Texas toast
Frost Heaves win ABA championship
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The Frost Heaves pose for a team picture following their championship win on Thursday. The Frost Heaves defeated the Texas Tycoon 143-95. Jeb Wallace-Brodeur/Times Argus |
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By Anna Grearson Times Argus Staff - Published: March 30, 2007
BARRE – The energy in the hallowed "Aud" could have fueled a whole city Thursday.
It certainly helped fuel a victory for the Vermont Frost Heaves.
A sellout jam-packed crowd unleashed some serious wattage as its team went for the big one. And that is one big reason why the Vermont Frost Heaves today are the American Basketball Champions, gaining a rip-roaring 143-95 win over No. 3 Texas Thursday.
"The crowd was just like I remembered, everyone just gets so into it," said Dana Martin, who played basketball for his hometown of Stowe and is a guard for the Heaves. "They feel like the ownership of the team, you can see it in the fans, and that's how it is to play in the state tournament here. It's your team that's in the finals, and that's how it is here," added Martin, who knows something about Aud energy.
"It was just astonishing," said Frost Heaves president and general manager Alex Wolff, talking about the game and the season and the energy, while in a mob scene after the final buzzer sounded.
"It came from our coach, it came from the support our fans gave us who said, 'We love the kind of ball you're playing, keep playing it,' and then from every individual guy," he said.
The franchise's first ABA championship comes a little more than 15 months after Wolff stepped up to the podium at the Aud to make what has since become a momentous announcement – that he was taking the plunge and starting a professional basketball team based out of the Barre Auditorium.
"It's sort of something leaping off the page," Wolff said Thursday. "As a writer, I've struggled with trying to figure out how much of me is an observer and how much is a participant, and I've always been an observer. I've always required a little bit of a nudge to get in the fray. There was no turning back when we decided to do this.
"When we were standing in here on Dec. 14, 2005, to say we were going to do this, I had to listen to my own words and persuade myself that what I was saying here with the cameras rolling and everyone taking notes, might come to pass. Just fielding a team and to see this happen, to see the team get that confidence. You can see the basketball, that zone we were in, and in this game, the first half was just another level."
The crowd, with Bump the moose mascot egging them on, was at another level too: Deafening, when the team made two steals in a row and a three-point shot – seven points in seven seconds.
Wolff, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, counted on local fan support and was repaid in spades. The fans chose the coach (by online vote) who put together this unstoppable ensemble that won the hearts of fans, not just in Barre but around the region. And it was the fans who flooded the court to congratulate the players, along with friends and family.
Those same fans will get their chance to line Barre's Main Street Friday for a victory parade through the Granite City at 6 p.m.