Consider Oregon Girls Basketball as entering the Annie Oakley era. What used to be mostly a zealous father-son and the Billy the Kid thing has spread its tiny wings and mutated over to the XY spectrum. It helps get that leg up on the competition when you're smart, gifted and spend a year in academic purgatory. In the new rewritten musical "Annie Get Your Basketball," there is a great scene when Annie and Frankie are going one on one. "Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you." Imagine putting your son or daughter in the proverbial "Groundhog Day" where for a full year, they do the exact same thing over and over. In hopes someone at the Groundhog Day celebration bids top dollar for their basketball or football prowess.

I fondly remember my junior high years of late 1960's. As lowly incoming seventh graders we were the runts of the litter compared to the ninth graders who just towered above us. While Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Viet Nam raged around us, we anticipated watching our football team terrorize the other schools because the ninth grade had a secret weapon. His name was Jess Harper and he made fellow ninth graders look like wimpy seventh graders. He had big bushy brown hair. Not just on his head but on his whole face to where he looked like Lon Chaney Jr, in The Wolfman, except he had feral eyes that struck fear into even the most pompous and fearless teachers of Renne Jr High. At 6'2 and 230 pounds, he had a physique that most PAC-8 linebackers would have envied. He drank and smoked and drove a car and played linebacker with such ferocity that I can remember just watching mesemerized as he would wheel toward a little ball carrier who would suddenly and almost always seem to stumble and fall on a large tuft of grass just before impact. I could hear the voice of old Marlon Perkins from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom drawling in the background about the large powerful jungle cat taking down the small and defenseless little newborn who must have had a horrible final few moments of sheer panic before getting taken out.

Being the little doofs, we joyfully speculated about Harper going straight from ninth grade to play alongside Dick Butkus he was that good. When needed, Jess would carry the ball in close games. That scene always reminded me of Gulliver running toward the goal line covered with Lilliputians, who in this case came from far away places like Poynter, Mac, Brown and Fowler Junior High. The Renne Rams went undefeated that football season thanks to Harper who would drop out of school by the Christmas Break and eventually go to "Nam." I had heard he would have been to old to play football once he entered high school. I wondered if he faced the same dilemma that Jethro Bodine as a 17 year old eighth grader had endured before dropping out and becoming a Double Naught Spy on the "Beverly Hillbillies." I never heard about Harper ever again but still think back to those sunny fall afternoons and what an advantage we had over other teams because of a kid that was held back because of grades.

We all had friends growing up who were older than us. Sometimes they struggled early on with a learning disability. Maybe a severe illness kept them out for such a long stretch of the school year they had no option. Regardless, in most cases they where usually just a bit better than us in sports and on the playground through the formative years until we caught up with them in the later stages of high school. Rarely, you knew someone who was held back because the maturation process had lagged behind everyone else and the doctors or parents felt for some reason, the child might lose confidence to be smaller than the rest.

There is a new breed of Oregon High School ball players hitting the scene. They are intelligent and often straight A students. They are gifted athletically and would have dominated even amongst there own age peers, yet in increasing numbers, they are showing up their freshmen year after repeating a grade through either home schooling or another measure in hopes that their superiority will be even greater once they embark on their high school athletic career. It used to be reserved primarily for boys who needed that extra year to physically mature after lagging behind other classmates in the "voice change" department but now, girls are starting to take this route more frequently. This season two of the top 6A girls basketball teams, Oregon City and Central Catholic, will showcase incoming freshmen who in reality should be sophomores. Their talent should not be questioned. They will be good. The names aren't important. Setting a precedent may be more important down the road as the Uber-Parent continues to que up Cher's immortal classic with the assuredness that indeed, where your child is concerned, you "can turn back time."

On the other end of the spectrum we have the legendary Schimmels. Those gypsies of Oregon basketball who evoke strong passion amongst the state basketball community. They went against the grain and fast-tracked their daughter Jude who should be in the same class as the incoming talented freshmen but is instead coming into her junior year at Franklin. Which is the smarter decision? Is there a smarter choice? Last year Jude was the PIL Player of the Year and deservedly so. She should have been just a true freshman last season. As an eighth grader playing up you could see the older kids had more physicality. She offset the physciality with hoop smarts, moxie and athleticism. Three things that counter the age gap. If you have a daughter who is eating, drinking and sleeping basketball the way an athlete goes to college just to turn pro eligible, then I can see your point. The downside is your daughters best friends all leap frogged her toward realization of graduating from high school. Maybe you won't trade. Or could it just be a "parental" thing under the lament of "the best thing for you is....."

In the end, seldom is the child the decision-maker in the scheme of things. Just like transferring and academics, there are those parents that enjoy pushing the envelope. It is the guise of "whats best for my child" but more often than not, the end result is the gratification of the parent. To continue the dream of being able to keep watching their kid play basketball and I'll admit as a junkie myself, it's an addiction as strong as any drug. For those staring at an empty nest coming down the turnpike at a terrifying speed, keeping your child back to milk an extra year of sitting in rock hard bleachers much to your proctologists delight watching your son or daughter score 14 points is like meth. Anything to delay Father Time is perhaps a valid reason for some. Yet in the scheme of things, all it does is prolong the agony of watching them begin their own lives away from the game. Its inevitable. So while some may hold their prized offspring back for what they deem the greater good of things, put it in the pile of debatable topics. When you walk into a gym and inhale the intoxicating smell of sweat and old shoes, will you be able to detect a slight whiff of Marv Marinovich?