From lovable losers to unlikely success stories, we all love "Rudy"

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June 22, 2012

From lovable losers to unlikely success stories, we all love "Rudy"

By MATT CHRISTIAN Princeton Times The Zope Gazette Fri Jun 22, 2012, 05:00 AM EDT

PRINCETON — It seems like every few days, I’ll be flipping through the guide on DirecTV and the movie “Rudy” will be on.

“Rudy” is one of those indefinitely rewatchable movies. It doesn’t matter if you’re watching for the first time or the 33rd, you can’t help but feel inspired by the scenes at the end of the movie when Rudy sacks the Georgia Tech quarterback and gets carried off the field.

A few years ago, I thought that I was going to get to see another version of the movie while I was a manager of the University of Charleston’s men’s basketball team. And I almost did, twice.

My last two years there, I worked with another manager, who often would spend the hours before practice shooting impossible shots in Eddie King Gymnasium. One time, he decided that he was going to shoot from the upper-level stands of the gym through the rafters and make a basket on the court.

He tried for over an hour before finally sinking the shot. If there was one moment in my life that I could have put on YouTube, it would be that shot. I saw him hit the shot, and I still don’t believe it.

Neither could our players that were watching him try.

Often, we would play H-O-R-S-E, either before or after practice, and this may surprise you but he won every single time.

He loved basketball and is the only manager that I’ve ever heard about that could dunk a basketball. I often joked that he was the most athletic manager in the history of the WVIAC. He was much like Rudy, not very big, not a really good athlete, just someone that loved the game and would do anything to stay around it.

•••

My senior year, because of a bizarre NCAA requirement, the basketball team, accepted a senior walk-on, as a member of the team. What made him unique was that he was the only Chinese player that I’ve ever seen in the conference. That’s not to say that there were no foreign players; we also had a Cameroonian on our team and West Virginia Wesleyan had a guy from Europe and a point guard from Japan.

Anyway, I was convinced that our Chinese player would go down as the first person from the People’s Republic of China to score in a WVIAC game. He almost did.

First, we blew out Bluefield State in a home game on Feb. 1, 2010, at the end of the game, the UC students chanted just like the Notre Dame students in Rudy to put the Chinese guy in the game.

He finally relented and our backup point guard seized the opportunity to feed him the ball so that he could make a shot.

As he let go of the first attempt, I remember thinking that this would soon be a national news story or something. Then, a swooping hand of a Big Blue defender swatted the ball away.

The Chinese guy dropped the next pass and missed his last shot attempt of the year. I remember coming down from the stands, where I was filming, and being disappointed that I didn’t get to witness that specific part of history that I thought was going to happen.

Maybe, one day, my son or daughter will take up basketball and be able to say that they were the first American-born Chinese person to score for a school or in a conference.

But I can assure you that they will hear all about my time as a basketball manager at UC and the Rudys that weren’t. Then, maybe they can put a little bit of effort and make their Rudys actually become Rudys.

Matt Christian is a Princeton Times reporter.

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From lovable losers to unlikely success stories, we all love "Rudy"

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