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Sports
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Week of 23 October 1998 |
Vol. II, No. 11 |
Sports
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Alumni globe-trotters BU-rostered Team Watertown is a local world-class actby Amy E. Dean They're each six feet, four inches tall, and having played together as BU hoopsters, know the game inside out. And in their past five trips overseas to compete in the French-hosted Quadratour tournament, they have never come away with less than silver. However, unlike the NBA "World" Champion Chicago Bulls, they and their teammates have truly earned this global title, defeating teams from Holland, France, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, and China. By the way, these guys are in their 50s. The two former Terriers who have made their mark in over-40 basketball events both nationally and internationally are Dave Walko (CAS'68), director of the BU Athletic Association and associate director of athletic development, and Allen Gallagher (SED'69), director of the Boys and Girls Club in Watertown. They started playing together on a BU team whose best season, they chuckle, yielded a hardly distinguished 8-12 record. "But we had a lot of fun, a lot of memories, a lot of good times," says Gallagher. And they simply never stopped being teammates. Gallagher -- or "Galzo," as Walko calls him -- is the team's eagle-eyed outside shooter who's often as adept at the three-point arc as in field goal range. Walko is the garbage man who "takes a beating inside, plays some big guys" and tries to hold his own. "After college, we kept playing together in various organized men's recreation leagues," Gallagher says. "We played in the Watertown league -- we won a couple of championships there -- played summers, and in tournaments in Charlestown and Medford. Now we're in the men's recreation league in Newton. We won the C division championship three years ago, the B division championship two years ago."
Team Watertown officially formed in 1993 when Walko received a phone call from a friend of Yves Relave, a French basketball promoter who "had some over-40 guys who wanted to play a game in Boston, and asked if we could accommodate him." Walko found the idea interesting, knew a lot of people who would play, and had access to a gym because of Gallagher's position at the Boys and Girls Club. "So we showed them a good time, we played them, and then Relave invited us to play in this tournament he had organized in his hometown of Lorette, in southern France, with teams from countries that were within a three- to five-hour trip," says Walko. Relave was thrilled with the addition of Team Watertown to Quadratour, the annual tournament for over-40 men's basketball teams, because it not only gave truth to the billing of an international league, but also "changed the intensity of the game," says Walko. In their first year, members of Team Watertown, paying their own way, beat the defending champion from Italy. For the past four years, Team Watertown has obtained local sponsorship to pay for most of the expenses, which has enabled the team to extend its stay overseas to be both ballplayers and goodwill ambassadors, traveling to Switzerland, Spain, and the French Riviera for exhibition games prior to Quadratour. In 1996, for example, Team Watertown played an exhibition game in Lorette against an All-Star European Quadratour team, and along with money earned at the game, donated a check from the Water-town Rotary Club and the players to a local school for autistic children. Team Watertown has been a dominant force in Quadratour "because we tend to be very aggressive, very physical," explains Gallagher. "We play man-to-man, whereas the European teams tend to play zone defense. They let you take the outside shot." "But each year," Walko says, "it has gotten progressively more sophisticated. Relave has weeded out the weaker teams and invited new competitors, and he's gradually brought up the level of play. In fact, we played the French National team, which was the country's 1972 Olympic team and the 1972 European Cup championship team. It's a fairly high-caliber team that still plays together." "But we beat them," Gallagher adds. The matter of
style "And the officials are definitely biased against the dominant team," Walko cuts in. The hectic Quadratour tournament weekend schedule has three or four games played on Saturday, each consisting of two 10-minute halves. The semifinal and the final games, which are played on Sunday, consist of two 15-minute halves. "We play a lot of games," says Walko. "Some teams play five or six games in two days." "Who would have thought," Gallagher asks, "when we were at BU or playing in these men's rec leagues into our late 20s and early 30s, that at the age of 50 we would be winning an international basketball championship in southern France?" Walko agrees: "We've been on the court with some great players and have made some great friendships both here and abroad." |
