The Blue Knights first home game ever, in the history (one week, now) of the franchise, was Saturday afternoon.

Home court, since DCTC has no gym; the Salvation Army gym in down town St. Paul.

Game time; 1:00. 

I went for a (very brief) run at 11:00.  Half way around the park, I thought 'What's going on?  Is it raining?"  No.  Sleet.  When it rains in November at 33 degrees, what comes out of the sky is ice.

Great.  Just what you want when you are planning on driving over the river and through the woods.  No, there aren't any woods between here and downtown St. Paul, not unless you take the parkway which I wasn't because I had agreed to pick up Zack so we took 94.

I left here at 12, thinking that would give us time.  It didn't.  There was an accident on 94 going into the tunnel at the West end of downtown, slowing traffic to a crawl for miles.  By this time, the sleet was merely a pleasant memory hiding beneath the snow that was falling heavily, creating that fun, exciting phenomenon known as winter driving conditions.

We reached the Sal with four minutes left in the first half.

I must say, when I finally parked the car and dashed through the snow into the gym, I was delighted by what I found.

I knew the Sal was old.  I think my Dad played there over seventy years ago.  It has a very old school atmosphere; very Catholic school gym.  It's dark, yet very well lit if that makes any sense. One end of the gym features a stage just like the ones in every gym/auditorium in elementary schools all over the country.  The stage has a maroon curtain.  The bleachers are fairly new, plastic, dark blue.  The ceiling is low for a gym but not too bad.  It's not 'St. Thomas' low, for instance.

At St. Thomas the Apostle school, the gym is under the church.  You could always tell who learned to play in that gym; our shots had no arc.  Just a straight zip into the basket.  Any arc on your shot and the ball hit the ceiling and rocketed right back down onto the court.  Quite a few college ball players came out of that gym in the old days; Tim Wahl and Kris Long for starters.  That was back in the day when competition was favored by the families in the neighborhood.  Now, I think they're all into non-competitive sports, like yoga.  Or transcendental meditation poetry reading.

The Sal just put in a brand new wood floor which is gorgeous.  I really liked the place right away; like the look, the feel, the parking situation.

The second thing that struck me was how many fans had shown up, despite the awful driving conditions.  I think there were as many folks at the game as ever showed up at the old place. 

The DCTC Blue Knights are a brand new team, and a different school but so many of the old crew were able to come along that it just felt like home.  From the coaches bench to the scorers table it was all familiar faces.  A handful of former players were in attendance as well as some MCTC faculty.

I think we're going to enjoy our new home quite well.

Oh, we won by about thirty.

Like I said, it was a familiar experience.