Frost Heaves | First Place

If you haven't been paying attention, we have a damn good basketball team to root for around here. The Vermont Frost Heaves, in their inaugural season, are atop their division at 6-2. And both of those losses were in overtime and on the road. I smell another championship for central Vermont this winter.

Two weeks ago, a bunch of us (including jds, k from Analog Giant and Greg from pages within) went over the the Barre Memorial Auditorium to catch the Frost Heaves first home game. It was a great time. The place was packed. Everyone was having fun. The team romped while playing lots of entertaining ball (117-87 Vermont win). It was a good night of entertainment.

Seven Days had a good review of the night here.

Here's a clip of the game action:


A few observations of the night, in general:

- I like living in a state where you can go to a minor league basketball game and find the governor of the state standing by himself in the stairwell. My friend and I were walking up the stairs and saw Gov. Douglas just standing there. We both did a quick double-take, shrugged our shoulders and kept going up the stairs. I'm guessing that Gov. Pataki wasn't at the Rochester Razorbacks opening game.


By the way, why does Gov. Douglas where his pants so damn high. Who's his tailor? Look at the picture from the ceremonial jump ball. I know the picture is blurry but you can see how his waistline is about the same height as the Quebec City player's waistline despite being much shorter than the Kebekwa's starting center.

- I like the 3D rule that gives a team an extra point for any basket following a steal in the backcourt. It only came into play a handful of times during the game but it kept both teams pressing which led to an uptempo game.

- The Frost Heaves were easily the better dressed team. QC's uniforms looked like something from a town rec league. The Frost Heaves uniforms were much nicer and they all wore matching shoes. I don't know why I care but the difference was quite noticeable.

- People in Vermont are sometimes too nice. We got yelled at by fellow fans for heckling the QC coach. During the game, the coach got angry at a call, turned around and kicked his chair over. The ref then gave him a technical foul for kicking the chair. Well, we were sitting right behind him. So, the next time he got angry at a call, we started chanting "KICK. THE. CHAIR! KICK. THE. CHAIR!" That was it. Nothing vulgar at all. Well, the lady in front of us turned around, gave us the hairy eyeball and said, "Stop it." Then the lady behind us said, "They are worst than the coach". What a bunch of twits. Hey folks, you're at a basketball game; not church. It's OK to root for your team to win.

- Rex's Outrageous Road Crew Crunch is great. The stuff looks like a turd when you open the bag but the chocolate covered Chex Mix is a nice treat during the game.

The Frost Heaves have two games this week in Barre. On Thursday, Dec 7th, they are playing the Chicago Rockstars (with a name like that, they must suck) and on Saturday, Dec 9th, Quebec City is coming back for another shellacking. My wife's office Christmas party is on Saturday so I'll miss that one. But I plan on making it over to the Aud for Thursday's game.

Tickets are availble in advance at the Barre Opera House from noon-5:30 during the week and the monring on Saturdays. FYI...Considering that the game sold out for the first game, everyone had fun and the team is smoking good, there is a good chance this one will sell out too.