MOMENTS, MEMORIES and MADNESS with STEVE CAMERON: You can't make these kinds of connections through a laptop screen

Zoom doesn’t cut it.

This is a small complaint, given the tragedies of this pandemic we’re all enduring, but as a sports columnist…

I can do an awful lot better job of informing and entertaining you if I have access to actual people.

I know, I know.

Needs must.

For now, we make do — like hooking up to a Zoom interview after the Gonzaga-Kansas game, and having so much background noise at the source that Jalen Suggs’ first interview as a bona fide collegian came across garbled.

And if we wanted to talk with some other Zags?

Too bad.

COVID-19, besides all the other things it’s done to millions of individuals and society in general, has prevented media members from having many conversations with real human beings.

Sometimes I feel like I’m interviewing my laptop.

If there’s a good side (relatively speaking), it might be that all these crackly Zoom connections have brought back memories of players, coaches and administrators that I’ve actually dealt with — you know, face to face.

NEEDLESS to say, I could launch into countless stories here — like tales of cavorting on the road with various athletes (or Whitey Herzog, when he managed the Kansas City Royals),

But there’s one coach that ALWAYS comes to mind when I start drifting into the past.

Ellis Dahl.

It’s likely you’ve never heard of Ellis, whose basketball coaching career never took him on to Michigan or North Carolina.

Or anywhere that’s listed in the Sunday scores, for that matter.

Still, I’m here to testify that Ellis Dahl was both a true character AND a heck of a coach.

When I knew him, Ellis had just taken over the hoops program at Shawnee Heights, a high school just outside of Topeka, Kan.

He was a tall, gangly drink of water, with one of those faces that always looked like he was fixing to grin — usually about something he was thinking to himself.

Naturally, he was funny.

We wouldn’t be having this Sunday conversation about somebody who bored me to sleep.

ANYHOW, Ellis took over a program that was nondescript and barely known to anyone.

In fact, that also was true of the school itself, since it wasn’t in town nor in any spectacular suburb.

It was just…

There.

Also, as you could guess, Shawnee Heights was neither a large school with a serious reputation, nor a little place that people all remember for its charms.

Heights was Class 3A at a time when Kansas designated its activities from classes 1A to 5A.

If I’m remembering this correctly, Ellis had a so-so first season after being promoted to varsity hoops coach.

But then he started to win.

He had a remarkable ability to take big kids who struggled to walk and chew gum at same time, and somehow make them into impact basketball players.

He found guards in strange places (usually in intramurals), and paired them with the big galoots that he’d taught what to do around the hoop.

So, Ellis’ teams first became respectable, and then they started to blow people away.

THE FIRST time I went to interview Ellis, we were walking through the busy gym at Heights — and I got whacked hard on the side of the head by an errant volleyball spike from somewhere.

Ellis thought that was hilarious.

He said: “Life is about staying loose, partner.”

I was the chief high school coverage guy for the Topeka Capital-Journal at the time, and naturally I began to see more and more of Ellis Dahl as Shawnee Heights became a mid-tier power.

We were friends almost from the beginning.

Ellis understood that I had to be objective, and he didn’t mind even a little bit — which made it possible for us to be pals.

Frequently, when Heights was off playing in some not-exactly-famous Kansas community, I’d write and send my story immediately after the game.

Ellis would send the team bus home without him, and once I was done, we’d take off in my old TR-3 and find some little saloon to knock back a couple of beers.

It became something of a ritual, in fact.

Show me a map of eastern Kansas, and I can point out plenty of towns where I shared a lot of laughs with Ellis Dahl.

IN CASE you’re wondering why this particular coach, and our hanging out after games, is worth any fuss…

I had to introduce Ellis to tell you about the Christmas Classic at Tonganoxie.

The town everyone calls “Tongy” is on a rural road between Topeka and Kansas City.

By the time of the event in question, I was living at a place called Weatherby Lake — on the northern edge of the Kansas City metro area.

My main gig involved covering the Royals and Chiefs (still for the Topeka paper), but occasionally I’d get called into action for something else that was happening over my way.

So one year, I was assigned to the Christmas tournament at Tongy — which figured to be fun because Shawnee Heights was involved and I hadn’t seen Ellis in quite a while.

OK, there were two games on the first night — and by the way, I had to drive my things-could-go-wrong sports car through a snowstorm to get there.

Heights was playing the opener, and my plan (since I knew they’d win by a thousand) was to start typing during the second half of that game.

I’d have a story just about finished, then I’d grab Ellis and one of his players for a couple of quotes to wrap it up, and finally I intended to phone in my story between games.

(Yes, we sometimes used phones instead of fancy computers in those days.)

ANYHOW, the game was a predictable rout and Ellis let his subs run around in the second half.

But for whatever reason, my story wasn’t coming along fast enough.

Tongy writer’s block?

I don’t know.

As the clock was spinning down on the game, I realized that I probably wouldn’t have time to wrap it up, make the call and get back for the second game.

I was sitting about three rows behind the team benches, and I said, “Ellis!!” – in what I hoped was a stage whisper.

On my second try, he looked around.

I made the hand signal for a timeout.

Ellis spread his hands out, as if to say: “Huh?”

But I needed some extra minutes, so I made the signal again.

Eventually, Ellis shrugged, looked back at the court and whistled to some third-string guard who was playing out the last couple of minutes.

Nobody in the gym had a clue what was going on.

Shawnee Heights was calling time with 55 seconds remaining, a 45-point lead, and every sub already in the game.

When the kids got over to the bench, I could see them asking Ellis why he’d asked for a timeout.

Of course, Ellis being Ellis, he turned and pointed straight to me, making sure everyone in the gym was watching — and announced loudly: “He called it!”

Talk about the power of the press.

We definitely had a couple cold ones and a lot of laughs later that night.

I got my story in on time, though.

Email: [email protected]

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.

Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published each Tuesday.