Morton’s Lady Potters 69, Pontiac 39. It wasn’t that close.
That sound you heard, ker-LUNK, was the back of Bridget Wood’s head ker-LUNK’ing against hardwood. The Potters’ senior guard had been run over by a truck disguised as a Pontiac player. Wood rose quickly and felt around on her head to see 1) if it was still there, and 2) was it still in one piece? Happily, it was and it was. That one piece soon had a bump growing out of it alongside her blonde ponytail.
On the bench, an athletic trainer shone a light into each of Wood’s eyes. He talked to her in hopes of getting responses in English, which concussion test she passed easily. In the fifth row of the bleachers, Wood’s mother, Shannon, had said only, “Ooooh.” Then, satisfied that no significant damage had been done, the trainer did what any mother might have suggested. He gave Wood a big bag of ice to press against her noggin.
Later, Wood was run over again. No call of charge that time, either.
Even later, Wood was on a drive toward the basket when she was tripped and fell face forward down the lane. I’m not sure ker-LUNK is the proper characterization of the sound her body made that time. I leave it to the reader to imagine the sound of the inside edge of your elbow striking hardwood. I know the sound my mouth would make, which would be, “#$%@!!”
Anyway, poor Bridget was bumped and bruised by the game she loves, and what does the mother say about the suffering daughter?
“Tough week so far for Bridget,” Shannon Wood said. “She had duty Sunday morning, and she got battered around there, too.”
She showed me a picture of a humongous airplane. Early Sunday morning Wood got on that plane. She was doing her Air National Guard duty. This was after a 3 ½-hour bus ride got her home Saturday at midnight following the Potters’ game in Wisconsin. On duty, Wood strapped herself into a seat on that giant Air Force cargo plane on a training mission. By training mission, the Air Force means the pilots do stuff that simulates the maneuvers necessary to deliver cargo in combat zones.
“Dives and stuff,” Bridget Wood said. Cargo planes are flying tin cans that shake, rattle, and roll. With the tail open to dump cargo, they become wind tunnels. Even strapped into a seat, as Wood and a dozen buddies were, the wind and vibrations beat up on the passengers.
Add the dives and stuff, the sudden turns, the roller-coaster ups and downs, the whole tilt-a-whirl thing, and Bridge Wood is here to say, “Everybody threw up . . .”
A smile.
“ . . .except me. I decided I was not going to throw up. And I didn’t.”
By then, an hour after the events, the bump on her head had gone down some and the bump on her elbow had come up some, and I asked her about the second time she was run over by a Pontiac truck. To the old guy safe in the bleachers, it seemed a little much for Wood to risk another ker-LUNK’ing.
“If I’d stepped out of the way,” she said, and then practically defined unselfish team play by adding, “that would have hurt more than hitting my head again.”
Wood didn’t score on this night, but who cares? Morton was a zillion times the better team, even if it showed its superiority only in rapid bursts that caused the coach, Bob Becker, to say, “They have to learn there’s no on-off switch. To be a great team like the other great Morton teams they have to play great all the time, not some of the time.”
One sensational burst opened the third quarter. Morton stretched a 16-point halftime lead to a 33-point lead in 6 ½ minutes. It did it with beautiful passing and a transition game that quickly turned rebounds, stops, and steals into layups at the other end. In a 22-5 run, seven Potters scored – Tenley Dowell had seven of those points, no one else had more than four.
Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 18, Lindsey Dullard had 9, Maddy Becker 8, Peyton Dearing 7, Makenna Baughman 5, Courtney Jones 5, Megan Gold 5, Addie Cox 4, Katie Krupa 4, Raquel Frakes 2, and Olivia Remmert 2.