Rebecca Hardt, 46.

Nikki Lima, left, and Rebecca Hardt put Attleboro basketball on the map.

I can't give you an accurate number of the number of local female basketball players about whom I wrote on a regular basis during my 41-year career as a sportswriter at The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro. But a quick estimate gave me a number exceeding 6,000. And that number has continued to grow in the four years of my retirement as a writer as a result of my play-by-play announcing for local cable TV systems.

I may not be able to recall all of those young women's names instantly, but fortunately, I have volumes of archives that can produce complete statistics with just a few keyboard clicks. But of course, there are many for whom no research is necessary for me to remember them -- which only serves to heighten the sadness I feel when one of them is lost.

So it was this morning when I read that former Attleboro High School standout Rebecca Hardt had died in her sleep on Tuesday of this week.

In a year in which I've already endured too many sledgehammer swings to my heart, hearing this news hit me hard. I covered quite a few of Rebecca's 72 high school games from 1990-94, which was a period of rebirth for the Attleboro High girls' basketball program. In tandem with her teammate of those four seasons, Nikki Lima, Rebecca put the Bombardiers back on the map in local girls' basketball and put down the foundation for future successes for the program.

Former Attleboro star Rebecca Hardt.

She was 46 years old at her passing. Far too young. And, coming just two months after the death of her father, Dave, who was a true icon in Attleboro High athletic history -- well, it's just a terrible time in the Jewelry City.

My recollections of Rebecca coincide with those of Nikki Lima, who's now known as Nikki Correia and is the head coach of the North Attleboro High School girls' basketball team. Those two came to the Attleboro varsity in the 1990-91 season and immediately embarked upon a course that would lead them to become the first of three sets of AHS teammates that would reach 1,000 career points in the same season.

Nikki was the high-energy guard that could score and distribute with equal skill, and always played with a broad smile on her face. Rebecca was the gazelle-like frontcourter whose quiet grace and athleticism made everything she did look easy -- almost too easy to believe at times. I can recall several times when I'd be sitting in the stands at the old AHS gym and groaning audibly because an old and overmatched referee, unable to keep up with the speed of the game, would whistle a foul against Rebecca as she attempted to block a shot even though the block was clearly clean. It was as if the referee just assumed that a superbly agile 6-foot-1 forward could not leap high into the air from behind the shooter and pluck the ball away without making contact. And this happened far too often.

Sometimes, having two players of elite talent on the same team might lead to conflict. But the skills displayed by Rebecca and Nikki were complimentary in nature, and they fed off each other's talents. And they knew that would be the case from the very moment they entered Attleboro High. Here's what Nikki had to say about that to Sun Chronicle sportswriter Tyler Hetu in a very touching story that appeared in Wednesday's paper.

"When her and I got there, from Day 1, the chemistry with her and I was like nothing else," she said. "Rebecca didn’t care about accolades, or the stats, or being the No. 1 girl. She just went out there and played. I say it about her all the time, I don’t think she realized how good she really was because she was just dominating, but she was humble. She’d kind of go through the motions and still give you a double-double.”

From a 1-17 initial season, the Hardt-Lima combination turned around the program and led Attleboro to 13-8 and 14-8 seasons over the next two years. That led us to create the page you see at the top of this post. With the help of graphic artist Mike Forgette, we dubbed Rebecca and Nikki as "Attleboro's Dynamic Duo" to introduce our 1993-94 girls' basketball preview.

That was no overstatement. They were that good, and so much fun to watch. Their team was 40-42 over their four seasons as postseason success would elude them in the tough MIAA Division 1 field, but I'm certain that their elevated level of play was inspirational to younger Bombardiers-to-be -- some of whom would forge a team later in the decade that would play in a state semifinal at Boston Garden.

Rebecca played in 72 games over four years, missing six in her freshman year and four as a senior. She averaged just under 17 points a game for her entire career, finishing with 1,221 -- the second-best total for Attleboro High girls and fourth overall in school history. She held the girls' record for 23 seasons before Sarah Deyo (1,341 points) passed her in 2017.

She also shared the school's single-game record for girls under five-player rules with 33 points, achieved in her junior year, with Emily Houle and Julia Strachan. The only female player at AHS to surpass that was Rebecca King, who tossed in 44 in a 1953 game against Mansfield when girls played six a side, three of them couldn't cross the center stripe, and the center could stand in the lane all day without penalty.

Rebecca Hardt's career was one of constant improvement. She averaged 10.9 points a game as a freshman, 16.1 as a sophomore, 18.3 as a junior and 20.6 as a senior. And her success didn't prevent Nikki Lima from carving out her own place in the AHS record books, as she finished with 1,030 points over 79 games. Thus, they became the first of three sets of Bombardier basketball players that would graduate as 1,000-point scorers from the same team, followed by Leland Anderson and Derek Swenson in 1999, and Bryant Ciccio and Qualeem Charles in 2020. Sarah Deyo and Emily Houle also played together for three of their four seasons, and both would eventually go over the 1,000-point plateau.

Rebecca would go on to play at what's now Bryant University, under current coach Mary Burke.

The poignancy of Rebecca's passing is multiplied in that it comes less than two months after the death of her father. Dave Hardt was perhaps Attleboro's most accomplished athlete in multiple sports, and he went on to play at Kentucky and was drafted by the New England Patriots as a tight end in 1971. I attended Dave's only game as a Patriot -- the first game at Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro -- in which he suffered a career-ending knee injury on special teams.

The area has lost some wonderful people this year -- first former North Attleboro High football and baseball coach Bob Guthrie, then Heidi Deppisch, the sharpshooting forward of the 1987 state Division 2 champion basketball team from North. And now, Rebecca Hardt. My heart goes out to their families and friends, and also to those that just enjoyed watching them participate in sports, as I did.

Patriots' "honorary Bombardier" retires.

James White became one of the Patriots' best leaders, on and off the field.

Several years ago, when the New England Patriots made running back James White of Wisconsin their fourth-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, I got a tip from someone close to the draft braintrust. White, it turned out, was almost a "local."

Sometimes, those are dreaded words to hear while covering an NFL Draft. 

It's one thing to know if you have a local athlete that's projected to be a draft pick, as it was for me when North Attleboro native Anthony Sherman was eligible for the 2011 draft. You prepare in advance with interview requests and phone numbers at your fingertips, and you can move quickly and purposefully when the player's name is announced.

That made it relatively simple for me to jump into action when the Arizona Cardinals made Sherman their fifth-round pick in 2011. Within an hour of the selection, I was on my way to Sherman's family home in North Attleboro to interview him and his parents, and thus fulfill my responsibility as the reporter of record for the local daily newspaper.

