The year was 2017, and a 21 year old Grant Avalon declared a vow to get married if Stanford ran the Pac-12 Tournament gauntlet in Las Vegas.
I was there in Sin City through it all. First round exits, the 2020 mid-tournament cancellation, even the empty gyms of ‘21. A visit to a wedding chapel was of course but a bluff. But what I wouldn’t have given to wildly thrash around in bits of Cardinal colored paper on the T-Mobile Arena hardwood. Even once.
There are pictures of yours truly making confetti angels in Oregon green, Arizona blue, and even OSU orange. Sam Weyen and I knew we would eat at Rainforest Cafe if lightning were ever to strike. It is, after all, Where Champions Eat.
The games were long but the seasons were short under Jerod Haase. Unable to flop his way to a semifinal appearance, Jerod’s tenure folded as Stanford was left without a table.
When the dealing was done, Stanford found itself in a conference that hosts a tournament nowhere near an institution of animatronic excellence. No one stopped to consider the human toll of such a move.
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Heraclitus understood the only constant in life is change. I believed that to be a reasonable mantra for conference realignment, not to mention my six apartments in the eight years since my Wacky Walk. But just as Heraclitus says no man ever steps in the same river twice, I have come to see myself as everflowing waters.
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Last season, for the first time ever, Channel Tree brought a regular photographer to men’s and women’s basketball games. Patty Dougherty, as she’s known for a few more weeks, eagerly stepped into the role.
The moment her season as a high school water polo coach came to conclusion, you could find her and her camera in the rafters of Maples. Unlike Sam Weyen’s polaroid, or selfie stick, or multipixel Bluey camera, Patty took things seriously and produced pictures that were unironically outstanding. Her only issue was braving the baseline.
I should say, Patty was already my girlfriend at the time. I worried it could be construed as an abuse of my (very) limited power. But all it took was her asking excellent questions in the postgame pressers and the SIDs could tell she belonged.
Patty was a lifelong fan of Tara VanDerveer and Stanford women’s basketball before we met, not to mention quite the point guard herself. Our first ever conversation was about the NBA, when I came out of the closet as a Trail Blazers fan. We quickly realized we’d attended many of the same games in Maples over the years. I was smitten, to say the least.
Channel Tree was never something I imagined being able to share with a significant other. The site itself was weeks of tandem Covid coding with Sam Weyen, but the lifeblood of it is years of love from the likes of Jose Saldana, David Ta, and Matthew Riley.
The site saw me and the other writers through the lows of the Covid Era. It was there for us as we switched jobs, changed cities, went through breakups, and completed grad school. It kept us connected. It gave us our yearly Las Vegas trip, but also excursions like Minneapolis, Duke, San Antonio, and Omaha, not to mention a thriving group chat.
It was Omaha, 2021, when I walked with Sam around Carter Lake. The innocuous body of water is in fact an oxbow lake, formerly part of the great Missouri River. A flood in 1877 sent the river on an alternate journey, creating Carter Lake and one doozy of a border dispute between Nebraska and Iowa.
As we walked the perimeter of the waters, Sam and I took stock of our lives. We were both at a crossroads, struggling to find direction and contentment. The whole world was only starting to come out of hibernation around us. I was on the precipice of starting therapy, and closer yet to a series of misdirected life decisions. I prayed daily, but was still years from really understanding what it meant to place my trust in God.
By the time Patty stepped foot into my river, I had flooded into new banks and left that oxbow far behind.
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Bernard Muir hired one Kyle Smith to do what no self-respecting American had ever done: Go East, young man. A senior Maxime Raynaud manning the middle gave us hope for our March trip to the Queen City. Premier basketball brands abounded, and the Great White Hope was to be showcased. Still, we couldn’t help but compare to the way things used to be.
There’s no pageantry, Sam said. They only care about the basketball.
Why did we replace UCLA and Washington with Georgia Tech and Pittsburgh?
And yet, some things stayed the same. A familiar foe advanced through Tuesday to meet the Cardinal in their Wednesday opener. Mark Madsen’s Cal Bears put up a fight, but finally fell for the third time in three games on the year.
The Cardinal were mere seconds away from a stunning upset over top 25 Louisville on Thursday. Sam and I watched from our seats behind the bench, as amazed by the plucky play as we were by the fire and brimstone from Associate Head Coach Jim Shaw.
