Most of the year, high school basketball is played where they hold gym class.
Most of the year, the Giant Center is a hockey arena and concert venue.
For 10 days or so in February each year the game and the building come together. By Monday night District Three championship games in all eight boys' and girls' classes were played here or at Hersheypark Arena, along with most of the semifinals and a few quarterfinals.
So it is that for local teams, "making it to Hershey" is shorthand for having a great season.
This is essentially also true in wrestling, but wrestling is anchored to the mat, the wrestlers literally too tangled up with each other for the environment to mean as much.
For hoops the shooting background, the brightness and bigness, symbolic and otherwise — all of it matters.
Which is all to introduce the fact that This Space spent a lot of time in this building last week. Here is some of what I saw.
MondayBoys' Class AAA semifinals, Steel-High vs. Daniel Boone; Greencastle-Antrim vs. Susquehanna Township.
This doubleheader features three of the best five teams in the district, regardless of class. That may be conservative.
Steel-High, big, athletic and relentless, blasts Boone by 35. (Lancaster Catholic's double-overtime defeat of Hershey in a consolation game today looks especially good considering that Hershey's the only team to have given the Rollers a game lately).
G-A is an interesting bunch. Last year, at less than full strength often for the usual variety of reasons, the Blue Devils lost 11 times, but the last of those was by two, at the buzzer, for the state championship.
Its game with Susquehanna is a messy, quadruple-overtime colossus. G-A's monster big man, Dameatric Scott, scores 39 but it's not enough. Susquehanna misses an insane 27 free throws but survives, 93-85. It started at 8 p.m. and didn't end until nearly 11.
TuesdayGirls' AAAA semifinals, Cedar Crest vs. Central Dauphin East. Boys' AAAA semifinals, Central Dauphin East vs. Harrisburg, Elizabethtown vs. Reading.
The Cedar Crest girls, who've been here a lot in recent years, led 24-19 at halftime. They scored just 15 points the rest of the way, and it's hard to imagine how they could have scored more. Not pleasant to watch.
Harrisburg does much better against East on the boys' side. Quickness all over the court. Two central figures are East guard Jonathan Breeden, who transferred from Harrisburg after last year, and Harrisburg big Quincy Roberts, a University of Miami signee.
Breeden seems jumpy and tight early but ends up scoring 18, including some big free throws down the stretch. Roberts scores only seven. He seems to lack intensity, settles for jumpers and is guarded fiercely by soph Christian Deven, who at 5-10 gives up seven inches.
The game's tied at 37 with 90 seconds left, but East wins 45-39. Weird to see Harrisburg with 11 losses.
The nightcap is an apparent mismatch, Lancaster-Lebanon League surprise Elizabethtown against top-seeded, undefeated Reading.
The Red Knights are quick, big and well-organized. You'd think if they shoot well it's over, and fine two-guard Jordan Burdine drills four first-half 3-pointers.
Yet E-town is down only 12 at the half. The Bears try a full-court press after the break, with opposite the intended effect.
Reading rolls, 61-38, but the Bears' coach, Kevin Dolan, defends his decision to "dance with who brung ya," i.e. to play the style they've played all year.
"It wouldn't be fair to the kids, after 27 games, to get away from what got us here," Dolan says.
WednesdayGirls' AAA semifinals, Lampeter-Strasburg vs. Lancaster Mennonite and Northeastern vs. Gettysburg. Boys' AA semis, Milton Hershey vs. Delone and Columbia vs. Trinity.
Big, big night of hoops.
Of all the teams in all the classes that will play here this week, nobody will ace the exam better than Lancaster Mennonite.
The Blazers go around, over and through Lampeter-Strasburg to a 59-26 blowout.
L-S has no seniors, but it played in the Giant Center in districts a year ago and beat Mennonite in their only regular-season meeting this year.
The Pioneers look overmatched, but that seems more about Mennonite being good than about L-S being bad.
Mennonite coach Sherri Gorman said she learned a lot from the first game.
"We told the girls to give them a step — let them shoot jump shots, especially in this arena," Gorman said.
As Gorman speaks Mennonite's stars, including her daughter Kelsey (21 points on 9-of-10 shooting), are grinning and giggling their way through local TV interviews.
"We talked a lot about what playing here would be like," Kelsey's mom said. "There's no reason to be intimidated about it. We're trying to enjoy it."
The second AAA semi is about as good as the girls' game gets. Neither Northeastern nor Gettysburg seem great defensively, but there are a lot of scorers on the floor.
Down five with four minutes left, Gettysburg drills six straight tough shots — four of them 3-pointers, two of them NBA length — to go up three with 80 seconds left.
Northeastern star Autumn Lau then buries a hand-in-face three to tie it, 66-66 with 53.8 seconds left.
Guess they don't mind shooting in an arena.