But James White's situation was different. He was a native of Fort Lauderdale, which was a long way from The Sun Chronicle's circulation area. But my tipster told me that the young man's aunt and uncle lived in nearby South Attleboro and had since 1989 -- which, of course, would be of great interest to the readership of the local paper. But other than the names of White's relatives, I had nothing to go on -- and not a lot of time to track them down before that night's deadline.

James White chats with the media
in the week leading to Super Bowl 51.

That's when the training and experience kicks in. I used every search engine possible to find the phone number of Arnold and Desiree McNeil, called several times, left pleasant (but urgent) messages asking them to return the call -- and then I waited. 

Just about the time I started to feel a little desperate about whether I would get an actual scoop (or be beaten to it by the metropolitan papers), I got the calls -- first from Arnold McNeil, then from his wife, the latter being the sister of James White's father. The conversations were pleasant and productive, and the next day's newspaper rewarded its readers with a feel-good local story that nobody else had.

And to me, that's a good way to regard the eight-year career of White, who retired today as the result of the serious hip injury he suffered last year. It was always a feel-good story, and not just because of what he accomplished on the field.

It was during the conversation with his aunt that I learned the most about James White, the person, as opposed to the football player. I learned he was grounded and humble and the sort of young man that would totally dedicate himself to self-improvement and helping his team succeed. As time passed, and White fulfilled those expectations, I often jokingly referred to him as an "honorary Bombardier," employing the sports nickname of Attleboro High School as a well-meaning reference to his family ties in the city.

“Sweet Feet,” as James would come to be known, became probably the best among a line of productive third-down backs in the Patriots’ offense. Steady and reliable in that role over the majority of his career, his amazing performance in the second half and overtime of Super Bowl 51 in Houston made the difference in the Patriots’ comeback from a 28-3 deficit to the Atlanta Falcons -- and I think he should have been MVP of the game because of it.

But that was just a sample of his on-field contributions. In many ways, White deserves to be remembered as fondly for what kind of a player he was off the field and in the locker room.

Never boisterous, White was the epitome of players that are able to become strong locker-room leaders by example. Soft-spoken and thoughtful, he displayed a constant and unflinching work ethic that was respected and admired by every member of the organization. He set the baseline for rookies and veterans alike, and from the indications being posted today on social media, they took notice.

"James defines the term, 'consummate professional,'" Patriots' coach Bill Belichick said today in a prepared statement. "His dependability, consistency, unselfishness and performance under pressure were elite. ... While soft-spoken, he brought exceptional leadership and competitive toughness to the team. He was a multi-year captain and one of the most respected (and) best team players I have ever coached."

Indeed, one of White's most shining moments of leadership came during a terrible time in his life. 

His father, a respected former police officer in Fort Lauderdale, was killed in an automobile accident early in the 2020 season, and his mother was critically injured. James grieved, as we all would. But after a brief trip home to be with his family during the crisis, he returned to the team and resumed his daily commitment to being the best player and person he could be for his teammates.

From a media standpoint, White was always accommodating to reporters that would stroll past his locker looking for insight. It wasn’t self-serving on his part, but an acceptance that accountability was part of the job. And he was respectful at all times, even when I’m sure it might not have been the easiest thing to be. I'm not certain he was ever truly comfortable in the spotlight -- sometimes when the media scrum would congregate in large numbers around his locker, his responses to question might include a brief nervous laugh -- but he took the responsibility seriously as a true professional would.

He was one of the first recipients of the “Ron Hobson Good Guy Award,” so named for the gregarious former beat writer from The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. It's annually bestowed upon players that are cooperative with the media, but as I indicated before, not in a self-serving way. We of the media see it as an important honor because we didn’t honor “gabbers" -- players that loved the sound of their own voice but rarely made plays worth remembering. White, like past recipients Devin McCourty and Matthew Slater, was a player that backed up any and all of his words with non-stop effort and a level of dignity that served as inspiration to everyone in that locker room. 

As I learned of White's decision to retire earlier today, I was reminded of the predictive comments made by his aunt in her phone call to me in 2014.

"He’s easy-going, truly focused on football and willing to do whatever he can to excel, and to be a good team player," Mrs. McNeil said. "And if he's called upon to be a leader, he has the fortitude and ability to lead."

Mission accomplished.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to cover James White's career for as long as I did, and I wish him and his entire family all the best going forward.

More ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while perusing some of the Tweets I've been writing lately and coming upon the realization that some deserve to be expanded in scope and presented here:

** It's been a bad week to read the obituary page, but comments are begging to be made, so I'll start with the first one.

I am so glad that in my formative years as a basketball fan, I had the Celtics and the magnificent Bill Russell on hand to teach me what greatness was all about. The long-time center of the team died at the age of 88 on the last day of July, and the outpouring of sentiment on social media has been heartwarming, to say the least. In fact, it was just a shame that it took a loss of this magnitude to make Twitter actually enjoyable to read.

Bill Russell won 11 NBA championships.

I don't have any personal Bill Russell stories to tell, unfortunately. I was still a teenager when his playing days ended. Nor did I see him play much in person, perhaps only one time (when the Celtics played a game at the old Boston Garden before a performance of the Ice Capades). But as he played during my awakening as a basketball fan, I spent a lot of time in front of the old 25-inch General Electric black-and-white set watching Russell, KC Jones, Sam Jones, Tommy Heinsohn, Bob Cousy and John Havlicek running up and down the old parquet -- and remember, these were the days when the NBA wasn't the big draw that it is now, and the networks often carried playoff games on tape delay because the ratings didn't justify prime-time exposure.

That will always be "real" basketball to me, not the "bump, run, gun and strut" stuff that passes for basketball in the NBA these days. And one thing about the Celtics is that you can find a common thread through the ages, an abiding respect for the fundamentals of the game, whether it was in the Bird-Parish-McHale era or the Garnett-Allen-Pierce period. I'm still waiting to see it kick in with this current crop of Celtics, although sometimes I think they are too inflicted with the ills of the current NBA to fully embrace it.

We could talk forever about all the things Russell accomplished on the court. All of the titles. All of the individual awards. All of the success in elimination games, and so on. But his lasting legacy will be as much for what he accomplished off the court as he did on it.

Russell remained relevant after retirement, and possibly became even more so, because of his activism in the battle for civil rights. It is indeed unfortunate that he played his entire career in a city that was not ready to accept African-American athletes as human beings worthy of equal treatment, but I'd challenge you to find any New Englander today -- aside from the most hard-core racists, of which there are still far too many -- that doesn't view Russell as a member of the region's Mount Rushmore of professional athletes.

In recent days, some social media pundits have used Russell's death to repeat the tired old trope, "Boston is a racist city." Well, it certainly was at one time. Bostonians hated just about anybody at one point in history, and not just Black people. Irish and Italian immigrants also drew the scorn of the old Brahmins, although as Caucasians, both were able to assimilate more quickly than others.

