Even though I've been in the thrall of Friday night lights since the late 1950's, and in spite of all the publicity that High School Football attracts and all the attention given to each week's gridiron games, the sport that somehow manages to worm its way into my heart more than any other, year in and year out, is HS Girls Basketball.

For a dozen years I have been a devoted fan of my local girls team.

All it took was one Friday night when I went to watch the older sister of one of my son's teammates. The stands were full, the band was playing, the gym was rocking, and, most important, the girls were really getting after it.....diving for loose balls, getting knocked on their keisters drawing charges, crashing the boards, while at the same time playing the same sort of quintessential team ball that reminded me of the games my old HS team strived to play, back in the post-peach basket days.

For the team I follow, every season has been the same old story.... never the worst team in the league, never the best, almost always with a realistic chance of making it to the State tournament. Every year has finished, though, with a season-ending, emotion-wrenching defeat, spanning from desultory to bitter to heart-breaking. One year, a makable shot at the buzzer rimmed out, sending the game into overtime and an eventual defeat, resulting in another long bus ride home for the team, full of what-ifs and shouldas, wouldas, and couldas.

This season proved to be different.

Hopes were higher than normal for this year's team. Though young (with seven sophomores, a freshman, three juniors, and only one senior on the squad), they had shown some promise during the short summer season, and hopes were high that this team might just be the first one in the school's history to break through at Districts and advance to State.

A couple early losses to the league's elite teams didn't seem to deter the girls – in fact, they seemed to elicit more resolve as the young squad began to figure out what it was going to take to compete at this level, with many opponents being a year or two older than most of them.

A signature win came on the road (against one of the aforementioned elite teams) as the girls overcame a 17-point deficit to avenge an earlier 30+ point loss to win by nine.

The team also scored its first win since the Reagan administration (!) against the heretofore goliath of the league (who notably was missing its best player that night with an injury).

When Districts rolled around, good fortune smiled on the team.

Another school, regularly the league's doormat, has recently enjoyed a renaissance with the opening of their new modern campus, replacing their dreary old one that must have been designed by the same people who built Gitmo. Their team, reflecting the optimism brought about by the change in scenery, showed flashes during the season that they could challenge for a spot at State. When given the chance, they knocked off the perennial league champ, handing them their first loss in the double-elimination District format.

A new school in the league, in only its second year of existence, had a talented post player who measured 6'1”, was built like a brick outhouse, and played with a ferocity seldom seen in girls basketball.    But a broken foot had sidelined her for the last half of the season, and her teammates had struggled to find an identity in her absence. And yet, playing on their home floor, they, too, managed to upset the perennial champs, bringing their season to a premature end.

The door was left open for the team I root for to claim a District Championship, and they didn't disappoint, winning by ten to punch their ticket to the State Tournament for the first time in the school's history.

The following week at State, the girls won their first round game, and when the defending state champs were knocked out in the second round by a purposeful team that scrapped and persisted more than the champs, visions of a clear path to the Finals danced in the heads of us fans. Our hopes were soon dashed, though when the eventual State Champions showed their physical superiority, knocking off our girls by ten, in a game that didn't start until 10:30 that evening.

In a fitting way, the game (and the chances of winning the State Championship) ended right at the stroke of midnight.

The next day the girls played the defending champs in a woefully misnamed consolation game, as their was little consolation to be found in what wound up being the season-ending defeat.

The depth of caring for their team and each other was evident on the tear-streaked faces of the girls as they walked off the court, and half an hour later when they emerged from the locker room and into the arms of their consoling parents (many of whom seemed to be in need of consoling, as they, too, hated to see this marvelous season come to an end).

Basketball, perhaps more than any team game, relies on synergy, where the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. When nobody on the team cares how many points she scores, but is more concerned with how the team does, great things can happen.

This was a team with six different players who led the team in scoring in at least one game. Only one player averaged more than ten points a game, while another four of them averaged at least 7 points a game.

This was a team whose lone senior, one of the co-captains, led by example by showing her teammates that individual and personal success meant nothing if the team didn't achieve. This attitude seemed to permeate throughout the team, and it even managed to find its way into the stands with the moms and dads.

The virus of selfishness that can afflict so many teams (“the disease of me” as Pat Riley calls it) never took hold with this group.

In his great book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, “The Boys of Summer”, Roger Kahn observes that “you may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat”.

This wasn't the best team in the state.

Nobody would mistake this team for a steamroller.

Like all the school's teams that had gone before it, this one had its flaws.

But unlike its predecessors, this one triumphed as no others had.

It made this team a very easy one to love.

There's no question about it.

FtheM