My dad played forward for Drumright, my mom for Indianola, she in that era when half the team played on one end of the court and the other on the other. As if women could only cross certain lines.
So it only made sense that, when they married and moved to Tulsa in the early sixties, they’d buy season tickets to University of Tulsa basketball. (By 1965, they could have bought them to Oral Roberts University, which would have made no sense.) Then, TU was playing under coach Joe Swank. In 1969, Ken Hayes took over and the level of play improved due to the likes of Steve Bracey and Willie Biles, Ken “Grasshopper” Smith and Dana Lewis. (That Lewis began his college career at ORU before transferring across town was icing on the cake.)
The games were played at the Fairgrounds Pavilion, which also hosted rodeo and dressage competition, and livestock events in October. It was a weird place to watch basketball. (And an even weirder one to see a rock show, which is where I found myself during a Nine Inch Nails tour, standing at a urinal, sandwiched by Marilyn Manson and The Enigma, a walking puzzle piece in only a thong.) But, to a pre-teen, the spectacle was outrageous.
My parents liked to arrive early and had seats behind the bench, which they would keep until TU moved into the Reynolds Center. I would go stand in the empty space behind the goal and wait for the players to appear. Some of them wore great floor-length coats, platform shoes (in stark relief of the white Converse they’d soon lace up) and brimmed fedoras with peacock feathers stuck in them. The pep band played renditions of “Light My Fire” and “The Horse.” Cigarette smoke rose foglike into the rafters.
TU was good but the Missouri Valley was better. There was no conference tournament in those days. The March Madness bracket you bungle every year had slots for only 32 teams. Our season ended well before spring break.
The Golden Years