#20 State Championship Game

State Championship Game

“And that is why I will always remember the State Championship game of my senior year,” Ben said with a smile on his face. It was the the Class of 2019’s tenth class reunion. It had been ten years since the State Basketball Championship game. A small high school from Chicago was going against the heavily favored team from Champaign. First, we should start from the beginning of the season.

It was the middle of the summer and the Chicago Falcons were just getting done with an open gym, but while everyone else left to go hang with other friends or their girlfriends, Ben stayed in the gym and kept shooting. It was his senior year and he didn’t want to have any regrets about not working hard enough. Practice ended at 2:30 and he planned to shoot until 3:15. He had watched Tyrone and the Champaign Snakes win the Championship last year. He knew if he would not have got hurt in the last regular season game that he could have led the team to its first championship, at least that’s what his dad kept telling him. Ben had received offers from some Division one schools but hadn’t been recognized by Duke, which is the school he dreams of playing at. Tyrone had been in contact with Kentucky in the offseason and was ranked 5th in ESPN 300 which ranks the top 300 high school prospects in the nation. Ben practiced pulling up from three after running in transition. When he was done shooting he went home and talked to his dad about practice.

“You are gonna shoot the ball every time you are open and lead the conference in scoring,” proclaimed Ben’s dad. Ben knew he had to impress his father this year and it gave him some pressure to deal with. He thought he was giving himself so much pressure to do good. It took him a while to realize that as long as he tried his hardest, that he had nothing to worry about.

The Chicago Falcons were destroying teams during the regular season. Ben was leading the area in scoring and rebounds. He had received some contact information from Duke. They weren’t going to give him a full scholarship at the moment. That just motivated Ben even more. Especially because Tyrone just verbally committed to Kentucky. With three games left in the season it looked like the Chicago Falcons and the Champaign Snakes were gonna meet in the State Championship game. Ben started to get a little too confident and tried to score too much in the last few games. This caused some conflicts with his teammates and coaches. They kept telling him that he wasn’t playing college basketball yet and they had to play as a team to defeat the Snakes.

“Look, I’m the best player on the team and if you guys want a shot at winning the championship, I have to have the ball in my hands,” Ben was telling his teammates in the locker room after winning the Sectional Title Game.

“You aren’t going to single-handedly beat Tyrone and you know that. It’s time to accept that we need to play as a team if we wanna win it all,” a teammate responded.

Ben started thinking and realized that the Championship game was tomorrow and he was going to have to figure it out in order to win it all.

The Championship game started out like any other game. It was back and forth between the Falcons and the Snakes. It started getting late in the third quarter and Tyrone had the ball with Ben guarding him. Tyrone embarrassed Ben by breaking his ankles and hitting the three. Ben was ashamed, but that made him more motivated to win the game. With thirty seconds to go in the game, the Falcons were down by two. They had the ball and were drawing up a play for Ben. Ben got the ball with Tyrone guarding him. Ben started dribbling off of the pick and Tyrone stripped him. Tyrone was going on a fast break and looking to dunk the ball. As he jumped, Ben leaped up and swatted the ball off the backboard. Ben grabbed the ball and started running in transition with five seconds left on the clock. He pulled up and time expired as the ball was in mid-air. The ball bounced off the back of the rim and missed. The Champaign Snakes had won the Championship.

Surprisingly, Ben was fine. It took him one day and he realized he had a future to play basketball and forgot about missing the game-winning shot and focused on getting better.