Remember the Tigers...

This weekend our JV basketball teams participated in the county-wide JV basketball tournament. JV season ended back in December before school go out, but due to a snow cancellation, the tournament had to be rescheduled for this weekend. This presents several challenges, the most of which is that the teams were not "in the groove." They had to practice one week and then hit to court and make it count. The first night of the tournament we played a team that shall remain nameless and after looking at the roster discovered that they were playing 2 varsity starters in the JV tournament. This particular team, we had played earlier in the season and the game had been a blow out! (Not because we pressed or anything, we played clean, played everyone on the bench, and only played a couple of the starters in the last period) we just out-played them. At the tournament, with their additional players, it was a VERY close game and after looking at the books, without their varsity players we would have blown them out again instead of winning by a small margine. Talking to parents who had seen previous games of the day, we were informed that several area teams had brought varsity players as well! What a disappointment that adults, coaches, would set this type of example for their players! Up against these odds were were not sure that we even had a chance to make it all the way. The girls lost on Saturday and were out of the tournament, but the boys hung in there and won their second game which put them in the final game! A couple 7th grade boys from our Varsity begged to dress out to make up for the injustice of the other teams - they wanted to level the playing field but our very own Coach Hooper said, no, we were going to play a fair game! According to the parents who know players on the other team, not only did our last match up have 3 varsity starters - they weren't even 7th graders. The game began, I was SO nervous! We were down 10 in no time and the refs were calling us on EVERYTHING and the other team on almost nothing! It became apparent very quickly that we were not only going to have to beat a team that was cheating but we were up against bad refs as well! About half way through the game Coach Hooper asked the ref a question about a call he didn't make (in a very respectful way) and he was, without warning, given a technical and told he had to sit down for the rest of the game! Now our boys REALLY had a challenge ahead of them. The most magical thing happened... Chris getting the technical lit those boys on FIRE! One immediately turned around and said, "Don't worry coach, we got your back!" another.... "We got this Coach!" It still gives me chills! From that point on Chris didn't even have to coach! After being down by about 10 points the boys kicked it into high gear and rose to the challenge, outscoring the other team by 9 points for the final score! Not only did they play hard, they played fair, and they played CLEAN the WHOLE game! I know our boys learned an important lesson that night and I hope that the players and especially coaches of the other teams did as well! I don't think I have ever been so proud of a group of students! They truly are champions!!!!