Good-bye to Chris Jans, an excellent college basketball coach. A small blip in his career led to a five-year diversion to NMSU, not a top-tier NCAA program. Jans succeeded. He also seemed a stand-up guy.
Teamwork and speed are essential to basketball. Players move fast, and need to sense where their teammates are and where they’ll move, making split-second decisions on the run. A coach today has to build that teamwork fast. Players aren’t here four years. Many start elsewhere or move on after a year. Each year, Jans had to meld into a team guys who had talent (and sometimes problems) but were new to each other. He did well.
Teddy Allen, a redshirt junior, got NMSU its first official NCAA Tournament win since about 1970. (Back when I was a young fella, friends with several players.) I hope Allen returns, A deeply appreciative au revoir to Johnny McCants: a local kid with miles of heart, a great beard, and a month-old son. Taking over NMSU’s second NCAA game, with Allen double-teamed, McCants did everything: made his shots (including a thundering dunk and a key three-pointer), took about five charges, blocked a shot, passed and defended well, and kept NMSU close. You could see this committed young man will his underdog team nearly to victory.
Speaking of local kids, it was great to see Bill McCamley back for a short visit. A great guy who represented us ably in the Legislature, then got a raw deal from some folks when he tried running Workforce Solutions during a pandemic. (Like herding cats through an aviary?) We miss him.
Are these questions for an experienced federal judge who was a star at Harvard? Or racist ones? Sure, those guys are cynically playing the roles they think will maximize their political popularity; but they’re racist, too.
Thursday our Progressive Voters Alliance held its first in-person meeting since February 2020. I saw some wonderful folks, heard from state and local officeholders and younger folks running for office, and heard about worthy local causes.
Leaving, I stood in the Munson Building entryway, staring at the portrait of Bob Munson. Recalling Bob and Diana, with love. He looks so incredibly young! How very many years life has gone on since that plane crash, years Bob never got to experience! He’d have loved PVA.
That’s this moment. Can’t say it matters. But I’m sure grateful for it.
- 30 -
[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 March, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site. Algernon D’Ammassa also wrote this week about the Judiciary Committee’s embarrassing performanceabout the Judiciary Committee's embarrassing performance. One point I had to drop for space reasons is that both parties waste everyone’s time with speeches rather than questions, praising or maligning the nominee according to their own party membership.)
[One weird feeling I had at times all week was that, as Yossarian repeatedly screams in Catch-22, “I see everything twice.”
> I’d noticed a news article that Las Cruces has plans to procure grants and make something of its airport. One of my first El Paso Times stories in 1974 was about how the City planned to make something of its airport.
> Of course the Aggies NCAA appearance, and win, brought back memories. When I arrived in 1969, I got to know some of the players, and also filmed games. The Aggies reached the Final Four, losing to eventual champion UCLA, with Lew Alcindor, coached by John Wooden. Thereafter I worked intermittently with the Athletic Department. In 1974-1975, they went to the NCAA again. I went with them, ‘cause I was shooting a recruiting film for Lou Henson. First game was in Charlotte, North Carolina – against either University of North Carolina or North Carolina State. Never heard more noise. The lost by a bunch. Afterward, news surfaced that Lou was leaving for Illinois. It was kind of a shock – as the news this week of Chris Jans’s departure was not. I always knew we had him for just a few years. Then as now, the players (and I) pushed for the Assistant Coach [Rob Evans, then] to get hired to replace his boss. NMSU went in a different direction, then. Rob Evans did coach for a long time at Arizona State.
Anyway, at times I couldn’t shake the feeling that stuff from the past was repeating itself. Communing with Bob Munson’s photograph in the Munson Building Foyer fit.]
I turned in the column Friday. A few hours later, the garden was quiet, and I wrote a bit of a poem:
THE MAYOR
One Thanksgiving he invited me,
the young reporter. His wife
was reluctant. I had
criticized him.
As I leave a meeting today,
his portrait catches my eye.
I pause in the entryway.
The automatic door keeps
opening and shutting, confused.
Bob looks so young!
I remember when I won something
he took me and my wife
to dinner, a magical night
with an old-lady artist. I remember we talked
as he fixed his sailboat in the back yard,
after my wife left me.
Were we ever so young
as he looks in that portrait?
After he lost, we talked
on my TV show, the whole hour,
one on one. Next morning,
one city official beckoned me, closed
his door, and said, “Thank you! Bob is
such a wonderful man, now
everyone’s seen it.” Next office
someone called to me, then said,
“Close the door, please.” He got up
and shook my hand. “Thank you
for nailing that sonofabitch.
Showing what a fraud he is.”
I remember the night
I ran into his daughter somewhere.
Their plane was overdue, Bob,
Diana, the pilot, and a scientist I knew.
The weather was bad, but Bob
wanted to get home
from Santa Fe.
Silently, I eye the portrait. The door
keeps complaining. I have not forgotten
I loved these people. Suddenly I feel
the weight of all those years –
45 by now – since then, years
Bob never got to see.
© Peter Goodman
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