Well, now I'm a collegiate athlete, 15 years too late. My church team, Crossroads Christian, who I've written about before, played Messenger Christian College Friday night. The game was official- Messenger's final opponent, St. Louis Something or Another, had some major illness or something like that or tragedy or something, so we ended up on Messenger's schedule as a replacement.

Those of you who know me know that I am NOT a great athlete. I'm decent- which means that I can play every game out there well enough to look like I am a good athlete- baseball, softball, basketball, football (TOUCH- I'm made of tinfoil), bowling, tennis, lawn darts, curling, Scottish Log Tossing, the Luge, Ice Hockey, Field Hockey, Soccer, the Pole Vault, Thoroughbred Racing, Stock Car Driving, Crew Team (Rowing), Yachting, Arm Wrestling, Thumb Wrestling, Greco-Roman Wrestling, Sumo Wrestling, Professional Wrestling (ring-name: Ferret of Doom), Kung Fu, Figure Skating, Gymnastics, Rock Climbing, Paintball, Pinball, Tetherball, Raquetball, Volleyball, Rugby, mountain biking, hiking, jogging, running, speedwalking, rock-paper-scissors, and Cage fighting.

But I was never even remotely able to consider a college career in anything- I was a pretty good ballplayer my freshman year, but between my 9th and 10th grade basketball seasons, I grew six inches from 5'10" to 6'4", and I never recovered. I completely lost the ability to walk in a straight line, much less run up and down a court. It took me six years until my junior year in college to have any co-ordination, by which time I'd gained 35 pounds and lost any interest in competing.

So when the opportunity came to play in my first ever collegiate game, we jumped at the chance. Not a single player on our team played collegiate ball of any kind, although Jacob had numerous offers to play football.

Messenger, as a team, is roughly on par in terms of talent and skill level as an average 4A basketball team with no aspirations to win state. They're a bunch of non-scholarship kids playing ball as they learn their field- in most cases, ministry and missionary training. They play a tough schedule of larger universities like Avila College (who gave Pitt State a TOUGH game earlier in the year) and they hadn't had much success. So even though they're not a GREAT college team, they're still half our age; in shape, faster, and they actually had a defense and offensive scheme.

It was a full 40 minute game, replete with the shot-clock, 3 collegiate officials (including my uncle Warren Turner, who is MSSU's baseball coach), 30 second timeouts, full time outs, announcers, black-out lights, musical introductions, cheerleaders, PAID admission, the whole nine yards. It was AWESOME. It was the first time I'd even been introduced in the starting lineup for anything. I loved it.

We got the scat knocked out of us, 69-37.

We played them tight, down 13 at the half after Messenger hit 2 three-pointers in the last 30 seconds of the first half. As we trudged our way to our locker room (WE HAD A LOCKER ROOM! WITH ONE FUNCTIONING URINAL! WOO HOO!), I paused to look up into the stands at my wife Natalie. She was just grinning at me, either because she was proud of me, or because she knew I was on the verge of having an embolism. Either way, I winked at her as I knocked back about five puffs of my inhaler and plopped down on my seat.

We talked strategy, plans, schemes, and ideas. It didn't matter, we might as well have been drawing cartoon characters on the board. We were going to lose and we knew it, we just wanted to have fun and represent ourselves, our church, and our families well. And we did. We just didn't have the legs. We'd get a rebound, but we'd have spent all our energy going up for it. So when we went to jump again, we just kinda hovered an inch above the ground. It was ugly.

Messenger's inside game was non-existent- but they just smoked us from 3 point land and fast break point. If you read my blogs earlier this year about our team, my main concern was the fact that we have ZERO guardplay. None. Nobody can handle the ball at all. So they came out in a relatively agressive 1-3-1 trap zone, which of course, we could do nothing against, so we just took turns turning the ball over and failing to hustle back on defense to guard against the fast break. When they saw we couldn't handle pressure, they really tightened the screws and came out in a half court man, which stifled us unless we were able to score on penetration (which I did twice) or firing up off-balance shots and cleaning up the boards (which Jacob and Chad Bay did.) We simply were too slow to keep them from launching the three, they ended up with 8 for the game. Argh.

Our legs finally gave out with about six minutes remaining on the clock- a 16 point lead for them became 30 in a span of just over 3 minutes as we turned it over about 10000 times in a row, which they converted on.

I spent the last three minutes on the bench after I went to jump for an entry pass from Tracy Rowe, our minister, but I never left the ground. My knee buckled and I hurt my back on the same play, so I sat down. It was okay- I was exhausted and thrilled at the same time.

Messenger got a nice win to end their season with- the student body that was there had fun cheering, and the paid attendance of 104 got their money's worth, and we got a nice dinner at Cracker Barrel following the slaughter- er, game. When I got home, I took a 45 minute bath in the jacuzzi and popped 3 Advils to ease my pain.

Saturday morning, I rushed to the Conoco and bought a Joplin Globe. There, I got to see something I never thought I would see- my name in a box score under COLLEGE BASKETBALL. Chad Fletcher, 4 points. I also had about 10 rebounds and 4 assists, and I nearly killed a kid (seriously- he was out of control coming down the lane and as he passed the ball, I put my arms up to defend myself- I guess I pushed a little DOWN on him and he fell headfirst onto the court. He laid there for nearly a minute, groaning.)

We told them we'd play them again for an exhibition game next year- they don't lose a single player for next season, and now we know their game (heh,heh). We'd also like to challenge KU. And the San Antonio Spurs.

Because by golly, we're college athletes.