2022 HOMETOWN HEROES MAGAZINE

2022 Hometown HEROES Magazine LINCOLN DAILY NEWS May / June 2022 Page 39 theme songs. Veterans in the gymnasium were encouraged to stand for branch theme. The shenanigans began at the tip off, when the ref faked the tip and handed the ball over to a WLB player to get the game started. While the score is of little consequence in these games (we’ll explain that later), it was clear from the get-go that the firefighters were going down. The kids ran circles around them, stole the ball from their grasp, made basket after basket and the best thing the firefighters could do was look pretty out there on the court. Oh, they tried, and they did score from time to time, but it was easy to see that WLB would take the first game handsdown. Of course it didn’t hurt that the kids got fouls and free throws they probably didn’t earn. Baskets went for more points than they were normally worth, and the refs had a tendency to clear the field and let young players have the basket all to themselves from time to time. The WLB teams also had a ringer. While seventh and eighth graders are typically 11, 12, maybe 13 years old, it was seven–year-old Nolan Neitzel (and a half he tells us) that came to the floor from time to time with impressive Continue 8