The Denver Chronicles: Part I

…and here we go again. 

It all started in the Spring of 2003. What began as a mechanism for a bunch of friends, getting older and growing up to keep in touch and visit with one another has blossomed into an annual tradition and “event”. As my friends and I began to leave our surrogate home in Gainesville, Florida, we started losing touch. One moved to Utah, another departed for New Mexico, and yet another for San Diego. Until that Spring, we were limited to e-mails, the occasional phone call and the annual “Holiday letters” (which are dreadful, by the way…). One of the crew, we’ll call him “Dean”, decided to invite everyone to his place in Salt Lake City, Utah for the weekend for a visit. He planned it all out that we’d buy some tickets for the opening round games being played on campus at the University of Utah and on the off day, we’d go skiing, have a nice dinner and check out the “nightlife’ in Utah. We all signed on and did it with the blessing of Dean’s new wife. We caught some quality games that weekend, but one game completely altered the course of our lives forever.

#2 Arizona vs. #7 Gonzaga

If you don’t recall this game, we have come to know it as the “Luke Walton” game. Double overtime, Arizona wins as Gonzaga guard Blake Stepp misses a three pointer at the buzzer. This game had everything… a growing buzz from the crowd as the rallied behind the underdog Zags… a Bill Walton sighting in the stands… star players stepping up and hitting big shots when it counted… great basketball play (Arizona’s offense running through Luke Walton in the post at the end of the game was fantastic)… and all of us screaming our heads off and having a blast.

This was our gateway drug and we were hooked.

After that game and that weekend, we vowed that no matter what happened and what developments came in our lives, that we would always attend the tournament opening rounds in the place of our choice (TBD a year ahead of time). Some of us have to miss a year here and there (work commitments, children, etc…), but most of the group has vowed to make the trip and it’s special every time. As we get older and our lives change, staying in touch becomes more and more important and the buzz of NCAA opening weekend means much more to me these days.

The past 5 years, we’ve attended the opening rounds in Salt Lake City in 2003, Orlando in 2004, Austin, TX in 2005 (this was a Sweet 16- we couldn’t get tickets to the openers this year), Salt Lake again in 2006, and New Orleans in 2007. This year, we head to Denver.

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