President Obama presents the Presidential
Medal of Freedom to Bill Russell.

Yet this is also a state that has had a Black governor and a Black senator. Boston has an Asian woman as its mayor. And while it's clear that the region still has its problems in race relations, I defy you to show me any city in America that doesn't. And I've been in every single city where the NFL currently plays except Las Vegas, so you'd better be more traveled than I am.

No, we have our faults. But it's safe to say that people like Russell helped alter this nation's thinking for the better. He fought with dignity to be treated equally, and despite the terrible treatment he received in Boston when he first arrived, I think he probably left this earth knowing that those who would be most saddened by his death were those that fully embrace his importance to the city of Boston and environs in retrospect.

What a moment it was a few years back when Bill Russell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the nation's first Black president. Never was one so deserving. It's too bad that the guy that followed Obama in office decided to devalue that medal, but Russell got it when it really meant something.

Long-time Boston Globe sportswriter and columnist Bob Ryan, guesting on the Red Sox radio broadcast on Sunday, did you younger folks a service by describing Russell's signature laugh -- a full-throated, wholehearted cackle that was absolutely infectious. In many ways, it's important to note that Russell still had the ability to laugh and enjoy life despite the indignities he endured for so long. And it is the measure of the man that he was able to forgive Boston and eventually embrace it, instead of allowing those past indignities to simmer for the rest of his life.

As I was thinking about writing this piece, and was searching for photos to illustrate it, I came upon the realization that the uniform he wore in his latter days as a Celtic is practically identical to the traditional home whites worn today. Thus, as I see the younger Russell with the big "6" on the front of his shirt, it reinforces my belief that the team should NEVER wear an alternate jersey. The old whites and greens mean something.

** Just hours after I first learned of Russell's death, I saw the news that Nichelle Nichols, the actress that had originated the role of Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek series, had died. She was 89.

Admittedly, I am a Star Trek fan. Not a "Trekkie," mind you, because I've never been prone to dressing up in a Starfleet uniform, sticking points on my ears and pretending to be a Vulcan at fan conventions. Besides, I can do the "live long and prosper" hand salute with only my right hand (which I believe is also William Shatner's problem). But ever since the show debuted in 1966 on NBC and through all of its iterations since, I have embraced Gene Roddenberry's image of a future society in which exploration and knowledge have replaced avarice and aggression as humanity's favorite pastimes.

(OK, I know. Jim Kirk was a raging horndog that never followed the rules, banged females on every planet he visited and ignored the Prime Directive with phasers and photon torpedoes blazing when it could resolve the conflict at hand by the end of 46 minutes or so. But let's face it. When done right, it worked -- and what else has lasted so long as a national entertainment obsession?)

Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek

One key to Roddenberry's vision of the future was that the future had to be inclusive. So it was that the USS Enterprise's bridge crew had to reflect that wish. In addition to the testosterone-fueled white male captain, the obligatory alien and the slightly cartoonish chief medical officer and chief engineer, the helmsman (Lt. Sulu, played by George Takei) was Japanese and the communications' officer (Lt. Uhura) was Black. And they were officers in full standing, equal in importance to the operation of the Enterprise as any other characters.

In 1966, network TV had yet to see any Black actors or actresses in roles that weren't automatically subservient to the Caucasian stars in one way or another. And while there was the matter of rank to be dealt with on the Enterprise's bridge, Lt. Uhura was not Yeoman Rand, there only for window-dressing in the first season.

Nichols also considered leaving Star Trek after the first season, close to accepting a role in a Broadway musical as a means of broadening her career. But a conversation with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. changed her mind. Dr. King understood that Lt. Uhura's place on the Enterprise bridge was important to a younger generation that lacked role models on television, and Nichols' continued role on the show could help convince young Black girls that they could grow up and do anything in an America that was bound to eventually throw off the shackles of racism. 

Nichols went on to play Uhura (we never knew her first name until the first of J.J. Abrams' three alternate time-line movies) for all three seasons of the original series, the animated series that followed, and for the first six motion pictures in the franchise. Later in life, she remained a working actor until about three years ago. She also served as a special ambassador and "recruiter" for NASA, which sought to attract more young women and minorities into space exploration. And it wasn't just a publicity stunt; the space agency can point to several astronauts who were influenced to come on board by someone that had already gone where no one had gone before.

** If you don't remember these words, you are not a true Boston sports fan, was born yesterday, or both.

“Little roller up along first … behind the bag! It gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it!”

Legendary sports broadcaster Vin Scully.

Those were spoken by the late and great baseball broadcaster, Vin Scully, in the 10th inning of Game 6 of the World Series between the Red Sox and Mets at Shea Stadium, played on Oct. 25, 1986. He was handling the NBC broadcast of the game and I was sitting in my hotel room in the Buffalo area (the Patriots were to play the Bills the next day), surrounded by fellow Patriots beat writers as we watched baseball and gulped down Buffalo wings and Canadian beer.

I had given up hope that the Red Sox could get out of the jam, even before Mookie Wilson stood in against Bob Stanley with runners on first and third and two out. Wilson saw 10 pitches from "The Steamer," including a wild pitch that brought one of the runners home and sent Ray Knight to second base. Not filled with confidence, I buried my head in a pillow before the 10th pitch was thrown -- and thus I never saw Wilson's slow roller scoot between the legs of the sore-kneed Bill Buckner at first base. I just heard the call.

Scully's amazing career as an announcer, stemming back to 1950 as the voice of the then-Brooklyn Dodgers, is as much a slice of Americana as apple pie. It's just sad that the call that registers first in my mind has to be one of my greatest disappointments as a young sportswriter; I had covered the Fenway Park games of that World Series (and still have a garment bag that features its logo), and I was hoping that my articles could have been a small memento of the first Red Sox World's Championship since before indoor plumbing.

Scully, of course, maintained his relationship with the Dodgers until retiring in 2016. He also worked for the major networks at various times in his life and announced a multitude of sports. He has left a legacy of great calls and was truly beloved by Dodger fans everywhere. 

I won't presume to judge what made Scully the announcer he was. I have no experience upon which to base any judgment. But I will say that as a fledgling announcer myself (and one that has undertaken this career choice far too late in life for it to go anywhere), I was always in awe of his precise use of the English language, the swiftness with which he could frame a thought and present it to his audience with the perfect delivery as if he was reading off a script, and most importantly, his keen awareness of when it was the right time to let the moment on our screens do the talking, and not to talk over it.

So many young announcers feel the need to impose their presence over moments of historic importance. Vin Scully never did that. He was a true reporter, content to tell the story and not become the story himself. Maybe that's why so many of his calls live on in memory.

