The State B's

 

STATE B WEEKENDS

I grew up in Alexandria, a town of about 600 souls and a whole lot of heart. Our school — Hanson Independent No. 40 — pulled together the kids from the Alexandriia Beavers, Farmer Orioles and Fulton Pirates. We were the Hanson Beavers because we were Hanson County, and Alexandria was the county seat. In a small school, you didn’t specialize. You played everything. I suited up for football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and track in the spring. Baseball wasn’t a school sport yet, so summer meant the city team, dusty diamonds, and long evenings with friends.

But if you ask me what really defined high school, it wasn’t prom or graduation. It was the State B Basketball Tournament.

For small schools, the State B’s were the mountaintop — the top eight teams in the whole state, the ones who survived districts and regionals. Back then there were only two classes -- Class A (the BIG schools) and Class B (everyone else, us small schools). Making it to the Sioux Falls Arena was like stepping into the big leagues. If you weren’t there as a player or a cheerleader, the next best thing was going as an upperclassman who had earned the right by seniority. And believe me, we took that privilege seriously.

My first State B as a junior, a bunch of us stayed with a relative just outside Sioux Falls. We packed a case or two of Budweiser — because that’s what seventeen‑year‑olds with more confidence than sense did — and when we hit the Arena on Thursday, the fun began. Every night was a mix of basketball, beer, and figuring out which party we could crash. At some point — junior year or senior year, the memory’s foggy — we decided we were sophisticated enough to smoke pipes. Not those pipes. Just regular old tobacco pipes, because apparently we thought we were professors.

Now, my relatives didn’t condone underage drinking, and we did our best to hide it. We kept the beer tucked away, acted casual, and pretended the pipes made us look distinguished. Looking back, I’m sure they suspected what we were up to. They just let us have our weekend of feeling grown‑up, as long as we didn’t do anything stupid.

Senior year we stayed with a different relative, and this time we came prepared: a case of quart bottles. We made the first round games — four in one day — but the consolation games the next afternoon didn’t stand a chance against our priorities. Who cared about losers? We went to the night games on Friday and Saturday, including the championship, because that’s where the electricity was.

The details blur now — who won, who we ran into, which parties we found — but the feeling remains sharp. Freedom. Friendship. The sense that for three days in Sioux Falls, we were part of something bigger than ourselves.

Those State B weekends weren’t just about basketball. They were about growing up.