With the game on the line, Gettysburg eschews the jumpers and goes to Ambraea Johnson, a slasher who gets back-to-back little one-handers in the paint, the latter with seven seconds left, to make it 70-68. Lau hits the rim with a 40-footer at the buzzer. G-burg by two.
Very, very good stuff.
Delone is coached by Jim Dooley, an old-school guy who patrols the sidelines in a necktie, short-sleeve dress shirt and, yes, saddle shoes.
Dooley is a colorful, hyperkinetic presence on the sidelines. He can also coach. The Squires handle everything big, quick Milton Hershey can throw at them. With the lead near the end they toss in an extended 1-3-1 zone that slows the Spartans when they need to hurry.
Delone moves on, 58-46.
In the other semi, Trinity's size kills Columbia, which gets a brilliant 22-point game from guard Mike Seibert but not much else.
It isn't all about height, though. Trinity's Eric Kindler, listed at 6-5, scores 26 despite his teammates not finding him much early or late. Kindler makes hand-in-face threes, fallaways, slashing drives, postup turnarounds, etc.
He's a sophomore. Facially he looks about 13. Remember that name.
ThursdayGirls' A final, Lebanon Catholic vs. Reading Central Catholic. Girls' AA final, Trinity vs. York Catholic. Boys' AAA final, Susquehanna Township vs. Steel-High.
There exists, in these games, a small possibility that a teenager will do something not only he but a lot of people will never forget.
You just hope it's a good thing.
Steel-High and Susquehanna Township are tied, 54-54 with time running out.
Ben Dupree, a 5-10 sophomore, launches a three from two steps behind the arc. Swish. Ballgame. Bedlam.
The Rollers, who beat Susquehanna by 21 for the Mid-Penn Conference title, had a foul to give but failed to do so.
Dupree is thrilled but not verbose. "When it went in," he says, "it just went in."
Earlier, York Catholic edged Trinity in an overtime heavyweight battle that could be reprised in states. Lebanon Catholic led early but faded down the stretch.
Twelve games in four days. And there are still five championships to be decided.
There were five more championships to be won.
And then it started snowing ...
SaturdayGirls' AAA championship, Gettysburg vs. Lancaster Mennonite. Boys' AAAA championship, Central Dauphin East vs. Reading.
In the 11:15 a.m. opener, with maybe 800 people in a 10,000-seat arena at tip-off, Lancaster Mennonite puts on a defensive clinic.
The Blazers hold Gettysburg, which shot brilliantly from everywhere Wednesday, to 10 field goals and 22 percent shooting.
In the second game CD East looks quicker than Reading and, for a long while, causes problems for the favored, undefeated Red Knights.
But Reading has size and shooters. It struggles a bit with East's press until it gets the rock in the hands of 5-8 waterbug Justin "Macho" Rodriguez.
Reading goes to 30-0 with a 63-51 win. The Knights are in the western half of the state AAAA bracket, where there's no threat like Schenley, last year's state champ.
Reading could only see monstrous, nationally ranked Chester in a state final.
I think it was Wednesday, when somebody asked if I had a cot set up in the press room.
I did not.
I'm tired, but it's a good kind of tired. So what have we learned?
A number of things:
• A lot of very, very good players will be back next year throughout the area. Keep your eye on that Kindler kid.
• There are few forces on earth more powerful than the desire of girls' basketball officials to call traveling.
• Milton Hershey's nickname is Spartans, and it reportedly has a mascot, absent Wednesday, that except for the colors is a dead ringer for Sparty, the iconic Michigan State mascot.
There's a medival knight-type warrior mascot on the floor, but it's Delone's, not Milton Hershey's. Delone's nickname is Squires.
Wikipedia: "In feudal times a squire was a man-at-arms in the service of a knight, often as his apprentice. In later years, the term's meaning shifted. Squires are often known in current day as very wealthy people in England."
Whatever.
• You still can't teach or, if all other things are equal, nullify size. Ask Columbia.
• Reading fans might be returning to their notorious belligerence from the program's heyday in the 1960s and '70s. As they're closing out their 29th win in 29 tries, somebody bellows, "We've got the worst coach in the state."
• Hersheypark Arena is a drafty barn with pre-World War II quality locker rooms, but it has a better feel than the Giant Center. A crowd of 4,000 looked better there than here. The GC is by all evidence a better place to shoot, though.
• I was ready to say girls' basketball players don't cry anymore. Not a criticism, certainly. Just an observation.
The Lebanon Catholic and Trinity girls changed my mind about that while reluctantly accepting silver medals Thursday night.
• The stereotypical shirtless kids with team names spelled on their chests get attention from the TV news camera guys, but the belle of this ball was a male Northeastern fan sporting a full two-piece female cheerleader's uniform with a bare midriff and short skirt. Just an extraordinary look.
• One lousy sausage sandwich, one candy bar, one drink: $9.50. God bless America.
Note to self: Buy candy bars at Turkey Hill.
Mike Gross is a Sunday News sports writer. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