Vin Scully was 94 when he left us. His voice will live on forever.

Oh, and by the way ... let’s also never forget that Scully and Steve “Psycho” Lyons called Billy Chapel’s career-ending perfect game for the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium.

Yes, I know, it was just a movie -- Kevin Costner's sappy "For Love of the Game," with Scully and Lyons providing the game narrative. But seriously, if you're a casting director and you are looking for a legitimate top-tier baseball announcer to lend some credibility to the in-game scenes in the movie, who you gonna call? Damn straight. 

Lyons must have come cheap, though.

** Just a thought here. Patriots' fans have repeatedly blocked Bill Parcells’ potential entry to the team’s hall of fame because he talked to the New York Jets before leaving to become their coach. Now we hear that Tom Brady did the same thing with the Miami Dolphins while still a Patriot. Will fans reject his potential Patriots Hall of Fame status too? Of course not.

Was Brady seduced and abandoned?

OK, it may be a bit of a stretch to equate Parcells' four years as the Patriots' head coach to the 20 years in which Brady became the greatest quarterback in team history (and maybe also that of the NFL). But in my book, the crime is the same. 

Parcells almost single-handedly saved the Patriots from becoming the St. Louis Stallions by completely revamping not only the team on the field, but also the front-office operation from top to bottom. But he did so under interim owner James Busch Orthwein. When Robert Kraft first purchased the team, he had a lot to learn about an owner's role in the operation -- and his meddling ways (and that of No. 1 son Jonathan) almost immediately brought him into conflict with Parcells' authoritarian rule.

It wasn't until much later that Kraft learned to build a solid football operation and then to let them take it from there without undue meddling. That was not the case when the Patriots were in the fourth and final year of Parcells' tenure. You know the rest of the story.

So now we learn that as Brady neared free agency after the 2019 season, the Miami Dolphins made multiple overtures to him with hopes of eventually signing him. It's not fully known to what extent Brady entertained the overtures, but given his sub-par performance in the 2019 season -- following at least two seasons in which his relationship with Bill Belichick clearly deteriorated -- it's fair to assume that the Dolphins' tampering fueled his desire to go elsewhere at the end of his contract.

Brady didn't go to Miami, but he did get what he wanted in Tampa, where he could basically call all the shots in personnel decisions and have greater input in coaching -- to the point where he basically forced head coach Bruce Arians out of a job with his fake retirement this past offseason. Brady is also now free of the Patriots' repressive policies and can fully realize a level of narcissism that was bubbling just below the surface during his New England days, just waiting for the opportunity to burst free.

No, Patriots' fans will not hold Brady to the same standards to which they've held Parcells. In fact, I suspect that the minute that Brady finally retires for real, the wheels will be set in motion to put him in his rightful place in the Patriots Hall of Fame -- no waiting period, no nomination committee, no fan vote. And not one single care about what the Miami Dolphins tried to do while he was still wearing the helmet with the Flying Elvis on it.

I don't even know why I would expect anything different.

** I was watching the Red Sox drop a 6-1 decision to the Houston Astros on Wednesday, and I was thinking just as it seems the Sox start straightening things out, well, shit happens. But the series in Houston wasn't a total loss.

Indeed, if the Red Sox can continue to win three and lose one over the remainder of the season, that should check them in at something close to 97-65 at end of 162 games. Easy peasy! (Yes, this is intentionally sarcastic.)

I was also thinking that I like Minute Maid Park. I got to walk around it a lot when the Patriots played a Super Bowl in Houston a few years back (you may remember the comeback) and they had Media Day at Minute Maid instead of NRG Stadium. The sightlines were good and the dimensions were quirky enough to make the ballpark interesting.

Yeah, Fenway Park is the most beloved ballpark in America, blah blah blah. But I would not have been unhappy if things had gone in a different direction and the city might have opted for a modern replacement instead.

He pities the fool!

** And finally, I still wear protective masks when I go to supermarkets or other crowded venues because, whether you like it or not, COVID-19 is still with us and people are still being infected every day.

I am vaccinated and double-boosted and have gone 125 weeks without an infection, but that doesn't mean I couldn't still get one. So the next time someone tells me it's time for another jab, I'll stick my arm out and tell them to jab away.

Right now, we’re on the BA.5 variant of COVID, right? Very concerning, but I pity the fools if we get to the B.A. Baracus variant!

Don't know what that means? Google it. Maybe we'll be able to give you an A for effort once you discover what the reference means!

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

Proposed site of a soccer stadium in Everett, near the Encore casino at left.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while continuing to live the leisurely life in retirement (before the telecasts start up again in September) ...

** I read in the Boston Globe today that the Massachusetts legislature has cleared the way for Robert Kraft to build a soccer-specific stadium in Everett adjacent to the Steve Wynn-built Encore casino property -- although they did so in a typically sneaky way that's so commonplace in this state's politics.

According to the Globe story, the lawmakers added language to a wide-ranging, multibillion-dollar economic development bill Thursday evening that would exempt the 43-acre industrial property straddling the Everett and Boston line from a slew of environmental requirements so it could be developed as a “sports, recreation or events center.”

The property, like much of the site upon which the casino and hotel complex was built, has environmental concerns after decades of use by manufacturing that left toxic deposits in the earth bordering the Mystic River. Right now, it's the site of a power plant. An adjacent oil tank farm owned by ExxonMobil is also being considered for further development.

Needless to say, reaction has been immediate and mixed.

Some applaud the Krafts for finally zeroing in on a development plan for the smaller soccer stadium they have sought for their New England Revolution MLS team practically since its founding in 1996. Others decry the development of what would probably be a 30,000-seat venue in an already congested area that's even more challenged by the casino development and would likely be further beset upon if the tank farm is developed for commercial and residential use. And, of course, the plan has been met with objections from those that decry another "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" move by the legislature without the benefit of public discourse.

A quick look at the comments under the story revealed the usual saucy comments about Kraft's visits to an Asian "massage spa" in Jupiter, Fla., as well as outrage over how another entitled billionaire is getting unworthy assistance from his politician buddies on Beacon Hill. And so on, and so on.

This all comes without even an artist's rendition of what a soccer stadium would look like on the site (which is pictured above courtesy of Google Earth) -- although I suspect that the wheels will move quickly if indeed this bill makes it possible for Kraft to realize his dream of getting a soccer stadium built in a metropolitan area filled with potential fans that fit the MLS demographic.

Fewer empty seats in a soccer-specific stadium.

