Our son at college let us know last week he had missed four of his classes. It's OK this time, though. It's March, and you can hear the sound of basketballs.
A campus organization had decided to offer two tickets to the Duke-Carolina game to the winners of a marathon dribbling contest on the UNC campus. My son, Mac, a sophomore and certainly among the greatest of basketball fans, said some of his friends urged him to give it a try.
So at 4 p.m. on the Thursday before the Sunday game, he and a small group began to dribble.
Each hour, they had five minutes to eat and take care of necessaries. Then, they were back to it. After a few hours one had enough and picked up, while another's ball bounced the wrong way and he was out.
The rest, including our son, dribbled into the evening Thursday and on into the overnight.
They dribbled through the thunderstorms that rolled across the state — although the rain forced them inside. And as the sun rose Friday, they dribbled into the morning. This is when some of those classes were missed.
During the day, Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams came by for the traditional Carolina pep rally. To while away the hours, the dribblers — four of them left now and getting to know each other pretty well — had composed a song for Williams, urging him to get tickets for all of them instead of just two.
They sang it for him to the rhythm of their basketballs, dribbled in unison. Mac said Coach appreciated it, too. But he offered no tickets.
Reporters and photographers came by, friends, and the curious watched, but as Friday wore down, the dribblers did, too. Finally they reached the approximate time of the world record for continuous dribbling — 26 hours, 40 minutes.
Mac said by the time he matched the record he had begun to see faces of cartoon characters on his basketball. He decided to call his number. So as the sun set behind the Bell Tower nearby, he picked up his dribble.
It turned out that the remaining three dribblers continued on until they passed the 28-hour mark and then, almost unthinkably, one of the boys dribbled it off his foot. The contest for the two tickets had ended.
By that time our son had long since been back at the dorm, asleep, oblivious to the television that blared and surely to the dreams of bouncing basketballs.
This year is the 50th anniversary of UNC's first national championship season in basketball. I remember watching that first statewide basketball telecast — UNC vs. Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain — as a third-grader in 1957. I've been a fan ever since and watched countless games since as have so many in our state.
Basketball has simply always been a part of our landscape. And I guess that's why I was so taken with my son's exploits with the roundball this season. He wasn't going to square off in Carolina Blue against the Blue Devils or anything like that, but in a way matched by few other Tar Heels, he was part of it all this year. And that's made us a part of it, too.
I'm also sure that as those dribblers were bouncing out of their comfort zone, they learned a few things about themselves, their friends and the passing of time.
Sometimes you have to miss a few classes to learn about those things — especially at college, especially in March at Carolina.
Al Clark is executive editor of The Daily Reflector. Tell him what you think at 252-329-9560 or at aclark@coxnc.com.