Chisom Okpara grabbed a rebound in the waning seconds and was hounded by multiple Louisville players, and seemingly fouled by at least one of them. At the same time, Kyle Smith was working to call a timeout, and Chisom was hoping to outlet it up the court for a potential desperation heave at the buzzer. Instead, Chisom’s arm was hit and the ball caromed straight to Chucky Hepburn, who made a mid-range shot at the buzzer for a Louisville win.
I listened to Sam’s stream of consciousness narrate a deep anguish on our return to the hotel. The loss was devastating to me, too, though I didn’t quite second the sharp pain of my friend. What hurt me most was that Patty was due into Charlotte that night, and would not get the same behind-the-bench experience for a Friday semifinal.
Sam departed Friday morning for his first St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago, his new home. Patty and I had the tournament and city of Charlotte to ourselves. Bringing Patty into the conference tournament experience felt supremely intimate. It’s just a basketball tournament, true, but it’s my basketball tournament.
It was our first time out of the state together, and one we relished. We walked and explored Charlotte’s older neighborhoods, and even found a spot to go cheese tasting, as we often do. At the table next to ours sat the Knueppel family - massive, blond Wisconsites in town to cheer on Kon.
We made our way to the yuppie neighborhood, playing trendy mini golf, eating spendy ice cream, and giving a Jaws pinball machine our best as a tandem. We didn’t know it then, but that first foray into pinball would spark a passion that to this day remains a date night favorite of ours in Marin.
Most spectacular, though, was witnessing a classic Duke-UNC matchup in North Carolina. The Devils were without the injured Cooper Flagg, but even at halfmast were a formidable force. Kon Knueppel and company did enough to get the victory, with some help from a late lane violation, and would go on to claim the ACC Tournament title the following night.
Patty and I were on the court for the trophy ceremony, marveling at still another non-Cardinal shade of confetti raining down. Jon Scheyer, one of my favorite players from childhood, celebrated with his family only feet away from us. Patty and I soaked in the moment and took pictures together. I knew I was happier than even the right color of confetti could have made me in years past.
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Five months later, Patty said yes to my proposal in Porto. I placed a green sapphire on her finger as I knelt in the sands in front of the Capela do Senhor da Pedra. It was just us on that beach, and the Portuguese photographer I’d secretly hired. We finished our photo shoot and walked the length of the shore in unbridled joy and connectedness, before settling in to watch the most sensational sunset conquering the horizon. I like to think of it as God’s confetti.
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My friends knew a March Bachelor Party weekend had to involve college basketball. We discussed turning the Charlotte trip into just that, but decided on a bold, new direction: South Dakota.
We made the trip with four: Jose, Sam, Sylesh Volla, and me. The plan was to fly into Rapid City on Friday, see the sites on the western half on Saturday, before making our way to Sioux Falls and the Summit League final on Sunday night.
For a city named Rapid City, we didn’t get there too quickly. Each of us experienced some amount of delay, but my experience was the worst.
After my initial flight into Denver was delayed a few hours, I was forced to keep toggling between connections as they were delayed, moved back up, and subsequently canceled. In the end I got back onto my original flight with a worse seat, now delayed some four hours. Sam and I called to discuss airport logistics on the other end since we were now due around the same time. While on the phone with him, a deafening groan rang out and my flight was canceled.
I needed the nuclear option. I walked through Denver’s maze of a cursed airport, looking at my phone just enough to hop onto Expedia and book a rental car for the night. I was behind the wheel by 11 PM, navigating one lane roads covered in thick ice through rural Wyoming.
There were no convenience stores open along my route, and instead signs indicated no services for 83 miles. With one quick stop for gas and plenty of prayer, I white-knuckled it into Rapid City and the Alex Jones Hotel by 5 AM. It helped that Sylesh called me for the last hour or two.
In the morning we donned matching sweatshirts: our four faces on Mt. Rushmore - much to the delight of everyone we met. Naturally, we called ourselves the Rushmorons.
We saw the monument in all its glory, then Crazy Horse about 30 years before all of its glory, and took a tour to explore the boxwork of Wind Cave. We hit Wall Drug, caught a sunset in the Badlands, and posed in front of a giant prairie dog statue.
We checked into the hotel in Pierre, and tried to explain to the front desk that this was a Bachelor Party. It didn’t quite compute. We capped the night with food from a chaotic McDonald’s and the second half of a Summit League semifinal classic between North Dakota and St. Thomas.
