Back in the days of short-shorts and fundamental skills, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) was a high school basketball star. Inslee (holding the basketball) and teammate Eddie Kamins made the Ingraham High School varsity team as sophomores and helped the squad win the state high school championship in 1969.

Sadly, Kamins, a strong athlete with a “superb” jump shot, passed away last year. But Inslee’s memory of their time as teammates lives on:

“For a brief moment in 1969, the crowd roared and all worldly motion stopped for Eddie, myself and 10 other guys when we stole the in-bounds pass in the left corner with one second to go and our team up one point, and I hurled the ball at the buzzer up into the Hec Ed pavilion rafters (at the University of Washington) where the ball still floats in my mind’s eye, because for Triple A high school Washington state champions, mortality be damned, the ball never comes down.”