The East and West Aurora High School basketball teams have played 230 times, making it one of the most storied rivalries in the country. To many, this rivalry holds immense meaning and is the backdrop for some of the greatest moments in local history, tall tales told and retold for generations.
My grandfather, an East Aurora alumnus, brought me to witness the crosstown game for the first time in 1999, when I was twelve. I sat with him in the Girl’s Gym, the large section of bleachers behind the south basket. To my left, my grandfather. To my right, a stranger who had set his flat wool cap on the wooden seat between us.
What I remember most about that game was the bigness of it. The players were men in my eyes, each of them sinewy and strong and shining under the lights. I remember shuffling in from the cold, the wet slop from our shoes turning the gym lobby into a slipping hazard. I admired the presentation of the venue: seating on all four sides, an overhead scoreboard, the brass-heavy band rocking back and forth during the fight song, and my grandfather urging me to listen to the words. There was an eagerness in the crowd that had made it through another work week, finally sitting down for two hours and a chance at bliss.
I remember the crowd’s endless ascent into the dark ceiling. East Aurora High School’s gym is one of the great basketball cathedrals in the Midwest, and the lights over the stands dim just before starting lineups to cast a glow on what’s important: the game on that wood-planked floor with its vintage, unintimidating yet reverence-commanding logo of a black Tomcat at the center.
I have no artifacts from the game. Love and grandeur are great influencers of perception and memory, magnifying sights and sounds we want to believe are as big and wonderful as we recall. That night was a rite of passage on my personal hoops pilgrimage.
I also remember the fans, everyone dressed in black and red or red and blue, filing out the doors after the chaos settled—the result final, the exiting mass in threads and clusters of joy and grief as everyone departed.
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My grandfather always greeted us at the door wearing the traditional blue Cubs hat and clutching an Old Style. He was gentle and joyful, balancing his gig as the superintendent of a nursing home with evenings on the couch watching sports with my grandmother. He had nicknames for all his grandkids (e.g. Jake the Snake for yours truly) and spent weekends on various sidelines rooting for them. He was known for showing up whether we needed him or not, for celebrating the things and people he loved with such purity that it encouraged those around him to do the same. At the second East-West game in 1999, he showed up for me when I needed him. It was the only time I’d ever seen him angry.
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The missed free throw caromed off the rim and against the backboard softly enough that it hovered, helium-filled, just above the reach of the bodies clashing in a violent scrum at the blocks of the lane. As competing players fought with elbows and hips to gain position, East Aurora’s quick and lanky leading scorer snuck behind the chaos, leaped toward the rim, and snatched the ball from suspension. He was ever aware of the situation: less than five seconds remained in the game, and his team trailed by one point. He pushed the ball up the left side of the court in a chase, drawing an anticipatory hum from the slowly standing crowd. The stage was set for the spectacular.
With less than one second remaining, from just two steps inside the three-point line, he leaped again, swiftly moved the ball from his hip to his fingertips, and let it float toward the basket. The shot sank to the bottom of the net at the buzzer like a detonator, sending half the spectators collapsing back into their seats while freeing the other half to storm the court in a billowing frenzy.
East had bested West. After the final shot, l I rose to celebrate but in doing so knocked the stranger’s cap into the gap beneath our seats and watched it disappear into the dark below. I was just twelve years old at the time. The stranger turned to me and demanded to know what the hell my problem was. My grandfather heard him and quickly came to my defense, daring the man to talk to his grandson like that again. I huddled between the men’s midsections, the zippers of their winter coats brushing across either side of my face as they settled a quick but hot exchange. East High students celebrated on the floor as West High’s supporters slumped toward the exits, some clutching their heads in disbelief. I felt protected, in awe of quick but hot exchange.
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I eventually played in the East Aurora gym for a high school down the road; our crowd was sparser than those for the crosstown rivalry, but it was nonetheless enchanting. I later coached on that floor and many others, my grandparents showing up for games they highlighted on the schedule taped to their fridge. After one game, my grandfather likened my team’s defense to Ernie Kivisto’s (a legendary East Aurora coach whose son happened to coach in that ’99 game). It was an embellishment I accepted.
A few years after I quit coaching and moved to the East Coast, my grandfather’s health deteriorated. He was put on dialysis and told to ditch the beer as he slowly became a shadow of the man I knew. He’d lost a daughter and so much of the comfort he enjoyed for so long, and the dark cloud of his inevitable absence began a slow roll over the horizon.
Witnessing a loved one fade to death is like peeking into an aging star’s green room on their final tour as they’re stripped of their mystique. Pain and exhaustion are evident, and there is no performance to hide the decay borne by decades of their old behavior. As my grandfather’s health waned, the dynamic between parent and child shifted. My mother and uncles worked to guide their once-stable guardian toward decisions that would improve his quality of life. There were so many attributes I didn’t know of my grandfather—his stubbornness, his fear of operating outside of routine, which caused stress for those he loved. They often perceived his refusal of canes and resistance to therapy as a personal slight––as giving up. Had the man who stood up for me, who showed up for everybody his entire life, lost his fight, or had I spent a lifetime misperceiving him?
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I recently found a current picture of the kid who made that buzzer beater, now forty years old. He is an unassuming former star, average in height and stature, with patches of gray in his beard. Looking at the photo, I wondered how often, in those hopeful moments of youthful herodom, he and his friends—many of whom played their last organized games as teenagers—had absorbed the projected expectations of others, as most of us have and will until death. I wondered how it affected them, if they felt they have fallen short. I wondered if they retained the earned glory in those stories now told at public parks and gyms around the city. I hope they see themselves in that glorious light, at least occasionally.
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My grandfather fell in his room, which caused brain damage he couldn’t recover from. The event unearthed laments and regrets on his behalf, but there was more to admire. In 2016, he defiantly celebrated the Cubs’ World Series victory with his sons at a local pub. In 2018, he used a cane to walk down the aisle at my wedding. What do we know of how people fight, or when, or for whom? Loved ones are often left in a grieving, resentful wake, when choices are made against hope. Loss is a nuanced teacher of unpredictable lessons.
At my grandfather’s memorial service, my best friend brought a small cooler filled with two Old Styles, which we drank in the parking lot as family and friends funneled past us. I watched people shuffle into the funeral home draped in Cubs shirts and jerseys, some affixing Cubs pins to the traditional funerary black suits and dresses. Everyone was smiling and hugging, telling stories. I told the one about the East-West game, and a family friend remembered it. The buzzer beater? Incredible.
And so there we were, talking about those moments that make men into giants and boys into heroes. Finally, the pastor concluded a prayer, and the attendees sang, “Go Cubs Go,” a fight song of sorts. The crowd departed, sporting the colors that represented a man they loved, a great mix of joy and grief heading home. ◆
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