Riverdale Won by Seven. Its Fans Were Called a "Row."

A row. I have been a row of supporters. At the middle one's away games I am usually most of it: me, another father, and a grandmother who came for a different child and stayed for the heater.

The preview was hopeful. Buzzell, it said, was the chance to show what unwavering pride and school spirit look like, with the dance team adding energy and the players seeking to beat Horace Mann on points and on attitude. The crowd, in other words, had a rematch too.

The games have a reason older than any of the fans. Robert Buzzell, a member of Horace Mann's class of 1951 and a devoted Lions player and fan, died of polio in October 1950. His classmates decided an athletic contest against Riverdale would be a fitting tribute, and it has been played in all but one year since. For decades it has raised money, first for the March of Dimes and later also for the American Cancer Society. By 2015, Horace Mann reported, it had raised more than $58,000 for the March of Dimes and $6,000 for the cancer society.

The crowd standard was set early. Roy Salomon, Horace Mann's captain in 1955, remembered his senior-year Buzzell for the school in 2019. The gym was packed, he said, with standing room only on the track above the court, close enough that it "made it seem like we were playing in Madison Square Garden." The starters were introduced one by one with a spotlight in a darkened gym. The lead changed hands several times. Horace Mann scored with seventeen seconds left and won 57–55.

Seventeen seconds and a spotlight. The middle one's league introduces the starting five by having the coach read them off a clipboard while the other team warms up.

"It was not the Final Four or the NBA Championship," Salomon said, "but to us it could not have meant more."

I have decided to improve. I bought a cowbell. I brought it to the last game and rang it once, during a free throw, and was asked by our own coach, nicely, to become a quieter row.