodak.edu |
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May 29, 2003
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Plains Folk: Hoops
"It was a long shot for me to make it here," writes Jeff Boschee from Lawrence, Kansas, at the close of his college basketball career. "But I did." The former Valley City Hi-Liner, two-time Mr. Basketball of North Dakota, holder of the 3-point shooting record at the University of Kansas, has written a book entitled Long Shot: Beating the Odds to Live a Jayhawk Dream. "Written," that is, in the fashion of celebrities, with a sports writer named Mark Horvath setting down the words. Long shot? Not really. You can’t say Valley City is off the beaten path. The Hi-Liners were Class A and played in the state tournament. Jeff’s elder brother was a college ballplayer. Besides that, his parents hauled him around with traveling teams since about the first day he could tie his sneakers, supported him to play AAU ball, and sent him to high-profile basketball summer camps. It’s no particular long shot for a kid from Valley City to make it big in Division I basketball. It’s just that there are only a few blue-chip players from a state with so few people. The long shot is for any kid, from anywhere, to realize his fondest dreams and achieve as much as has Boschee. I’m not sure his book will be counted among his achievements, but I’ll get to that later. There are some good moments in the book. You won’t find out much about the Kansas Jayhawks that you don’t know from watching them on television. You will find out that before the end of his freshman year at KU, Boschee already was suffering from "basketball burnout," from overindulgence in a game he says was "strangling" him. You’ll learn that he hated to play in Gallgher-Iba Hall of Stillwater and loved Allen Fieldhouse--was "awestruck" at first sight of it, sentimental on departure. You’ll read his own explanation of why, besides that head-shaving habit, people thought he was conceited. "I don’t open up to people easily," Boschee explains, "and I have trouble talking with new people." So, was his apparent diffidence just a matter of North Dakota reticence? Maybe, although it’s possible to be both shy and big-headed. If you were among the 14,000 who gave Boschee a standing ovation when the Jayhawks played the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, however, take heart. The guy’s OK. He says North Dakotans are "decent, positive and honest," and likens them to people from Emporia, Lindsborg, and Horton in Kansas. "I’m a North Dakotan by birth, a Kansas Jayhawk by good fortune and proud to be both things," he writes. More important, he’s still carrying around some prairie values. He worries that AAU ball is undermining character, community, and team play. "What’s best for me seems to be what I hear many kids say," Boschee mourns. He wants to be a coach, he says, of the kind who takes a personal interest in his charges and teaches selfless teamwork over individual showmanship. It would have been better, though, to write the book later. Reviewers have taken some cheap shots at the book, which I won’t, out of respect for the accomplishments and sentiments of its principal. I will say, the ghost-writer should have done better fact-checking, and Coach Roy Williams, who provided a foreword, writes like a C student in freshman comp. If you want a basketball book with North Dakota roots, check out Sacred Hoops, by Phil Jackson. If you want a KU book, check out Coach Phog Allen’s Sports Stories. ### Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, isern@plainsfolk.com
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