Union
- Dec 10, 2019
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 14, 2019
Union Warriors (0-10?) vs. Kansas Christian Falcons (6-4)
Monday, December 9, 2019 @ 7:00 PM Lincoln, NE
The Thunderdome
THE SCHOOL
Union College is a private Seventh-Day Adventist liberal arts college in Lincoln, Nebraska. It has an enrollment of 813 students and an endowment of a little over $4 million. Union was founded in 1891 by Seventh-Day Adventists who wanted to build a school west of the Mississippi River.
The Warriors are not a member of any intercollegiate sports association, like the NCAA or NAIA. This means they don't belong to a conference and can't compete for any kind of championship. According to the Warriors' schedule, they play all their games against small Bible colleges and NAIA junior varsity squads. As you can see on the top line of this post, I'm not certain what their overall record is. They don't update their results on their website, they have no governing body to show their record, and their small size prevents any media outlet from reporting on them. I resorted to looking at posted results of their opponents, but not every NAIA school reveals their JV squad's results, so this was also imperfect. From what I can uncover, the Union College Warriors have played between ten and twelve games and they've lost at least eight of them. I can't find a win, so I'm guessing their record is 0-10.
In my research about Union College, I discovered that the Seventh-Day Adventist Church traditionally objected to competitive sports. They believed sports did not give glory to God and a high level of competition brings out bad character. So, the idea that Union College even had a basketball team was - at one point - bold.
Kansas Christian College (KCC) is located in Overland Park, Kansas and affiliated with the Church of God. The Falcons only started supporting an athletic program in 2016. They compete as a dual-member in the National Christian Collegiate Athletic Association (NCCAA) and the Association of Christian College Athletics (ACCA). Kansas Christian and Union are playing their second meeting of the year; per Kansas Christian's website, KCC won 96-67 on October 24.
THE TOWN
green=my apartment, blue=my office, yellow=previous games, red=this game
After leaving my apartment, I drove east on A Street and south on 48th Street to get to Union College. I stopped at De Leon's (a local Mexican fast food chain) for dinner, but it would have taken just 15 minutes had I driven straight there. It was nice to go to a game so close that I got back home before the middle of the night.
Union College is in south Lincoln. I never have a reason to go to this part of town, but maybe I should; it's nice. At 50 acres, Union's campus is bigger than I expected. The school is located on top of a hill and you can't see much of the outside city from most parts of campus. While it's in an area of Lincoln with several shops and large houses, the school feels separate from the city. Despite its small size, Union seems to be a mostly residential campus, and students were still walking between buildings when I arrived a little before 7 PM. Also, Union College is really ready for Christmas. The schools largest buildings and their central clock tower were covered with Christmas lights that could be seen from many blocks away.
According to Google Maps, the official name of Union College's gymnasium is "Union College Gymnasium." However, everyone there calls it "the Thunderdome." The Thunderdome might be the weirdest building I've ever been in. The lattice ceiling and frosted glass windows combined with the baseline stage and overall smell of must/cologne remind me of a mix between a small church building and my junior high school cafeteria. That said, the Thunderdome is my favorite gym I've visited so far. There are a few reasons for this: 1) It's intimate. As you can see from the photo below, there were no bleachers on the opposite side from me. What you can't see is that the side that did have bleachers only went up about six rows, and they're almost right on top of the court. It seemed like everyone on those bleachers (but me) knew each other and cheered right alongside one another. I could hear the chatter on the court as loudly as I heard the group beside me cheer for their classmates. 2) It's old. Union College has been around for 128 years and the Thunderdome may have seen all of them. The bleachers were certainly entering their fifth decade, the light fixtures looked terribly unnatural, and the restroom appeared to be an afterthought. It felt so old, but in a delightful way. 3) It's got personality. I don't know what the Thunderdome's original purpose was, but I'm not convinced it's always been a basketball gym. It has this weird balcony area above the entrance doors and there is the aforementioned stage that hangs out on the gym's opposite side. I had trouble even getting in because there were two outside doors that didn't open to anything. It was almost as if the building itself delighted in being strange. But most importantly, 4) it's unique. Nothing else is exactly like a basketball game at an eastern Nebraskan, Seventh-Day Adventist college in an architecturally baffling structure with a goofy name. When I set out on this project, this is the type of thing I hoped I would find. I'll probably never find a place like the Thunderdome again, and I'm glad I have a memory of it.
