It has been a very fun week for me and hundreds if not thousands of Blackjack basketball fans. Blackjacks are State Class A Champions! I arrived in the cities on Tuesday to cover the state boys basketball tournament and covered the Montevideo and Dawson-Boyd teams. When I arrived home last Saturday evening, I was exhausted, but it was a good exhausted. Here are just some of my state basketball experiences. Short stories if you will.

Arriving at Target Center Tuesday to broadcast the Montevideo Thunder Hawks and Pequot Lakes game Mitchell, my broadcast partner and I received our media passes then we waited to go through security. Ahead of us was a very big man, about 6’8 with long black hair. He was having trouble walking through the metal detector because it kept buzzing when he walked through. The security guard asked him again to empty his pockets, he then pulled out a knife, a large knife the size you would gut a deer with. He laid it in the tray and started to walk through again when two security guards stopped him and told him to take that weapon back to his car. The guy looked at me and apologized for the inconvenience. Wow!

I had a few halftime guests when I was broadcasting the Montevideo games. Morgan Hiepler and my grandson Eli. Morgan is Gannon Reidinger older sister. Morgan said it’s a family tradition to attend the boy’s basketball tournament. She has been coming every year with her dad and brothers since she was little. Eli was a fun interview. He broke the news that he is the one that draws up the basketball plays for Coach Webb! Some of the plays have animal names attached to them. Eli said Coach Webb uses some of the plays on the court during games. It was nice to spend a few days with my son Brandon and Katie and the grandkids cheering on the Thunder Hawks. Montevideo won the consolation championship. They brought some hardware home. It was fun to see my son Brandon coaching on the bench.

Trying to find parking the first day at Williams Arena was insane! The parking ramp and large parking lot around Huntington Bank Stadium were both full and so we drove around blocks from William Arena to try and find a parking spot. I was on a side street when a Yukon pulled out and I did my best parallel parking ever. However, the parking meter would not give me a receipt to put on my dash in my car. So, I was hoping my car would be there when the game was over and luckily it was. It was a long walk to Williams Arena. The next day we were lucky enough to park in the softball parking lot.

Mitchell and I stayed in an AmericInn motel and it was very clean and had a great breakfast. Plus, one of the best things was there was a Perkins Restaurant in the same parking lot, so we ate there a number of times. It was nice to have the basketball games later in the day, that way we got to sleep in.

After the Dawson games were over at Williams Arena, Mitchell and I made our way to the press conference room to hear Coach Larson and some of the players talk about the game and their experiences at state. Getting from point A to point B at Williams Arena isn’t easy. We struggled getting to the press conference room and actually arrived late the first time. We finally figured out taking the elevator was the easiest. Cory and the guys did a great job answering media questions.

I got to sit and visit with John Millea from the Minnesota High School League at Target Center. John writes “Johns Journal” and is retiring in August. I bought him his favorite snack, a pretzel with cheese and congratulated him on his retirement. John said he had to take a picture of me and posted it on Twitter. John is a good guy. I heard later he talked about me and KLQP on WCCO radio with Steve Thompson. That was pretty cool.

Another cool thing was seeing about 100 high school students being sworn into the National Guard between games at Target Center. Standing right in front of us was a kid with a Canby Lancer shirt on. I later found out it was Cayden Anderson. I visited with him in the hallway afterwards. It was a very moving moment to see them take the oath to defend the United States.

The welcome home for the state champion Blackjacks was really fun. So many Blackjack fans attended and I was impressed with former Blackjack Coach Vanderwerf’s comments to the crowd and team. It’s amazing how a basketball team can bring a community together when they go to state. So much happiness and kindness going around. Smiles everywhere!

I want to personally thank everyone that listened to the games on Q-92 for all your nice comments about the broadcasts. Congratulations to Montevideo and Dawson boys basketball teams and their coaches on a great season.