By Rick Anderson

For the Grays Harbor News Group

I’ve never set foot on its campus. But the recent announcement that Concordia University of Portland will close its doors at the end of spring quarter triggered a wave of melancholy nostalgia.

For years, the Concordia junior varsity was a fixture at Grays Harbor College’s long-defunct Cold Turkey Men’s Basketball Tournament.

More specifically, the Cavaliers were to that tournament what the Washington Generals were to the Harlem Globetrotters — an overmatched opponent for the featured attraction.

The four-team Cold Turkey Tournament traditionally tipped off Grays Harbor’s basketball season. It was staged at Aberdeen High School’s Sam Benn Gym (then GHC’s home court) on Thanksgiving weekend. In keeping with the holiday motif, cold turkey sandwiches were included on the concession stand menu.

Grays Harbor officials traditionally invited two other Northwest community college teams and filled out the field with a non-NWAC member. Sometimes it was a Canadian squad and even occasionally a recreational team.

More often than not, however, it was the junior varsity of a four-year college. Concordia usually filled that slot during the final years of the tournament.

Taking advantage of the host team’s privilege, the Chokers invariably “drew” Concordia in the opening round. I can’t remember the Cavaliers ever winning that match-up, although they may have prevailed once or twice in the consolation game on the final night of the tourney.

Gary Arthur, GHC’s men’s coach at the time, makes no apologies for relegating Concordia to also-ran status. The tournament, he maintained, was beneficial even to the Oregonians.

“I have experience at four-year colleges with JV teams and I know they just want games,” said Arthur, still employed by GHC as a program coordinator. “If anything, this was an opportunity for them to play two games against good competition.”

Some of the less traditional Cold Turkey entrants fared better than Concordia.

The University of Puget Sound JVs won the tournament one year, during a period in which the UPS varsity was a national NCAA Division II power under legendary coach Don Zech.

During the late 1970s, the Chokers assembled an alumni team to compete in both the Cold Turkey event and the Eddie Smith Christmas Tournament (the latter a short-lived tourney the Chokers hosted in late December).

With a roster that included former Elma High and GHC great Ron Sheets, the alums wheezed their way to a couple of Cold Turkey losses. They spent the next month getting in shape— and won the Eddie Smith tournament.

For most of its run, the Cold Turkey Tournament was a fun event. Since the invitees often included elite community college teams from Eastern Washington or Oregon, the championship games produced high-quality basketball during the years the Chokers were also strong.

The crowds, swollen by college students home for the holiday, were among the largest of the season.

I always believed that GHC’s failure to generate a consistent fan base during that era largely could be attributed to its inability to follow up the Cold Turkey event with many non-league home games in December. By the time the Chokers opened league competition in January, many Harbor basketball fans had all but forgotten about them.

Arthur confirmed that he experienced difficulty finding opponents willing to play a single non-league contest in Aberdeen. But, contrary to legend, he insisted that there was no shortage of willing participants for the Cold Turkey tourney.

When college officials pulled the plug on the tournament, the word on the street was that most potential entrants preferred competing in eight-team tourneys scheduled elsewhere the same weekend.

On the contrary, according to Arthur, he received inquiries from other coaches on the status of the tournament for years after its demise. The former GHC coach said it was the perceived difficulty in finding a support staff on a holiday weekend that prompted college officials to scrap the event.

As recently as two or three years ago, there were rumors that the Cold Turkey tourney might be resurrected— possibly as a four-school co-ed event. But Tom Sutera, GHC’s athletic director at the time, said such talk never progressed beyond idle speculation. Among other factors, a vintage Cold Turkey crowd would exceed the limited seating capacity at the college gym.

But for many longtime hoop fans, another helping of Cold Turkey would be welcome — even if any revival would come too late for the Concordia University JVs to redeem themselves.