Our grass will grow in the streets of your towns. — Native American prophecy

I am sitting in the high school gym in Brewster, Kan., watching a girls basketball game. A friend of mine and I have driven 40 miles from Atwood to Brewster because there is a regional basketball tournament and my friend’s son is a star player. In half an hour, he will have a very good night, leading his team to victory with a blizzard of three-point shots. Until then we are killing time and saving center court seats by watching the girls game.

I have become fascinated by the play of a point guard. The crowd calls her “Red.” “Go, Red,” they yell when she gets the ball. “Get ’em, Red. Go.” She is very good.

Out here in towns like Atwood and Oberlin and St. Francis — all who have teams in the Brewster tournament — the population is declining. No news there. It’s been going that way for 50 years. Stores are boarded up. Houses are abandoned. Lots are vacant, some with cars or trucks or trailers left behind as the owners moved on to Denver or Kansas City. Nobody’s coming back.

Eight- and even six-man football is now played at some small-town high schools. It’s sad, but it’s either that or drop the sport. Nobody wants to do that. Sports give everybody something to cheer for on winter nights. The town of Brewster is packed with pickups from hundreds of square miles of the High Plains.

“Go, Red, go.” I love it. “Red” was my nickname when I was her age and running up and down the hardwoods. I thought of myself as Bob Cousy. Not that I could dribble behind my back, or hit his one-hand running set shot. Nor did I have much speed. Being Bob Cousy was just a dream I had for myself.

But the Red I am watching can dribble behind her back. She is fast. And she has a shot that is better than any shot I ever had, and better than most of the boys with whom I played. She can also pass — sometimes with such skill and speed it catches her teammates unaware. When that happens, and the ball sails out of bounds, Red claps her hands — not in exasperation with her teammate, or even at herself for throwing the ball too quickly, but as if to reset herself, now on defense, the game coming back her way: She picks up her girl with an eye to forcing a turnover, or stealing the ball, or blocking a shot. Get ’em, Red.

Screens. Give and go. Top of the key. Fast break. In the paint. I remember the language of the game as it was taught to me. I remember as well how the girls played it in those days: half court. A defensive three and an offensive three. They didn’t cross the center line. I suppose the thinking was that girls couldn’t run the full court without fainting. Or without breaking a sweat — which none of them wanted to do. That’s not true of Red. She plays the game with glee, as do the other girls on her team. Up and down the court they go: picks, screens, fast breaks — plus dribbling and passing and shooting with either hand.

As I watch her play, I think: If there is six-man football on the High Plains, won’t it follow that there soon will be three-man basketball? Three-on-three we used to call it. Or two-on-two. The number of boys who showed up to play on a Saturday afternoon divided in half. Won’t it sooner or later come to that out here? One-on-one. Me and Red for the High Plains Basketball Championship.

She blocks my Bob Cousy running set shot and fast breaks for an easy lay-up. I miss a hook. She hits a jump shot from the top of the key. I am trailing by 10. Red passes to herself and runs behind me to get it — then full court through the paint. Another lay-up. From the bleachers an old rancher cheers, “Go, Red, go.” The clock is counting down. Outside the shortgrass prairie is coming up in the streets of Brewster.

Red makes one last shot.

— Robert Day, author of “The Last Cattle Drive,” is a member of the Prairie Writers Circle, a project of the Land Institute. Day teaches English at Washington College in Chestertown, Md.