Yes, there are eyebrow-lifting aspects to this plan (if there is a plan). As the stadium would be neighbors to the Wynn-built casino, it would give Kraft the long-desired opportunity to become a quasi-partner with the 80-year-old gaming mogul, although Wynn stepped down from his role as CEO of Wynn Resorts in 2018 amid accusations of sexual misconduct. You may recall that Wynn originally wanted to build a casino complex across the street from Gillette Stadium before meeting with staunch opposition from residents of Foxboro and South Walpole that would have been directly impacted by the development. The NFL also was not pleased at the time by the potential presence of legal gambling across the street from one of its stadiums -- although I'd bet that today, now that the NFL is in bed with gambling sites such as Draft Kings and whatnot, Wynn's plan would be welcomed with open arms.

There's not a lot of public transportation leading to the potential stadium site, either, but that's not our problem down here in the boonies. There's a T station a little less than a mile away from the site, I'm told. When money talks, people walk. In any event, let the folks in Everett take note of what's happened down here if they're expecting the state to fix their traffic woes. There have been two stadiums on US 1 since 1971, each of them seating more than 60,000 people and selling out year after year, and yet it's still one road in and one road out, and one rickety spur railroad line that is about as useful to the area as teats on a bull.

Not discussed at all in this matter is, "what about Foxboro?"

It's my understanding that the town still gets a share of ticket revenue from the sale of Revolution tickets, which is rarely more than 20,000 per game (although that has been trending gradually upward in recent years). But I'm not sure how much of that is affected by the attendance cap that stops revenue collection after a certain number is reached for all revenue-producing events within the stadium.

Currently, the Revs are averaging 18,600 per game, which is starting to approach the pre-pandemic high average of 22,175 in 2016. But that still looks lost in a 66,000-seat facility in which two-thirds of the seats are covered with tarpaulins. And in the scheme of things for MLS as a whole, the Revs are the 14th best draw among all 28 teams, right in the middle of the pack. Even if they bang out a 30,000-seat venue in Everett, they are still likely to reach no higher than fifth or sixth if current numbers can be used as a guide.

Kraft will make the ultimate decision.

I'm sure there is some concern about trading a relatively loyal fan base from south of Boston to the unknown potential of the metropolitan area, and whether losing the Revolution crowds will negatively impact commercial traffic within the Patriot Place development. But I don't have demographic breakdowns of either situation. I'm sure the Krafts do, and they wouldn't have been trying for 20 years to get a soccer-specific stadium built if they didn't think they could take the hit.

It should be noted, too, that this is not a precursor to eventually moving the Patriots away from Foxboro. If it was, the Krafts would not be investing $225 million (just about $100 million less than the original construction price) to renovate the north end zone of Gillette Stadium. It's a significant move because the stadium is now 20 years old -- by some estimates, about half of its anticipated lifespan -- and the improvements indicate an ongoing commitment to Foxboro as home base.

I'll admit, I'm ambivalent to the whole Revolution experience. I've attended one game by choice since 1996, the first game played within Gillette Stadium (then called CMGi Field) in 2002. I don't care one way or another personally -- although I do understand and respect the enjoyment that local fans have derived from their presence. The Revs have been extremely accommodating to local youth soccer organizations that benefitted from the stadium's close proximity. I'm not sure how many of them will follow the team to Everett without the ease of accessibility they enjoyed in the past.

But then again, this project could end up mirroring the vagaries of New England weather. Wait a minute, and it will change.

Still mustard color, but not Heinz.

** Speaking of stadiums, you may have noticed that the naming-rights merry-go-round has finally stopped in Pittsburgh, where Heinz Field is no more. The mustard-yellow seats and the big ketchup bottles will still be there, but the stadium at the confluence of those three rivers will now be known as "Acrisure Stadium," after a Michigan-based insurance company. The Kraft Heinz Company (the former name not belonging to the local Krafts) determined that the cost of extending its deal wasn't worth the exposure it would gain. After all, do we need to be reminded more of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or Heinz Ketchup? 

So Acrisure will shell out $10 million a year for the next 15 years for its name on the stadium. Heinz, based in Pittsburgh, paid about $2.85 million a year over the 21 years it held naming rights. Fans of the Steelers and the Pitt Panthers, who call Acrisure Stadium home, are livid. Petitions are circulating and outrage is being voiced, but it will all be to no avail. 

Heinz will remain a prominent sponsor within the stadium, but again, money talks. Ketchup walks.

In case you're wondering, Procter & Gamble (owners of Gillette) will own the naming rights of Gillette Stadium at least until 2031, having extended the original deal 15 years beyond its original expiration date of 2016. The Kraft Group reportedly receives $8 million a year for those rights.

** And no, I have never called Gillette Stadium "The Razor." I always thought "Foamy Field" would have been a funnier nickname for the place. 

But on your next visit to training camp, cast a glance at the field house adjacent to the practice field and you will notice yet another new name for it. It's now called the "Socios.com Field House," after a relatively new international company that has created apps that promise users (presumably pro sports fans) will have some sort of special access to the teams they follow, as far as claiming their participation in polls will give then an actual say in a team's decisions for marketing or their "fan experience."

Yeah, right. All I know was that I went to their website and was immediately greeted by the image of Aaron Rodgers holding a cellphone. No, thanks.

** I may have mentioned this in passing some time ago, but it appears that local high school basketball will see a change this coming December.

The National Federation of High Schools, which dictates the rules of play to almost every state in the nation, has recommended the use of a basketball shot clock for all of its state associations, limiting possessions to 35 seconds. Massachusetts currently has a 30-second shot clock and would have to add five seconds to the possession under NFHS rules.

Get used to seeing 35 seconds.

In addition, states have the option to consider resets on offensive rebounds to a lesser amount of time, such as 20 seconds (as is done in the WNBA), so teams cannot use missed shots late in possessions to kill time. It's not clear if Massachusetts will go in that direction, although shorter resets to 15 seconds are now in effect for kick balls or intentionally fisted balls out of bounds with less than 15 seconds showing on the shot clock when play is stopped.

I'm not certain why 35 seconds is the time of choice; 30 seconds works just fine and keeps the game moving. But even more amazing to me is that at the close of last season, Massachusetts was just one of 11 states or districts that required high school shot clocks (the others being California, District of Columbia, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Washington). Idaho, Minnesota, Montana and Utah were also about to adopt shot clocks, and Florida, Nebraska and South Carolina have them in place on a limited basis.

Some traditionalists are screaming bloody murder about the change in the game or the cost of adding shot clocks, but given that Massachusetts adopted the clock in 1998-99, I can honestly say that I would never again want to see the game played without one. It's just better basketball -- and it does prepare athletes for playing at the next level.

** One last note of appreciation, as Mansfield High athletic director Mike Redding has turned over the reins of the department to his former assistant, both in football and the department, Tim Selmon. 

