I left off as we were arriving at Oral Roberts University. It was near Tulsa but a bit more outside the city. As we approached we could see a couple tall buildings with nothing else around them. One ended up being a casino tower along the river, and the other ended up being the tallest of a complex of three buildings directly across from the campus. I can't adequately express how weirdly tall the big building looked here. It's apparently 60 stories, rivaling each of the tallest downtown buildings in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Apparently this complex (note the pyramid at the base) was built to be a hospital and medical school for Oral Roberts, but both of those things shut down decades ago and there are medical offices and other tenants there now. But they matched the campus with their gold accents, which we were about to discover were everywhere, and just added to the surreal nature of the entire area, as you will soon see.
As we entered the campus itself, I immediately started laughing hysterically because we both realized it looked like something out of the Jetsons! Zoom into the picture below and you'll see what I mean.
We drove around the basketball arena and the similar attached building called the Global Learning Center.
Beyond that was a relatively normal, modern looking building, the Mike Carter Athletic Center, which seems to have training facilities for basketball and other sports. It appears to be relatively new because it was still listed as "Coming Soon" on a campus map I found.
As we drove further we saw the church, which was definitely more of that spacey 60s look.
Near one of the entrances to campus was this giant praying hands sculpture that is touted as a major local landmark.
We drove up to a security kiosk and were sad to find out that pretty much everything on campus was closed because it was Good Friday, but they did give us a pass to park and walk around. We saw these dorms on our way to the lot. Again, weird and Jetson-y, right? Each of those dark corners appeared to be a tiny balcony.
On the other side there were two three-winged dorms that had this wacky chain decor on the outside of the building. It almost looked like giant gold chain mail draped over outdoor stairwells. I wish I had gotten a better picture. The gold really was everywhere.
Then we saw the baseball stadium. It was certainly less grand than the ones we'd already seen over the past 24 hours, but it too stuck to the campus theme.
We finally parked and started getting a better view of the rest of the campus. This building appears to be the main academic building, all 900,000 square feet of it. It was huge and had a lot of shiny gold accents. Apparently Oral Roberts was a prosperity gospel guy and liked the luxury the gold conveyed. I was trying to figure out what this building reminded me of, and I think it may have been the M&T Bank building in downtown Buffalo, which has the same sort of high arches.
Near the parking lot was a more modern building, the student center. Despite the differing styles, it still somehow worked. I guess ultra modern has the same tendency toward weird angles, too.
The centerpiece of campus was the Prayer Tower. I don't even have words to describe how striking and bizarre it was to see in person. It was quite the architectural feat and about the gaudiest thing I could imagine seeing on a Christian college campus.
The gardens beneath it were amazing. They were sunken behind the tower, and were beautifully manicured--made even better by the beautiful day and blooming spring. I can't even express how gorgeous the weather was that day.
From beneath, the tower was quite a sight. Appropriate we were there on Good Friday since the spikes are meant to symbolize the crown of thorns that Jesus wore.
You can't really tell, but there is an eternal flame atop the tower, and of course, lots more gold! Within the gardens below were benches and some art.
This one looked like Jesus ascending and appeared to be carved out of a tree trunk.
We made our way across the walkway above the gardens to get a better look at this oddball, the auditorium. It looked like something that belonged more in EPCOT than a college campus.
Around the backside of the tower there was an entrance to go up in the tower, but alas, Good Friday closed that, too. Shouldn't Good Friday be a prime day to use the Prayer Tower for its intended purpose?!
As we continued to wander, we found this goose. I think it was sitting on a nest. We kept our distance, but what a strange place to nest, right next to the walkway!
The main academic building had this funky fountain on its patio that matched the extreme point on the corner of the building. If you look close, there's an eternal flame here too.
The grounds really were immaculate, which actually made me a little nervous when we walked across the grass. I remember hearing of another conservative Christian school that had strict rules about that. I think it was Grove City? Speaking of rules, we did some research later and found out that dress codes here weren't relaxed until 2000. Everyone used to have to dress up for class, and finally they made concessions for women to not wear skirts in cold weather, then relaxed the code a bit further to allow for business casual attire. Jeans weren't allowed until 2006!
Here's another sculpture in another part of the sunken gardens. It's Jesus talking to two students. I'll be honest, I really had to hold off from sitting next to Jesus and taking a selfie. The half-open bench lent itself to it, but it felt wrong somehow, especially on Good Friday.
