Thoughts from Egypt by Michael Beans

I was talking to my good friend Rich Young the other day about the MAUC Basketball Tournament, the greatest sporting event of the year. We were discussing his latest 10 year recap article when he said, “Hey Mike, I think it would be cool if you wrote an article for the tournament.” Obviously I couldn’t resist having my name stamped on the most famous blog in Lincoln Nebraska.

This tournament has meant so much to me for just about my entire life. This is the first year that I haven’t been there since the 4th grade. I remember bits and pieces of my childhood but the most vivid things that I can remember happened at tournament. The memory that sticks out the most, and I’m sorry if this hurts people, when Gabe Cuny hit a bench side three pointer at the buzzer in the CVA gym against Minnetonka. I was sitting in the third row of bleachers at CVA and I jumped over the people in the first two rows and stormed the court. It’s moments like that that you’ll never forget.

I want to name a couple of things that I learned from this tournament. The first thing is how to deal with officials. I’m sorry but I have to say this. The worst officials I’ve ever had in my life, ref the Union tournament. And not only because of the fouls that I didn’t get, it was the fouls I committed that didn’t get called. I can remember countless times that I slapped someone, you know, the kind that the whole gym hears, and I didn’t get called for it. That being said it was a great character building opportunity for me. My Dad always did a great job of telling us to just play our game. The refs are going to make their calls no matter what we do. That being said, I was probably a refs worst nightmare in high school and I’ll admit it. I’m not proud of it but I can’t deny it. Nobody is perfect and we need to remember that especially as athletes. When we make 100% of our shots, we can expect them to make 100% of their calls. 

The next thing I learned was respect for other players. I know there were a lot of people that didn’t care for me in high school and I’m sure there are still some that don’t. But ask anyone who actually tried to get to know me off the court and you’ll find that I’m really not that bad ha ha. A good example would be Chavez Morris. I love that kid. We were never really friends outside of tournament but whenever we played each other I loved it. Number one because he was such a good player and I love a good challenge, and number two was because no matter what happened during the game, we were still going to be cool after it. It’s the coolest thing to see two very competitive players that obviously want to win, but don’t let that get in the way of what’s really important which is friendship.

And the last thing that tournament taught me was teamwork. I didn’t win 4 championships in a row; Campion won 4 championships in a row. To be honest I didn’t even score a single point in the first one I won. I had so many good teammates during my 4 years at Campion and I owe all those championships to them. My best friends are the ones that I played ball with. One of them, Alex Acton, I have been playing with since we were in diapers. Campion has always had a team first attitude and don’t think it should be done any other way. When you have 5 players on the floor that are completely unselfish and looking out for the well being of the team, it’s a very powerful thing. So that concludes my article. I hope some of you got something out of it and I want to wish all the teams the best of luck for the rest of the tournament.