As expected, Redding was organized, efficient and very helpful during his tenure, which coincided with the very worst that the COVID-19 pandemic had to offer. And don't fret, Hornet football fans, because Mike's still the football coach. Selmon has been learning the ropes recently as an assistant AD, and I'm sure he'll keep things moving positively as Mansfield enters a new era in the Hockomock League's Davenport Division this fall.

The cause for women's rights celebrates a triumph, then suffers a defeat in just two days.

A decade ago, these young all-star selections were evidence of the success of Title IX.

I will not lie to you. There are times when I look at the direction in which this country is headed, and I fear for its future.

That vantage point was attained even though I am still one of the most protected members of our society -- an aging, white, heterosexual male, one that has enjoyed far more privilege over my 68 years on this earth to the point where I not only didn't understand or fully appreciate what I had, but I also have no idea how to spend what's left in my remaining days. 

Outside of the norms of society, no one has ever told me what I can do with my own body. I can eat, sleep, work, play, fornicate or defecate whenever and wherever I want, save for instances where some of those actions would be totally inappropriate in a social setting. The only time I was told I couldn't play sports was when it was proven that I was not good enough at them to satisfy the requirements of the meritocracy that is competitive athletics. And outside of the legalities surrounding mingling with the opposite sex, there are no laws applicable to my participation in mutually-agreed-upon activities that might result in reproduction.

Yet here we are in the fourth week of June, the Year of Our Lord 2022, and in the past two days, it has been driven home to me just how badly women have it in these United States of America.

Thursday should have been, and hopefully was, a reminder of one of the great moments of triumph for American women. It was the 50th anniversary of the addition of just 37 words to the Education Amendments of 1972 -- a passage called Title IX that opened the doors to millions of women to receive equal access to opportunities in athletics in colleges and high schools.

"No person in the United States," they read, "shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Title IX opened the door, all right. Several states, including Massachusetts, followed up with their own statutes underscoring those provisions where state funding was concerned. And the changes those acts wrought were truly culture-changing.

In 1971, the year of my graduation from Mansfield High School, Title IX did not exist. Sports for boys were numerous and coaches had experience in their disciplines. But that was not the case for girls. For the most part, schools offered field hockey, basketball, softball and tennis, and that was it.

Just a year earlier, in fact, Massachusetts changed over from the peculiar six-girl basketball rules that allowed only three players to cross center court, restricted players to just one dribble and a pass, and let the center stand all day in the lane without penalty. At Mansfield High, the long-time female physical education teacher that coached all sports turned over the reins of the girls' basketball team to a young English teacher whose best qualification for the job was that she was single and available for after-school duties.

Jackie Cross, left, plays in a boys-girls exhibition
game at Mansfield High in 1971.

My high school sweetheart, Jacqueline Cross, was the center of that team. She was 5-foot-11, slender but athletic, who had received very little true coaching in the nuances of any kind of basketball, let alone the game that she and her teammates were forced to learn once "boys' rules" were in place.

Despite all that, she loved to play. She certainly drew more than her share of three-second violations during the transition from one set of rules to another, but she adapted and did her best. In hindsight, I look back at her and try to envision what kind of a player she would have been with today's quality of coaching, today's training equipment and the nurturing atmosphere that Title IX brought to women's sports, and I think she would have been a good one -- and that is said with the full knowledge that in my 40-plus years with the local newspaper, I saw a lot of very good players, many going on to excel in college, including one that was one of the best in the nation during her career.

Title IX made that possible. It was a slow start and change didn't happen overnight. Girls didn't start wearing actual basketball uniforms instead of baggy jumpsuits until the mid-'70s. Coaching hires and practice availability didn't improve immediately. Some schools, including Attleboro High, relegated girls' basketball to a small side gymnasium instead of where the boys played. Even Boston College didn't grant its women's team regular access to the Conte Forum on a regular basis until the late 1990s, instead forcing the women to play in an adjacent practice gym.

For most of our local girls, their teams played in the afternoons, before small crowds, while the boys played at night and got all the fanfare. In my role as a high school sports reporter for the weekly Mansfield News, I had to choose between the two because of travel, and the paper wanted only the boys' games covered, so it was that on an afternoon of shooting baskets outside her house, Jackie asked me why I never came to watch her games.

My response: "It's only girls' basketball."

Worst statement I ever made in my life. 

I will never forget the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. And yet it still took about seven or eight more years, in my early years at The Sun Chronicle, for pressure from local coaches to work its way through my thick skull and prompt me to start directing the sports department to provide better coverage for all girls' sports.

It was tough at first. People resisted the change. A lot of male sports fans thought we were taking something away from the coverage of their sports, when in truth we were adding more pages and more column inches of coverage. There was even some reluctance among the management of the paper to devote more resources to covering girls' sports or giving them equal play. And of course, there were the peculiar knuckle-draggers that found the need to personally insult me, accusing me of deviant behavior and attacking my reputation, just because I covered girls' sports and actually enjoyed them.

Former Feehan star Katie Nelson.

But as the saying goes, we persevered. The Sun Chronicle became a better newspaper because of it. And today, while the coverage of women's pro sports is still a distant second fiddle to the men's pro leagues, there isn't a newspaper (among those that remain, that is) that would not offer equal coverage to boys and girls at the high school level.

Consistent to that theme of being ahead of the curve, I wrote my tributes to Title IX 10 years ago, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the legislation. Several stories ran over a four-day period, highlighting the progress made by athletes I interviewed, who ranged in age from 16 to 74. Fortunately, all of those I interviewed are still with us and have witnessed further progress -- although there are still a few instances when I'm irritated that a school hasn't opened all of its bleachers for the girls' game even though Title IX mandates equal access to facilities.

Some glaciers move (or melt) more slowly than others.

In general, Title IX has been a positive thing for America as a whole -- and it's hard to believe that it was signed into law by one of the worst presidents this nation ever had, Richard M. Nixon. Paranoid and vindictive as he was, Nixon was not a stupid man. He respected the rights of all Americans (if not the Constitution that gave him his authority), and thus his signature on the Education Amendments of 1972 may actually represent one of the few high points of his morally corrupt administration.

So, Thursday should have been a day of celebration. That changed abruptly with the cowardly news dump on Friday that the Supreme Court of the United States had voted 6-3 to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion by a 7-2 vote in 1973. We all knew it was coming following that celebrated leak of the draft version of the opinion, but it became official just in time for all of the justices to hotfoot it out of town for what I expect will be a very long hiatus.

I will not get into a theological or moral debate over abortion. I do not consider myself qualified in the slightest to establish the moment when life begins in the womb, or when a fetus would be viable to survive outside it. I don't have the credentials to say the exact moment when a soul enters the vessel, or if there is even such a thing. I tend to subscribe to the theories that mankind has always created "gods" to explain away what they didn't understand.

All I know is that women do not have the same rights as men in a country where it was proclaimed in a document of some note that "all men (and that really should be amended to include women) are created equal."

