The glow is brightest the moment it happens, when an athlete sets a record.
The spotlight is on him, the wave of excitement generated like a jolt of a triple Red Bull ingested. Smiles and applause all around.
Time freezes the sweetness of the memory and no one interrupts to think of the next guy, about how long the record will last, what that moment will be like.
Former Trinity Lutheran basketball star Daniel Horton departed the Cougars in 2016 as the boys program’s all-time leading scorer with 1,069 points.
Last week, now 23 and back in Seymour as an engineer after earning a degree from Purdue University, Horton was seated in the Bollinger Athletic Complex as an eyewitness to someone else’s prized moment.
In the fourth quarter of a victory over Shawe Memorial, Tyler Goecker equaled and then broke Horton’s five-year-old mark. He came to the gym needing 23 points to erase Horton’s from the school record book.
Horton watched his name being crossed off, one letter at a time, as Goecker’s points accumulated. This time, the hoopla feted someone else.
“I was aware he was getting close,” said Horton, who sees his old team play a couple of times a season.
Horton, wearing Purdue and Trinity clothing, was invited into a quickie mid-game ceremony planned by Trinity officials to honor Goecker instantly. In a game the Cougars won handily, coach Ryan Crase called timeout when Goecker swished record-breaking free throws.
An announcement was made over the public address system. Horton and Goecker met on-court, and Horton handed a basketball to the senior guard, a symbolic passing of the torch. Goecker’s teammates mobbed him.
After the last few minutes of the game played out, the points written next to Goecker’s name added up to 1,071. The season continues, Goecker is still scoring, and he could end up with 1,300, or something.
When Horton set his record, he didn’t wait until his last game, either. He zoomed past the old mark of about 860 and set a new mark every game afterwards.
Sports records are meaningful occasions for players and fans, appreciated by whoever follows the game. They help define greatness when Hall of Fame selections are made, but rarely do precise numbers stick in the mind.
Who is the leading scorer in NBA history? Many might say Michael Jordan. He is actually fifth. No. 1 is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. No one can name the point total of 38,387 without research.
Records of all sorts are kept, many of them arcane, and are seemingly on the lips of TV broadcasters when one of them arises. The oft-spoken cliche “records are made to be broken” is not always true. Records are made to be cherished by the record breaker. And some records will never be broken.
It is not impossible someone will top Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game of 1962 when he was with the Philadelphia Warriors, but it is a long shot.
Horton, who played intramural ball at Purdue, is not jealous of Goecker taking the record away. Seeing him play as a freshman, Horton said he could see his talent and that if Goecker could maintain a high level of play for four years, he might be the guy.
“I’m extremely happy he got the record,” Horton said.
A gracious response, even if Goecker is no stranger to him as his third cousin through grandparents on both sides of the family. Hoops may be in the genes.
Trinity Lutheran is a Class A school, competing in Indiana’s smallest classification. Yet this is Goecker’s world and his family’s with older siblings and yes, cousins strolling through the doors and competing on sports teams for some years.
So there is something special about becoming the basketball school record-holder for Goecker.
“It definitely doesn’t seem real,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like it would be me who is the one to do it. You’ve got this small, 5-foot-10 point guard.”
Teachers and classmates congratulated him when he returned to classes after the weekend.
Horton is 6-4 and got most of his points, including a game-high 29, in the low post and by driving into the paint. He and Goecker would be physical mismatches for one-on-one games.
That fact leaves room for whose-better debates and trash talking at family reunions, both say they would never indulge in such a thing. Easy to say now. Wait till middle age.