Half Court Craziness

This morning I was getting ready for work and had GMA on in the next room as I often do. I leaned out of the bathroom to see short video clip of a guy making a half court basketball shot blindfolded in front of a high school gym full of kids. The folks at GMA were so enthralled with the video they had invited the blindfolded shooter (who was actually a teacher at the school) to be on the program this morning. When they showed the live shot of him with some of his high school students in the promo, my mouth dropped open and I actually said "NO WAY" out loud (apparently to the dogs since there was no one else here at the time). The blindfolded teacher/shooter was actually an old friend of ours!

We first met Joel and his wife Christian over 10 years ago when they were briefly part of our small group at our old church. Having Joel in our group was kind of exciting for all of us because he was rather famous in Lawrence--he had played basketball as a walk on at KU just a few years before we met him. Several years later, when Chad and I were searching for a new church and visited Christ Community for the first time, we turned around to the pew behind us to greet our neighbors, and there were Joel and Christian! Our paths at CCC didn't cross for long though, as Joel took a job teaching in Olathe and they moved soon after we joined their church.

So anyway, when I saw Joel on GMA this morning I was completely flabbergasted, but even if I hadn't known him it still would have been a fun and terrific story! The shot is absolutely amazing and astounding! Joel is a great guy and the 15 minutes of fame (30 minutes total if you count his 15 minutes with the Jayhawks) couldn't have been bestowed upon a nicer person. You can watch the full interview from GMA here or check out a good article in USA Today that gives you a little more background story, but first, check out the incredible shot below!



This amazing half court shot reminded me of some other amazing half court shots that I never got around to sharing a couple of weeks ago. If you didn't already see this somewhere online, you have to watch this video. It's Cole Aldrich and some student managers/coordinators horsing around before practice earlier this month, and it's so amazing, many people thought it was fake--but it's not! Really!



You can read the whole story about their game of horse at the Lawrence Journal-World. Gotta love basketball season in Lawrence!