I'm not a basketball fan but I do know enough about the college game to know that Indiana U is a traditional power. But last Thursday night, they got their Hoosiers handed to them by the mighty Gaels of Saint Mary's College in the NCAA tournament, and I wouldn't even be talking about it, except for the fact that the two best Indiana people in uniform that night were not on your scorecard!
Indiana was ranked 12th in the nation before that loss, but by now everyone in the world with a TV has seen the heroics performed by Nathan Paris and Cassidy Cerny. You see, what happened was, the basketball got stuck between the backboard and the shot clock, some 13 feet in the air, and nothing was going to happen unless that ball was retrieved.
They tried hollering at it, poking at it with a broom handle, and asking 6' 10" Saint Mary's center Matthias Tass to reach up and grab that thang, and nothing worked.
Paris, a senior cheerleader from Floyds Knobs, Ind. (add that to the list of towns we have to visit someday!) offered to get on a folding chair to go for the ball, but the refs nixed that as being too risky
So Nathan said, I have an idea! I'll just lift my cheer partner Cassidy (a sophomore from Avon, Indiana) skyward, as we often do during football and basketball games, and let's see if she can reach it...
Too bad it was the worst game of the year for Indiana, but because of our hypermedia world, Mr Paris and Ms Cerny had 24 hours of fame that they certainly didn't expect when they put on their socks Thursday afternoon!
And they can look forward to sharing their time in the sun with their children and grandchildren in the years down the road, as part of the innumerable "Whatever Happened To...?" stories we'll see!
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