Three cheers for welcome diversion

Here's a big thank you to Warren High of Gurnee, Hersey High of Arlington Heights and Wheeling High of, duh, Wheeling.

On Friday those schools provided me with an escape that I occasionally need from all the nonsense going on in bigger-time sports.

How nice a night is without greedy billionaires, whiny millionaires, honor-code violations, childish feuds, dugout altercations, $300 million contract demands, concussions and Charlie Sheen.

OK, so good-time Charlie isn't really on the sports landscape. But he does sort of personify all the creepiness that seeps onto the sports pages.

Anyway, included among the available remedies are throwing a brick through the TV, lighting a match to the newspaper or taking a hammer to the computer.

I chose to go in another direction — east down Hintz Road a couple of miles from home to Wheeling High School.

This was just one of the regional final basketball sites near you somewhere, from the suburbs to the city to the outlying areas.

At Wheeling, Warren met Hersey, and every once in awhile every fan should attend a high school event like this just to remember what sports are supposed to represent.

Competition, that is, rather than commerce.

Let's not be naive and call prep sports the last bastion of purity because they have their own problems.

But it's still comforting to go back to where every Hall of Famer started, the small gyms where the game is still a game.

Prep sports can be diversions from the worries of the world for youngsters. Funny how decades later they still can be for oldsters who check back in with them.

There's still so much to appreciate, like the scoreboard featuring the time and score rather than car ads, and the names on the front of the shirt being more important than the one on the, well, there are no names on the back.

Admission at Wheeling was $4. No, no zeros or commas are missing. Just $4. Maybe you can use the restroom in the United Center for less than $4, but that's about it.

Game time was 7:30 p.m. and music was blasting a half-hour earlier — “We will, we will rock you!” Queen sounded even better in the intimate gym than in an expansive arena, stadium or ballpark.

This game wasn't very competitive on this night on this floor. State power Warren outsized, outquicked and outplayed Hersey, and even out cheerleadered the Huskies in numbers 12 to 8.

Late in the fourth quarter Warren's expressive student Blue Crew section directed a few taunts across the court at Hersey's student section.

Apparently they didn't see the sign on the Wheeling wall that read, “Sportsmanship: Winning without boasting, losing without excuses.”

That's all right, though, because these teens were just teens being teens, as opposed to some fans at pro games just being grown-up babies.

Meanwhile, Hersey's players did what high school athletes do. They kept on keeping on, but Warren was too good. The Blue Devils won 65-49 and advanced to play Fremd on Tuesday in a Barrington sectional semifinal.

Go see Warren play if you can because it's a talented, disciplined, well-coached team.

The neat thing about high school sports is that for winners and losers alike, the outcome is just the beginning rather than an end.

That's just another reason prep games are nice diversions from the bigger stuff.

mimrem@dailyherald.com