8th grade girls win the championship

8th Grade Girls take home the championship

One of the lasting images from the 8th grade girls championship Wednesday night at St. Emydius will be the entire team gathered together on the court, just seconds after the final buzzer, embracing each other in a big heartfelt group hug.

The backdrop — a scoreboard with no time left, as they a celebrated 29-17 championship victory over OLP.

In their final game in a St. Mary’s uniform, the 8th grade girls walked off as champions, completing an improbable yet incredible basketball career for the class of 2014.

They used a 9-0 2nd quarter run to take a 10 point halftime lead, which the girls never relinquished.

Fiona, who along with Victoria was part of two (0-8) teams to start their careers, scored 6 points and had three assists.

Fittingly, every girl on the team scored.

Like their playoff game, they got off to a bit of a slow start offensively, and held a 3-2 lead after one.

Defensively, they were sharp and quick as usual, but the girls had trouble getting good looks at the basket. Much had to do with the height of OLP, as they were able to block a lot of shots from the St. Mary’s girls who were physically smaller.

It was pretty apparent Kelly played with some nerves in the 1st quarter as she was tentative every time she touched the ball. On one sequence, she was left wide open at the elbow of the free throw line as the entire gym was yelling “shoot.” 

Even though she missed the shot, Lily was their to grab the rebound and put it right back up, and that opened up the scoring in the game.

The girls struck fast in the 2nd quarter as Jamie hit a 3 pointer as part of her game high 8 points, and Rebecca, fresh off the bench, followed it up by hitting a lay-up off a Fiona pass right off an out of bounds play, making it 8-2.

Then it was Fiona who took it upon herself to go coast to coast twice on two beautiful drives to the basket to make it 12-2 heading into the break.

OLP hung around in the 3rd quarter and in the early stages of the fourth, cut the lead to 7 points. But every time the score got close, the 8th graders answered back and kept their lead around digits the rest of the way.

Kelly scored 4 points, and Victoria also added a bucket.

It’s hard to fathom that the bulk of this team scored only nine points in a playoff loss last season. 

In the two 2014 post-season games, they averaged 32 points a game.

Lily, a 7th grader who was added to the team, because they needed a sixth player, grabbed almost every rebound in sight and finished with 7 points and 11 rebounds. In her three years playing basketball at St. Mary’s, she has three championships, and this third one will probably be the most special one for the team’s center.

At the beginning of the season, she was a step slow around the basket and had trouble making the simple lay-up. She was the classic middle school basketball player who had the height but was unable to use size as an advantage. 

Not anymore. Because on a team that doesn’t have a true post player, Lily made up for all of that and she brought her game to another level down the stretch.

The person most responsible for molding Lily into who she is today is none other than the 8th grade girls coach Leslie, who had knots in her stomach the entire day. She’s been with this team since 5th grade when they won just two games. Four years and two championship game appearances later, she’s the proud coach of an 8th grade team closes their St. Mary's basketball careers as champions.

It's also the first championship Leslie has won as a coach.

As 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh pointed out this year, "The greater the challenge, the greater the reward."

And this team had a lot of challenges.

They've had countless post-games that lasted close to half an hour, if not more, as they dissected all their mistakes and shortcomings. They've lost last second heartbreakers on missed shots or blown defensive assignments. In a game during their 6th grade year, they scored one point in a loss. They’ve been through so many low points and disappointments.

But in the end, as cliche as it is, this team stuck through it as a team and no matter the difficulty, there was always some belief that they could have a fairy tale ending.

And on this special night, they wrote the final chapter.