DC’s Diamond Notes – Will Basketball Memories Get Repeated In Playoffs

Feb 28

Dwight Cadwell-NSO

When I was a young boy growing up in the middle of Cloquet, I remember walking to the Cloquet Middle School (then the Junior High School), why the name change is beyond me, anyways walking to the school early just to find a place to sit to watch a basketball game. With names like Sprenger, and Rodd, Norgren, Kolodge, Krezinski, Isle, and many more taking on the likes of McHale, Ujdur, Retica and such, it was a packed house nearly each and every night.

The main floor of the middle school had bleaches on the east end of the gym, as well as an upper balcony in the east end which is now used as a recreational center. The East Balcony shows no signs of what once held a full gymnasium. The Cloquet middle school also had the soft padded seats in the north balcony as well as the hard old wooden bleaches that we all sat upon.

The memories of watching every home game with such filled gyms, the noise, the excitement, the aura of something big, was relived this year a few times as I was broadcasting games for WKLK and WMOZ radio. Two games come to mind this season, the Moose Lake-Willow River boy’s game against the Esko Eskomos, a meeting where one team was undefeated, the other looking to grab first place in the conference standings played an epic battle before a full house at Esko High School.

The noise, the excitement, the crowds, the thralls over people cheering on their teams was breathtaking. This was something that I had not seen in several years. I have been broadcasting games for a long time and have seen filled gym’s, seen them loud and excited, but not like that Moose Lake-Willow River versus Esko game this season. That was until a week or so later when the Esko girls hosted the Barnum girls in a Polar League battle.

The excitement was in the air as two undefeated teams were meeting for their only game of the year. The undefeated and state ranked Esko Eskomos and the defending state champions of Class A, the Barnum Bombers would meet for the top spot in the Polar League. The gym was filled, maybe over filled, Esko brought in portable bleachers at both ends of the floor, but it wasn’t enough as this was a standing room only crowd that came to watch this girl’s battle.

Broadcasting the contest with people so close, having to stand to see the action, the home fans cheering as Esko won the game and the Barnum faithful never giving up on their team, showed me and reminded me of what was once the excitement when I was a kid growing up in Cloquet. As a former coach of basketball and now broadcaster and writer of sports, I love to see the game being played. It didn’t matter to me which team won as both schools playing that night are special to me, over the years friendships with coaches and players as well as fans have made it an awesome experience.

Growing up in an era where high school sporting events were the excitement of the week, it was nice to relive that feeling again, as I had when I was a kid. Today’s world there are so many things going on that take peoples time and money, there are so many things that drive us away from supporting the school activities of our communities. It’s not that we don’t want to; it’s the demands of today society that doesn’t always afford us that luxury. All I can say was for two nights this winter it was not only exciting but it relived memories of basketball.

With high school basketball playoffs beginning this week, one can only hope this type of experience will get repeated down the winding road that leads to the next state champion.

Dwight Cadwell can be reached at dwight@northlandsportsonline.com