This week between Christmas and New Year's Eve represents a lot of things to different people, especially if you're a party planner or work at a store's exchanges desk. For many of us, it's simply a time to relax and catch our breath, maybe even finding time to play with our new toys.
But if you went to high school in St. Louis, there's a good chance that at one point in your life this week meant the Normandy Holiday (nee Christmas) Basketball Tournament. This year marks the 78th annual hosting of the tournament at Normandy, so it definitely qualifies for "tradition" status.
The event has lost much of the prestige and broad appeal it once had, and you can blame any number of demographic factors for that, but it's still rich in memories.
In my high-school days, Normandy's Christmas tournament was like our own local version of March Madness. The competition was set up to include two 16-team brackets labeled the Red and Green divisions, and the champions had to win four straight games in as many days. It was intense and thrilling for everybody involved.
The excitement reached across town and beyond. Local TV crews would tape highlights of the afternoon games to air on the evening news. I remember cops directing traffic on Lucas & Hunt and St. Charles Rock Road as too many cars tried to cram onto the Normandy parking lots. Back then a lot of kids simply hitch-hiked there. Before turning 16, I was one of them.
My father-in-law remembers coming down to Normandy tournaments in the 1950s from his home in Troy, Mo. He was a high-school basketball star himself, and the assembled teams were a showcase for the best regional talent.
"It was just the place to be for high schoolers during that week," he said. "Everybody went."
A quick online search demonstrated some of the near-legendary memories attached to those tournaments. On its alumni website, McBride High School gives major kudos to its team that won the 1939 Normandy tournament (and later the state championship). In Earl Austin's eulogy to former Sumner High basketball star and NCAA scoring champion Marshall Rogers, one of the career highlights listed was Rogers' 33 points against Webster Groves in the Normandy tournament's 1969 championship game.
Bismarck High School's website offers some uniquely poignant history. Bismarck won Missouri's state basketball championship in 1944, but the team attributed its success to having won the Normandy Christmas Tournament the previous December. However, the school didn't have funds to send the team up to St. Louis to compete, so the players paid their own ways and stayed with friends or relatives in the area.
"After we won that tournament, the town and everybody got behind us," one of the players later said.
In its glory years, the Normandy invitational was held in a massive old brick barn of a gymnasium known simply and appropriately as the "Big Gym." Built as part of the government's WPA (Works Projects Administration) program in the 1930s, the gym was a state-of-the-art facility at the time.
As you'd expect from a building of that age, the old gym had windows that opened. One year it snowed pretty heavily during tournament week, and fans near windows in the gym's upper sections were reaching out onto the sills to make snowballs — which they occasionally hurled onto the court to express displeasure at the referees.
Another noteworthy feature of the old gym was a big banner hanging at one end, listing the previous tournament champions. The roster had many familiar names of schools around St. Louis, but what stood out was "Crystal City" listed three consecutive times in the late 1950s and early '60s. That was when future NBA star and presidential candidate Bill Bradley was playing high-school ball, on his way to becoming the best college basketball player in America.
In 1967, my high school team beat Riverview Gardens, Ritenour and DuBourg in the first three rounds of the tournament, and then faced the host team in the championship. Normandy had reached the final by knocking off Ladue, McCluer and Mehlville. That year, Normandy's star player was a guy nicknamed "Doody," and he was capturing a lot of local headlines. We got creamed. The Big Gym was scheduled to be replaced soon, and the old place went out rockin' and stompin' that night, especially when the home team won the trophy for itself.
This year's Normandy tournament features teams from Memphis and Chicago, but I suspect the venue will be packed with a lot of excited old ghosts from Missouri.
Steve Unger has been professionally writing for 30-plus years to help companies sell stuff. His Journal columns are a labor of love to salute the people, places and charm of St. Louis. If you'd like to share a memory of St. Louis or just drop him a line, he can be reached at stevethewordguy@aol.com.
