A great athlete and an even better man

Life is supposed to be somewhat fair.

We all get bad news tossed our way. Some we shrug off, some we deal with and sometimes it just kicks us in the gut.

The Town of Lenox received a collective kick in the gut when Mark Huber suddenly passed away recently. Mark was a exceptional scholastic athlete at Lenox Memorial High School, where he was a member Fred Lafave’s 1974 State Championship basketball squad. Before he graduated in 1975, he joined the list of Millionaire hoopsters who had surpassed the 1,000-point mark.

“In past years when someone would get 1,000 points, the paper would incorrectly put my name on the list instead of Mark’s,” said his brother Bruce, of Lenox. “He would always bust me about that.”

Bruce, a fine player himself at LMHS, would have been on the list with Mark but was sidelined with a broken ankle when he was within reach.

Bruce added, “He was my idol, and like a lot of people, I always looked up to him.”

Tim Casey of Lenox remembered Mark, “They had some good players on that championship team but I always thought Mark was the most important and one who did not get much of the credit for the success of the team.”

Mark was a regular competitor in the Josh Billings events, first in the runner/canoe class and in recent years, a solo canoeist. He was also an avid hunter; if it moved, he could track it down. There are many collective deer, turkeys and rabbits feeling a bit more comfortable lately in the wooded areas around Lenox.

When friends and family heard of the untimely passing of Mark Huber, they had trouble coming to grips with the situation. He was very active, supposedly in good health and simply, “one of the good guys.” He is supposed to still be with us.

His friends and hunting buddies are left to imagine why this happened, his wife, Alex, will remember all of the good times together with Mark and there are two black labs who are left to wonder where their best friend has gone.

Does that sound fair to you?

On another note

I have received some inquiries as to my take on the 138 points scored by Jack Taylor of Division III Grinnell College. Grinnell beat faith Baptist 179-104.

Here it goes:
*It is hard to imagine that it could even happen without the consent of the other team, Faith Baptist of Iowa. Maybe the opposing coach could have said during a timeout, “Let’s slow things down a little.”
*Taylor said he felt “that anything I tossed up was going in.” Hey, Jack, what about the 56 shots that you missed? (And three free throws.)
*I wonder if the Grinnell coach was upset his team gave up 104 points to Faith and worked on defense the next day in practice.
*Taylor jacked up 71 three-pointers and made 27.
*If the score was close and it was a triple-overtime game, I would be more impressed.
*Travis Best of Central High School in Springfield had 81 points in a win over Putnam, but that game was only 32 minutes.

Will someone eventually break Jack Taylor’s record? I suppose it is possible, but Taylor will always have a record that will never be touched: most points in a basketball game by a player without any visible tattoos.

Posted by Dick Syriac on December 6, 2012. Filed under Berkshire Sports Guy,Columns,Opinion,Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry