This is a non-playing day for the tournament, but the organizers asked me to talk about what the team did on the day off, and also about the changes I’ve seen in the area since I lived here in the mid-1980s.

The boys have a leisurely morning before we all meet at the hotel at 10:45. One of our Arizona hosts conducts us to a chapel a few miles away so we can attend Sacrament meeting. Unlike team meetings, attending church while traveling is optional, but the coaches always arrange for it and virtually everyone comes. Today’s vehicle procession includes the two team vans, plus a half-dozen cars containing parents and other family members, and me.

We seat ourselves in the overflow area at the back of the cultural hall, and I’m not too surprised when the member of the bishopric conducting the meeting points out our group, tells who we are, and offers us a personal welcome. This has happened occasionally in other places we have traveled as well (15 tall boys in white shirts do have a tendency to attract some attention). The meeting includes talks from two returned missionaries, one sister and one elder. The boys listen with interest because most of them plan to serve in the not-too-distant future.

After that, our host conducts the two team vans to In-N-Out Burger for an all-you-can-eat lunch. There is only one location for that restaurant in Utah, and it’s several hours away from where we live. But, many of the boys are familiar with the chain and are excited to go there, rather than Bajio’s as originally planned (we do have some of those).

The rest of us split up. Some families go to visit relatives in the area, some go back to the hotel to sleep, and others go to see the temple and other local sights. The boys come back from their lunch and change before heading out again to stretch their legs a bit. I return to where I’m staying to take a break myself.

In the evening, more than 20 of those traveling with the team meet at Maggiano’s Little Italy in Scottsdale for dinner, and I join them, by invitation. We usually do this at least once every trip. I always attend when I’m asked because I enjoy being around these folks. This is another restaurant we don’t have back home, but it was highly recommended by one of the families, who once had a child work at a location in California.

It turned out to be a great choice. We went with the family-style menu, and those who knew the fare made the choices for all of us. In addition to the delicious bread, we got two different appetizers, two choices of salad, a pasta, two entrees and two desserts. They kept bringing plates until everyone had had enough. When we were finished, two of the moms packed all the leftovers in boxes to take back to the boys at the hotel. I never know what the conversation is going to be about on these occasions; tonight, very little was about basketball, but it was lively and interesting. We all had a great time.

Now, some observations about how things have changed here in the past 25 years. In 1983, I moved with my young family from Texas to Gilbert, which was then still mostly an old pioneer farm town with a population of about 12,000. We bought a house that bordered the back lot of Gilbert High School; two blocks the other direction was an alfalfa field. We attended church in an old building right at the edge of the old downtown that had been added onto so many times that it was nothing short of a labyrinth.

Val Vista was then the town’s Outer Mongolia and there was nothing after that but farms until you hit Apache Junction. Highway 202 didn’t exist, and Highway 60 turned into a local road for many miles along its current length. In those days, the long-closed Williams Air Force Base was the biggest training base in the free world. There were jets constantly circling overhead as the pilot trainees practiced their takeoffs and landings. Gilbert Days, with its parade and rodeo (the residents were especially proud of that), was the biggest community event of the year.

I initially taught at Arizona State and the Scottsdale Management Institute, and also did some writing on the side for the Latter-Day Sentinel newspaper. One article I wrote was a feature about local football hero Todd Shell of Mesa, who was then at BYU and later went on to play in the NFL. It’s a name some older folks around here still recognize.

Eventually I became the editor, and later the publisher, of the Gilbert Independent, a weekly newspaper that was the community’s only local voice. Few people had home computers in those days, and the Internet was not yet available for use by the general public.

I had this job less than two years, but it was a critical stretch in Gilbert’s history. During my time there, the town’s master plan was completed, and so was the strip annexation that brought 64 square miles of land into the city’s borders, setting the stage for the explosive growth that began right about that time.

Also, at the latter end of my administration, Gilbert High School was preparing to split after being the only such institution in town for all of the 20th century to that point. I covered the Tigers when they won the 4A football title in 1985 and the girls basketball championship in 1986.

All of these changes brought a lot of upheaval and heated debate in the community, which we navigated carefully at the newspaper to make sure all sides got a fair hearing. Community newspaper publishers were still very hands-on at that time. I served as sponsor and chairman of the Gilbert Days Queen pageant and as a parade judge for the Gilbert Promotional Corporation, and also on the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce education committee. I was a charter member of the President’s Advisory Council for Chandler-Gilbert Community College, which was founded during my tenure.

When I left Gilbert in 1986 to accept a teaching job at BYU, the town council gave me a Key to the City, the first such honor ever bestowed in its 100-year history. I was deeply touched to receive this tribute, and it stills hangs on my home office wall in Utah.