THE GAME
Either Union didn't charge admission or I walked in the wrong door. Either way, I didn't pay to get in. (I'm pretty sure they didn't charge admission. Pretty sure.) Union and KCC were playing a women's/men's doubleheader and when I got there, the women's game was just heading into overtime. As soon as you enter the Thunderdome, you're pretty much on the court, so I hurriedly found a place to sit four rows up near midcourt. I sat there and watched the Union women prevail 59-52 in a smartly played overtime period by the Warriors.
By the time the men's game started, there were about sixty fans in attendance. That's not a big number, but the gym is small enough to where that actually feels a little full. Of that sixty, I suspect about five of us weren't students. An older woman sat right behind me (she may have been a parent, I couldn't tell) and there were groups of students in front of me and to my right.
Based on what I could gather, I think Union is an all-walk-on team. Their tallest player is 6'4" but he twisted his ankle early in the first half, so the Warriors played all 6'2" and shorter lineups for the rest of the game. Union's players are from all around the country, but it seems that most of them attended private Adventist high schools. KCC's team was similar in height, except for #32, Sven Muchow. Muchow was from Osnabruck, Germany and 6'7". If I had been Kansas Christian's head coach, 90% of their possessions would have ended with the ball in Muchow's hands; he's almost half a foot taller than everyone else and I'm pretty sure he was the only player who could dunk. However, he was underutilized and didn't make as much of an impact as I hoped.
Union's head coach seems to be about twenty-five years old. Coaching also isn't his full time job - he spends his days as a P.E. teacher at a local elementary school. I tried looking up more about why he is the coach, and it seems that he played for Union a few years ago, was an assistant for a year or two, and this is his first year as head coach. This is a brand of college athletics I am wholly unfamiliar with, but I think it's truer to the early ideals of university sports. The players truly are student-athletes and the coach obviously isn't in it for the money.
The game tipped off at about 8:15 PM. Kansas Christian plays a full court press every possession, and it confused Union immediately. KCC forced a bunch of turnovers but had trouble capitalizing as Union actually held a 10-9 lead five minutes in. KCC then hit a barrage of threes to take a ten-point lead with eleven minutes on the clock, but Union answered right back, and with 6:15 left in the first half, the game was tied at 28. Union's comeback was spearheaded by #15, Griffin Verrill. I can't find a box score so I don't know how many points Verrill scored, but I'm pretty sure he made four clutch three pointers in the first half that either cut into KCC's lead or tied it. The game went back and forth for a while, but then Griffin Verrill went on the bench and Union's scoring evaporated. Kansas Christian's #11, Jacorey Washington led the way in the last minutes of the first half. If Washington were bigger, I think he'd be playing in a bigger division. He was the smartest and most athletic player on the court, and he consistently made big plays for the Falcons. Unfortunately for Washington, he's a slight 5'9". Kansas Christian led at the half, 46-35.
At halftime, the PA guy cranked up the gospel praise music and about twenty students lined up at halfcourt for a shooting contest. They shot one at a time and the first person to hit a halfcourt shot won $50. It probably took five minutes but someone finally scored. After this was over, about half the crowd wandered onto the court for an open shootaround. The gospel music continued.
The Thunderdome's energy vanished in the second half for two reasons: 1) Kansas Christian went on a 20-7 run in the first five minutes to take a 66-42 lead and 2) a mandatory dormitory meeting sent about one-fourth of the students home. After they left, KCC only increased their lead. They took a 30-point lead at 12:15 and led by as much as 39 with ten minutes left; plus, they hit the 100 point mark with 2:57 left. Union couldn't keep up, and they seemed to stop trying once they figured that out.
Final: Kansas Christian 107, Union 71
While this game ended up being quite the blowout, I had a lot of fun at Union College. Everything about this game was wholly unique, and I was glad to sneak a glance at their environment. I hope they win a game one of these days.
Up Next: Hastings College
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