Jeff's Journal

Can you believe this?

The Transylvania University's men's basketball team

   will play the University of Kentucky's men's basketball

   team, November 2, at Rupp Arena.

I have a particular affinity for Transy basketball.

   Every game night, when I was a student there,

   I shepherded a group we named "Pioneer Scouts".

      They were children from the neighborhood

         who were allowed to come to the game and

         support the team by sweeping the floor at

         halftime, bringing water to the team and other

         things.

   After the game, once everyone had left, Coach Rose

      had security lock up the gym and we could stay in

      there with those kids until the wee hours playing

      basketball and shaping lives. Then I would take them

      home, sometimes 10 kids in my tiny little station wagon.

  I was the dorm counselor for the basketball team for a couple

    of years. I was always impressed with integrity of the coaches

   and the quality young men who were recruited to play there.

   In two years of being the dorm counselor, I do not recall

      ever having one problem with any of the players. Not one.

Some of my best memories come from my time playing/working

   within the basketball world of the Transylvania Pioneers and

   knowing that Coach Lee Rose and Assistants Don Lane and

   Ron Whitson, cared about the kids in the community and worked

      with us to improve their lives.

I have a piece of the basketball floor from the old McCalister gym

   which Bart Hanna got for me when it was demolished.

You might think this upcoming game is a mismatch with the

  perhaps #2 team in America going against a non-scholarship

  program like Transy.  Well, think about this.

Kentucky University emerged as a land grant college from —

   you may have guessed — Transylvania College in 1865. By that

   time Transy was 85 years old.

   Transy defeated UK the first time they played 42-2!!! What

      humiliation! The series is tied 7 wins for Transy and 7 wins

      for UK. There aren't but a few schools with a record that

     good against the Wildcats.

Transylvania University has been related to the Christian Church

   (Disciples of Christ) and is the place which helped sharpen my

   intellect and deepen my faith.

If I can find tickets, Sarah '02 and I '75, will settle into our seats

  and I will take off my UK jacket to reveal a Transy shirt.

I guess it could be said this way, "UK should thank Transy

   that they even have a university over there and, as a result,

   a basketball team that has the privilege of playing the mother

   school for the first time in 100 years."

Give me a "T…!"

Moving to the deeper places,

Jeff