We finished up our walk and headed back to the car, super happy we came and still in shock how odd the campus was. The drive back got a little complicated because the planned hour-and-a-half route had tolls and I wasn't sure how that would work with the rental car. I didn't want to get hammered for a toll violation for not having a proper tag or transponder, so I had the GPS route us without tolls. That made the trip a half hour longer and full of country roads, but we did get to travel on historic Route 66 for a bit. Other than a giant gas pump that I didn't get a picture of (look here), it was pretty unremarkable, but I guess it was neat in its own way to go through some of those small towns that were part of early American automobile history (as I learned from my American Landscapes professor in college who studied that stuff). We stopped to get subs at Firehouse on our way back and went back to the hotel for the night. I watched my parents' Good Friday service online while Jacob went with his team to scout teams they were playing the next day.
We were up bright and early on Saturday for an 8am game. The facilities were both nice. One had three courts, the other had four. We lost our first game by 14, went with part of the team to Chick-fil-A for a late breakfast/early lunch, and went to the other facility to watch one of the older teams. Jacob went with his teammates for a while leading up to the second game, and I was able to grab Panda Express for lunch because they have tons of freestanding (non-mall) locations there. I have missed it, and it was a nice change of pace from the places we'd been eating on repeat. We lost the next game by four. We had a long break after that and spent some time back at the hotel. Jacob got Chipotle for a late lunch/early dinner and hung out with some teammates for a while. Our next game wasn't until 9pm so we had time to kill. I ended up just eating leftover pizza in the room for dinner before heading to the game. That one was a toughie, as we were playing a team that was in the top-level Pro16 that we're trying to get to. That looks unlikely now, as we lost yet again. We hung with them for a bit but in the end we just couldn't finish, and that seemed to be a theme for these first two tournaments as a whole. We put up a really good effort, but in the end something always rattles us and the other team goes on a run we can't quite recover from.
After the game we had a long parent/player meeting that went over a lot of things--including some upcoming additional expectations of the players, including more lifting. I admittedly internally panicked a bit because Jacob is already struggling a bit to keep up with his homework, get enough sleep, and take care of the basketball side. I can't quite fathom how he will do more, particularly early morning workouts. It all sounds great to him in theory, until he doesn't finish his work, has to stay up late, and can't wake up in the morning just to get to school, let alone to lift. I warned him that if he doesn't change his habits he's going to burn the candle at both ends and will end up doing more harm than good. I think his ADHD messes with his head in a way that he knows what he needs to do and wants to do it, but he procrastinates and gives in to his preference in the moment to stay up or watch another YouTube video, and the cycle starts all over again. Talking through this turned into a whole big argument that night which did neither of us any good. In addition, I expressed my concern with how we were going to make this work for additional seasons (especially since it doesn't seem they will rank high enough to get travel covered next year) and that I worry we'll offset any good that future scholarships might do by paying all this money for travel. I'm honestly not sure how we might continue to make it work and it worries me...which in turn worried him because he doesn't want to lose this opportunity. It's really something I need to talk through with Craig, but it all sort of spewed out that night and made a mess of things. I didn't sleep and he was unhappy, so we were not in a great place by Sunday morning. My apology seemed to help a little, but I'm not sure it was enough to get his head on straight for the last game.
We lost yet another game to a previously winless team that morning, which left us winless for the tournament. We will definitely be relegated to a lower pool for the next tournament, which is a big one. To even have a shot at reaching an elite level, we'd have to win eight games straight. Right now we've lost seven straight...so...not good. To be fair, we haven't really had a full team. Last week one kid was sick and Jacob missed three of four games--the one he played we won, at least. But this weekend we were missing one kid who had flight issues and another who was on a spring break trip, and in the end we lost all four. We weren't playing like a team, and Jacob only ended up with two threes in the entire tournament. He had a good number of shots, too, but they just weren't falling. It was hard to watch, I'll be honest. His confidence is down and his ankle is still bothering him (more on that in my next post). Not enough to not play, but he worries about playing without his brace and yet hates playing with it. He doesn't get much bounce on his shots and it's throwing him off. They want him to play for the slightly younger regional team this weekend, just to try to get back in the groove. But he seemed to come home with a cold and was extra tired from all the early mornings, and due to various ailments and other issues he missed two additional days of school when we got home, in addition to missing the last day before break and the first day back for travel. I won't lie, it's all been a bit of a nightmare to manage because he's just behind on everything and can't seem to right himself. It's making me second-guess everything. He can't ease up on school but we also can't eliminate basketball because keeping his grades up for scholarships is his main motivator right now. But I wouldn't be against pulling back from this team and going regional, just to take a little of the pressure off. I'm sure he won't be down with that, but I'm not sure how he's going to get back on track because something has to give.
Anyway, the tournament was over, but we still had some trip left. That last part definitely wasn't our finest moment, but I tried to make the best of it. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion, coming soon...
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