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Thursday, June 05, 2008

Swashbucklers Prevail at New Mexico Games

By Harold Smith
Mountain View Telegraph
      Paul Mooney and Mike Eckhart, in a friendly East Mountains feud, faced off as opposing player/coaches in the senior 50-and-over 3-on-3 men's division of the New Mexico Games basketball tournament at the University of New Mexico's Johnson Center on May 23-26.
    In the end, Mooney's Swashbucklers defeated Eckhart's Touch of Gray in the finals on May 26. Neither coach, in what their juniors might construe to be simultaneous senior moments, could remember the score during telephone interviews conducted Tuesday.
    “We beat them by like 20 points,” said Mooney, a 6-foot-1 Sandia Park resident who qualified to compete with his 50th birthday coming this October.
    Touch of Gray had a 5-0 record going into the title tilt after the opening round-robin games, and the Swashbucklers were 4-1, including a narrow loss to Eckhart's squad. But it was one-and-done in the finals for Touch of Gray with no “if” game scheduled.
    No matter.
    “They would have beat us again,” said the 6-4 Eckhart, a 60-year-old former Sandia High athlete and University of New Mexico walk-on player who now resides in Tijeras. “We were tired.”
    Both teams were gleaned from the ranks of the seniors program which holds 50-and-over pickup games on Saturday mornings at Sandia Prep School in Albuquerque.
    “Our league is very unique,” Mooney said. “I've lived all over the country in my life, and I've never seen anything like it. Maybe in New Mexico, it's just that there's a lot of older people who like to live healthy. We play 4-on-4 half-court. It takes away the full-court running advantage and rewards playing with intelligence.”
    The Saturday group divvied up its players to form the two New Mexico Games squads.
    “We just got together and divided up teams so that they would be as evenly matched as we could,” Eckhart said.
    All experience and talent levels are welcome to participate during the weekly 50-plus games.
    “We actually have two groups,” Eckhart said. “The bigger players who have some high school or college experience are in one group, and the smaller players are in the other group. We generally don't play each other. But there are a few smaller players, the quick guys, who play with us.”
    For information on participating in the senior basketball program, call Eckhart at 286-8015.
   

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