So.
Here I am minding my own business … typing and emailing away with SportsCenter on in the background and a familiar voice comes on in the background.
You know.
One of those voices that sound slightly familiar but you haven’t heard it in a long time so it’s just a slight tickle in your memory banks.
And then the ESPN announcer (can’t remember which because they are mostly interchangeable) says “and now we have Gavin Keefe in Connecticut covering UConn for ESPN.”
Next thing I know Gavin is yakking away about the UConn-Syracuse game and Jim Calhoun back on the bench coaching UConn men’s basketball.
Gavin and I went to high school together in Vermont.
I don’t remember how and when we met (I moved to Vermont in-between freshman and sophomore years) but we ended up in this inseparable group of friends, 4 or 5 guys, who did everything together in high school. We all continued to keep in touch through college. And then marriages kept getting us back together for awhile. Then, as high school friends do, we started slipping apart. But it doesn’t mean that all those great memories don’t pop back up again when you regain contact.
When I heard his voice I immediately started chuckling over some pretty funny and stupid memories. Gavin was the guy who slept through the SATs with me. He had stayed over at my house when my parents were away on a trip.
Anyway.
Story for another day.
Oh my.
How cool is it that he is on ESPN.
Here is my old buddy’s mug shot <just to embarrass him>.
Gavin has worked at The Day since 1990 and is in his 19th season of covering the UConn men’s basketball team, including the national championship teams of 1999 and 2004 (what an awesome gig).
I think it’s kind of funny because he went to St. Michael’s College in Vermont (living in a pit called ‘The Slant’ because the entire building slanted) where college basketball ranked behind beer drinking, ice hockey and snowball fights on the popularity scale. And now he is on ESPN. He just started doing stuff for ESPN last year. And was on ESPN First Take yesterday talking about the UConn-Syracuse game. And did another ESPN NEWS segment again today.
Well done my old friend.
I think it’s just cool when someone you know from a completely different world and in a different way end up doing something that … well … you didn’t think wasn’t possible for them … but is just so far removed from the kid you grew up with … well .. it’s cool.
That’s the only way I can describe it.
Oh.
He is very worried because now that he is in the big time I have a boatload of pictures from high school and college.
What he doesn’t realize is that I am in all those pictures too.
Plus.
Why would I wreck it. Now I can say “hey, I drank beer with that guy on ESPN.”