Our Sunday morning was slower. We explored the Capitol building by ourselves, completely unfettered by security or locked doors. After that, the only thing on the agenda was a trip to Mitchell for the Corn Palace. As fate would have it, we came across a true gem on Spotify en route.
I was a boy when they built the new Corn Palace, recounted the raspy voice of Sean Keel. The Corn Palace will save the town.
We became his 25th monthly listener. Sean Keel’s catalog shuffled across our stereo speaker the rest of the journey, whether we liked it or not. The Bob Dylan of South Dakota enchanted us with non-sequiturs whenever we threatened to zone out.
I was right, the kielbasa was bad, he’d say.
The Corn Palace lived up to our wildest expectations. Considering City Hall shares a roof with the Palace, it more than likely did save the town. We paid our respects, took pictures with the giant ear of corn named Cornelius, and got in the car with Mr. Keel for the homestretch into Sioux Falls.
Nobody bales these days, they roll em, he painfully crooned. It’s quick and it’s easy, but it wastes a lot of hay.
We later learned Sean Keel is an award-winning mathematician at the University of Texas. The man who brought us that line about Kielbasa is a legitimate genius. He didn’t start releasing music until his fifties, never gained any traction, and yet became the soundtrack of my Bachelor Party.
Once we hit the mighty metropolis of Sioux Falls, we grabbed a meal of South Dakota delicacies. Chislic, Indian tacos, and a fried Snickers bar. None of us felt good after the meal, so we walked it off the best we could. We explored Falls Park, and then took a 45 minute stroll to the Denny Sanford Premier Center for the title tilt.
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Given my last name is Avalon, and Patty is taking my name, it only made sense to get married on Catalina Island. We visited in October and both felt it was the place for us.
One of the myriad quirks of Catalina is the wild herd of bison in the island’s interior. They were left there after a silent film of Zane Grey’s, some hundred years ago. Since then, the island conservancy has been managing their numbers. This resulted in Catalina bison being shipped off to South Dakota in recent memory. They shivered that first winter, we’re told.
The four of us saw bison aplenty dotting the plains. Jose and I both went as far as donating to ‘adopt a bison’ at Wind Cave. They call them the Monarch of the Prairie, and I’m inclined to agree.
When it came time for me to pick a Summit League team to support, the North Dakota State Bison were naturally a no-brainer.
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Sylesh and I rooted on NDSU, while Jose and Sam cawwed for the North Dakota Fighting Hawks. This year, there were no comparisons being made to our Pac-12 Tournament of old. We were all living in the moment, surrounded by dueling green teams from North Dakota.
My beloved Bison got the job done. We somehow made our way onto the court to join with the players and their families in celebration and the cutting of nets. We tracked down the mascot, Thundar, and got a group selfie. We made the bison horns with our hands, which makes way more sense than what I was doing all game.
The Summit League didn’t spring for green and yellow confetti, but rather a tiny amount of the generic rainbow. Either way, I rolled around in it with the same joy as I did that first time back in 2017.
We walked 45 more minutes through the Sioux Falls night to our hotel. Along the walk we talked about life, the wedding, Patty, and favorite parts of the trip. Sean Keel lyrics splashed through the air.
I told them how appreciative and blessed I am to have friends like them. Just as I had looked at the Missouri that morning from Pierre and knew it was no longer the river I saw in Omaha, I knew none of us were the same as when we became friends a decade ago. And yet we all still flow together.
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For the first time since 2016, Stanford went on to play a conference tournament game without me in attendance. I sat at home in California, basking in the glow of friendship and coughing up a lung. The Cardinal fell at the buzzer in their tourney opener for the second straight season, and will more than likely play in the NIT again.
I don’t know what the years to come will look like. The four of us made projections of our lives in 2031 as a road trip game. I do know from past experience how poorly I can forecast God’s plans. I suspect we’ll see that in five years.
But I do know this: next season, you can expect to see the men’s and women’s basketball photo credits by one Patty Avalon. And the same goes for the WNBA blog we started together, Valkyries Rising, which may look familiar.
God brought this amazing woman into my life when I was in a place to accept this greatest of blessings. And He’s given me true friends to walk with me every step of the way. I know life with Patty, and friends like these, will be full of adventures and reasons to celebrate. If I had my way, I’d bring Cardinal confetti with us to Catalina in May.
When Stanford someday does bring home a tournament championship, well, we can always renew our vows!