The Constitution, as written three centuries ago, reflects the society of the times. Men ruled the roost, and they were all one color. Black men and women brought over from Africa could still be sold as slaves. And all women had just one purpose -- to make babies.

Slavery wasn't ended until 1865. Women got the right to vote in 1920. Yet in both instances, vestiges of old prejudices remain and they continue to divide our country. We could have elected a woman president in 2016, and more people voted for her than the ignoramus that won in the Electoral College, but that glass ceiling remains unshattered.

Concentrating solely upon women's issues, because that's what's in the news today, women still don't make the same as men in comparable jobs. Fewer opportunities are presented to them, and workplace harassment continues to be an omnipresent issue facing those that endure it.

As I said at the top of this missive, no one would dare pass legislation that would so severely restrict a man's control over his own body, particularly his reproductive organs -- although I've suggested many times that the Second Amendment remains in place to compensate some men for what they didn't get at birth. In a nutshell: Big gun? Small penis.

Reaction to Friday's ruling was swift.

I can just imagine the howls of protest that would hail from old white men of Republican leaning if Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren and other female legislators (hell, let's throw Hillary Clinton in there just to torment the right wing even further) banded together to pass legislation to restrict the number of ejaculations a man could have, or the number of times he could legally have sex, the number of potential partners he could have, and the number of children he could father. Or maybe the Christian right could convince legislators that every ejaculation is an exercise in murdering potential children because from among the millions of sperm that get the chance, only one is needed to fertilize an egg. Oh, the potential humanity!

Yes, it's nonsense. But so is the premise argued by Justice Clarence Thomas that the SCOTUS should review other past decisions that cover contraception or same-sex marriages. I note that he did not include decisions that legalized interracial marriage (as he is a participant in one), but let's face it -- there are a whole lot of ignorant rednecks in certain parts of this country that still haven't accepted that part of normal modern-day society.

Almost 50 years ago, women in America got the chance to have a measure of control over their own bodies. That was taken away in a big way Friday, although some states will be safe havens for legal abortion because their laws and their state Supreme Court decisions have turned Roe v. Wade into state law.

What surely troubles me, and should trouble anyone with a brain, are the states that passed "trigger" laws that wiped out any and all forms of legal abortion once Roe v. Wade was overturned. Some of those states have banned ALL forms, even when the life of the mother is threatened by a failed pregnancy. Or what about a violent rape that results in a pregnancy? The most heinous violation of all, and the victim must be forced to carry her attacker's child to term? The potential for life-long psychological suffering for both mother and child is staggering.

I can't even imagine it, in fact. I'm a man. I can never be forced to make that decision or live with its consequences. And that's why I have always believed that I (or anyone else with a penis) lack the right equipment or life experience to dictate what decisions a woman should be forced to make regarding her own body.

Yes, we have become a nation with more respect for an unborn fetus's existence than for the lives of young schoolchildren that may die in a hail of bullets because the small-dicked gun lobby can't envision life without their AR-15s by their sides.

I am profoundly sorry as I write this. I'm sorry that for women all over this country, triumph one day turned to tragedy the next. I'm sorry that men have given you another reason to look at all of us as "the bad guys" in all this. I'm even sorry for the curious preponderance of women in some parts of the country that allow their warped, fundamentalist religious beliefs to trap them in a web of continued subservience to their male partners. They fail to take responsibility for their own existence because their God tells them that's so -- and in that, they have become traitors to their gender and traitors to a nation, effectively blocking the efforts of our Constitution to offer full and righteous equality to all of its citizens.

If women throughout America would rise up in unison to reject this draconian decision, it would be reversed. I fully believe that. 

One last note -- I was warned earlier today that this was not a day in which any man should be telling women that they NEED to do something, but I disagree. We're not getting the job done, ladies, so you must. My most fervent wish is that you succeed where we have failed.

Remembering an athlete with a big shot and an even bigger heart.

The Sun Chronicle's lead sports page on March 16, 1987.

The years are not kind to the human body, but they are even less kind to the paper upon which your daily newspaper is printed. It yellows quickly and crumbles not long after, unless it is somehow encased in a substance that takes air and moisture out of the equation.

As a former sports journalist, I once wanted to preserve everything I wrote -- as if there was a larger purpose to be served by these words in posterity. But as the years of my career passed and the words increased in numbers from the thousands to the millions and probably billions (if not more), there was no longer enough storage space to save all this flammable newsprint. Indeed, years ago, the wakeup call came when news out of Taunton revealed that a long-time writer for the Taunton Daily Gazette had perished in a fire at his home because he could not find a path out of danger through all the stacks of old newspapers that littered every room.

I probably sent thousands of pounds of newsprint to the recycling bins over the years, including in the days immediately following the decision by new ownership to terminate my employment in August 2018. Bin after bin were filled with the remnants of my career, each of the preserved papers featuring something that I believed to be remarkable and worth preservation before the management made it clear that I was not to linger on the premises. It suddenly became quite easy to throw out so many memories.

But I saved some. And early this morning, when I read the first obituary appearing on The Sun Chronicle's website, I knew I had to leave no stone unturned to find one particular newspaper.

The obituary was of someone I still consider a "young" woman -- certainly a lot younger than I am. Her name upon her passing on Saturday of last week was Heidi Deppisch Robinson. She had turned 53 a little more than a month ago. I knew her best as Heidi Deppisch, a member of an illustrious basketball family in North Attleboro and one of the best players on the North Attleboro High School girls' basketball team that won the MIAA Division 2 state championship on Saturday, March 14, 1987, with a 70-61 victory over Athol High at what was then known as the Worcester Centrum.

Heidi Deppisch, 53

Heidi, a 6-footer that had what they call "inside-outside" skills, was equally as adept at playing in the paint as she was at shooting from 20 feet out or beyond in the days before the three-point circle. On this particular day, she was North Attleboro's leading scorer with 21 points, connecting on nine of 13 shot attempts and three of four free throws. Teammates Stephanie Cooper (20 points) and Alyssa Gutauskas (18) also brought their "A" games, as North mounted a 41-17 lead by halftime and never looked back.

But there was something very special about Heidi's performance that day -- so special that, among the other stories that were written by myself and former colleague Bob Croce on that afternoon for publication in the following Monday's paper (we did not have a Sunday paper at the time), I devoted the space usually reserved for an opinion column to inform our readers of what made Heidi's performance unique.

Here is what that column said under the headline, "Heidi Deppisch's doubts disappeared at game time."

A couple of days before the state Division 2 girls' basketball championship game, Heidi Deppisch asked a reporter an innocent-enough question.

