12-0

12-0

It all started after my team and I lost in the RSU 24 Basketball Championship last year to Mountain View. We went undefeated over all of sixth grade and undefeated up until the final game of my seventh grade year. I couldn’t believe it, we lost to a team 44-40 who we had blown out by something like 21 and 27 points in the regular season. We thought that we were just going to go into the game, play a few minutes get ahead by twenty five or thirty and then just coast for the rest of the game. That was the pretty much the opposite of what had happened...
We only led by a few points at halftime, I believe that it was three and that was after I had hit a turn around while time in the half expired. While going for a rebound in the third quarter I was hit in the face with an elbow and my eye swelled up so I could barely see. After that I was unable to play for about ten minutes of game time. When I got back in the game, the game was close and there wasn’t much time left. Well it turned out to be too much time because in that last few minutes out undefeated hopes for our middle school basketball career went down the drain. We lost by four and the whole team was pretty much broken, especially us eighth graders this year who had thought that we weren’t going to lose a basketball game in school until high school.
After that game I knew that for me and the team we needed to not even come close to losing a game this year. We came into the season with sort of a chip on our shoulder. We were frustrated with how last year ended and we weren’t going to let it happen again. I knew that we were going to take it all this year, but I learned that I shouldn’t be arrogant and expect it because I learned the hard way last year that you have to work hard, and anything can happen.
In our first few games we rolled over people no problem at all. Easy twenty to forty point games over some easy teams. Then we had to play the our most difficult competitor that we would face all year, Lamoine. Hancock and Lamoine have always been two teams that are contenders in RSU 24 (formerly Union 92). This year although, was the year of HGS. We were good, very good. We had five players who made the Ellsworth travel team, and eventually went on to make the all-star/tournament team. On those teams there are only three Ellsworth players, Alex, Bruce, and Billy, one player from Surry, Bryce, one from Lamoine, my close friend Spencer, and the rest were from Hancock. Nick, Cooper, Brian A, Charlie, and myself are the Hancock players who made up the five that played on the travel and all-star teams. Other than us five we had a few other role players, Gordon, Brian H, and Nathan.
Our starting five was pretty amazing for a small school like ours. We had Charlie at point usually who’s pretty tall for a middle school point at about 5’9/5’10, then at the two guard we had Brian A who is a short little guy but he had a massive impact and was one of out leading scorers. The next three positions were really mixed up, it was myself, Cooper, and Nick, and at anytime any of us, me being the shortest (which I hate) could be playing either the 3, 4, or 5. Gordon who was probably our sixth man and had a big influence on the game is tall and usually played a four or a five.
From the first Lamoine game to the second game we played against them we really didn’t have any challenge and most of us, including me, didn’t expect much from Lamoine in our second duel. I once again found myself being overly confident and I knew that if I wanted to do well and for the team to win we I had to make sure that I was taking them seriously. I felt that in order to get back to the top we had to prove that no one had any chance against us at all, and that was what we were going to do by the end of the season.
In the second meeting between the two powerhouse teams, us and Lamoine, the game was played on our court. That was an even bigger need to win that game, to show them were boss at our house. That game got scary for a little while, as I recall, we only had an eight point lead going into the half. In the third I think that they had that down to a four point game when one of there giants got his fifth foul and was forced to sit and we regained a healthy twenty or so point lead. In the fourth we had to put in some of our bench players and I believe that the game ended with us winning by fourteen or so points. I was so glad that we won but I really was hoping for a dominating victory of more like twenty to thirty points.
After that game was the playoffs, we had an easy undefeated season but the scores of the games with Lamoine were still to close to say that we could beat the all day and I wanted to change that... We had to get through Peninsula first to get there though. Peninsula was the best team after us and Lamoine, I mean they weren’t really good at all. We had been up by forty and sometimes fifty in games against them but we needed to play good against them so that, one, we would beat them no problem, and, two so that we would be ready to face Lamoine on the night of the championship.
We got past Peninsula with ease, easier than expected even. I had three fouls in about the first few minutes of the first quarter so I did a lot of sitting that game, I wasn’t really needed though, which was a good thing. I did really want to play though and get some rare points for me, scenes how I mostly just pick up rebounds and assists in school games. When that game was over I immediately got butterflies, instantly just like that, I was more nervous than ever.
The butterflies didn’t stop for a long time. It was a few days, maybe a week after the Peninsula game (can’t exactly remember) was the game that I had been wanting to come for about a year and also a game that I was more nervous about than ever. I knew that we needed to win, I needed to win. Not because it was a life or death situation, nothing like that, I just needed it for me, and for us after last years break down.
The moments leading up the the game were terrible, I literally thought that I was going to throw up. I had never in my life been so nervous. The nervousness climaxed when we stepped onto the court for warmups and stayed at it highest point until I got my hands on the ball, after that I was good. Instantly, after a week of butterflies, they had all disappeared, like somebody just let them out of my stomach. Right then I knew that we had the game locked up, I could smell victory, it was in our hands and this time we weren’t going to let it slip away like it had a year before.
We knew that we were’t going to and we didn’t, we took the game over before the first half was over, even with Nick and myself in foul trouble we had a lead in the high teens. By the end of the third we had it up to twenty-five or so and we just kept expanding on that lead. By the end of regulation we had won 80-51. That was what I needed and I got it, we proved to ourselves and to everyone else that cared that we we’re THE team and no one could and can stop us... Dominating, all day.