"What's the Centrum like," she said. The reporter offered a brief description of what playing in a large, metropolitan arena was like in contrast to playing in a cozier high school gymnasium, but the explanation didn't fully answer Heidi's question.

"No," she said, "I mean, don't they have chairs and stuff behind the baskets?"

The reporter said yes, there are chairs and stuff.

"So if I shoot an air ball," she said, "it won't go halfway down the other end of the place, will it?"

The question was so typically Heidi Deppisch -- almost apologetic, yet thoroughly honest.

For a large part of the three years she, Stephanie Cooper and Alyssa Gutauskas have directed the fortunes of the North Attleboro High School girls' basketball team, Heidi has been the most anonymous of the three, the one most often overlooked by casual observers. Maybe it's her shy demeanor, or the fact that her strengths -- passing, rebounding, shot-blocking, the occasional outside shot -- aren't always noticed by those who watch only the bouncing ball or the basket.

But Saturday afternoon at Worcester's Centrum, it was impossible not to notice the Rocketeers' 5-foot-11 1/2 forward. Heidi Deppisch was ablaze with glory, calling an end to her high school career with the greatest game she has ever played.

And she picked the right time -- the game for the state championship.

Deppisch scored a career-high 21 points -- on 9-for-13 shooting from the floor and 3-for-4 from the foul line -- to lead her Rocketeers to a 70-61 win over Athol for the Division 2 state title. She was a powerful force from the second she stepped onto the court to the second she stepped off it, and never anything less.

This was also the same girl who, before the game, couldn't buy a warm-up basket.

"I looked over there and Heidi wasn't hitting anything," said Rick Smith, her coach. "So I looked away. (Assistant coach) Debbie Dalton had to come over an nudge me later to tell me she hit a couple."

Any similarities to the shy girl who feared throwing up perpetually-rolling air balls , the nervous one who couldn't find the range in warm-ups, and the dynamo who buried jumper after jumper from the outer reaches of the Centrum were not entirely coincidental. They were one and the same girl -- just different sides of her.

"I was worried," Heidi said upon emerging from the locker room after the game, her eyes reddened from the tears of joy she and her teammates shared. "The court really was different. It was a lot like playing in Franklin, only worse. I wasn't too sure in warm-ups that I could shoot here."

Somewhere between warm-ups and game time, something clicked in Heidi.

"It was the last game," she said. "That's what it was. It was knowing that we'd never play another game together, that there won't be any practice tomorrow, and that was the last game for Mr. Smith, too."

Once the game started, Deppisch hit the first shot she threw at the basket, a 15-footer from the left baseline. She also hit the second, a converted offensive rebound, and the third, another baseline pop.

By that time, she had told all of Athol, all of Worcester and anyone else who cared to listen that this was her game.

"I just got lucky," she said modestly, the sort of answer one would expect. Her coach and teammates thought otherwise.

"Heidi wasn't going to be denied," said Smith, who ended his career as the girls' coach Saturday. "She's sort of an unknown quantity in that people look at our frontcourt, see 5-10, 5-11 and 5-11 and think it's tough, but here's a 5-11 kid who can hurt you from outside, too."

"Heidi played the greatest game of her life today," added Gutauskas, the senior captain and center, who finished with 18 points to bring her own career total to 1,111. "What a way to end it. She was really terrific."

Deppisch scored 11 points in the first half as the Rocketeers rolled for a 41-17 lead over the reeling Western Mass. champions. But in the second half, Athol came back to life.

With tenacious guard Christine Chi creating havoc on defense and forward Lynn Dorrow hitting just about everything she threw at the basket, the Red Raiders cut that 24-point lead to a more manageable 16 entering the fourth quarter.

Suddenly, Deppisch became the "stopper" -- the clutch shooter who put the brakes on surge after surge by the Raiders. She hit a turnaround jumper just outside the lane on a quick pass from Cooper to open the fourth quarter. Then after a run of six more Athol points, she followed a foul shot by Gutauskas with a nothing-but-net jumper from a spot on the court which wasn't too far from the NBA three-point circle.

Athol reduced the margin to 11 points with two more left-handed hook shots by Dorrow. And again, following a free throw by Gutauskas, Cooper spied Deppisch cutting from right to left on the baseline. The pass was there, Heidi released the fall-away, and swish! -- a 13-point lead with 4:06 left.

"That's the best that play has worked all year," Cooper said. "I had no worries when I got the ball to Heidi."

Athol coach Mike King appreciated Deppisch's efforts, too.

"We tried to pack it in the middle more in the second half, and we did play better, " he said. "But it doesn't matter when 13 (Deppisch) can bury three 15-footers from the corner in a row."

The road to Saturday wasn't always a smooth one for Heidi Deppisch. Had she not been fitted for contact lenses this year and overcome the aggravations of adjusting to them, she and her teammates might not be state champions today. 

And she readily admits to uncertainty about her future, particularly in regard to basketball. She may, indeed, never play another game -- which would break the hearts of the collegiate coaches and scouts who saw her light up the Centrum Saturday.

But that was the last thing in her mind when the cheers faded away into the silence of the post-game locker room.

"We came back to the locker room, all of us with tears in our eyes, and people were asking us if we lost," she said, barely holding back more tears. "It was all we could think about, that it was over after all these years. All of a sudden, we started bawling our eyes out." 

Tears of joy, though -- the joy of knowing the rare feeling of being the absolute best at something, and wishing it could continue forever.

It can't, of course. But someday soon, when she no longer feels sadness over leaving behind these joyous times, Heidi Deppisch will be able to remember that on Saturday, she was the best of the best -- and there's no better way to end a high school career.

I'm glad I was able to find this remnant of a more innocent past, because it served to refresh my age-challenged memory and correct a few misrepresentations of fact that developed over the 35 years since that game was played. Indeed, many of Heidi's teammates didn't see her as shy at all. She was somewhat of a jokester and someone that knew how to diffuse tense situations with a quick quip. I needed to be reminded that what I perceived as shyness was just a natural reaction to being interviewed by someone 15 years her senior.

I'm glad that later in our lives, Heidi and I were able to maintain a measure of contact through social media. I'm also glad I never failed to tell her how much I still enjoyed my memories of her basketball career and my appreciation of her skills. And yes, I did poke a little fun at her abiding love for the Dallas Cowboys from time to time. But not too often.

I don't know the particulars of Heidi's passing and will not speculate. All I know is that I feel the same emptiness in my heart today as I did on Sept. 7, 1997, when I learned that Alyssa Gutauskas had passed at just 28 years of age. It hurts even more to know that Heidi's two children will no longer have their loving mother at their sides.

Heidi, Alyssa and all of those '87 Rocketeers are still happy-go-lucky kids in my mind, blazing trails on the basketball court for others to follow and crying those tears of joy in each other's arms outside their Worcester Centrum locker room.