Robservations: A season filled with highlights
I’ve never been a hoops fan.
To tell you the truth, years of working all winter in cramped gyms, watching kids I didn’t know play for Rutherford County schools I didn’t care about, changed my attitude about the sport from one of simple boredom and annoyance to, to be honest, a feeling of dread.
Every fall, I’d dread the beginning of basketball. Especially those meaningless non-district tilts at the start of the season. Then after the holidays, you get those three-game-a-week days of January, a month that some sports writers I know still swear has 60 days in it, just because of the amount of basketball games that are played.
Then of course, you get the tournaments, which usually end the same way everyone knew they would four months before.
So all in all, I always considered basketball as little more than a diversion — a way to spend nights (and fill pages) without having to get out into the cold.
At least, that’s the way I used to feel. Before I, like most of you, got caught up in the whirlwind season turned in by the Warren County Pioneers.
Where in years past, I’ve been relieved with the end of the season for teams I’ve covered, I really hate to see this campaign come to an end. Maybe that’s selfish, maybe it’s getting too caught up in the emotion of the team and not staying focused on being objective.
But I don’t care. This is my column, and this is my opinion.
At any rate, thanks to Lawrence County’s Wildcats, a sloppy first quarter and some really questionable officiating (remember, this is my opinion — and they beat us to death inside and we never got a call), the Pioneer basketball season is now, in fact, just a memory.
But what a crop of memories we have to look back upon.
Think back all the way to the first game, a Hall of Fame Classic against Cumberland County. A game that started out looking like a tough opening loss ended up an 85-81 victory that set the tone for a 7-0 start to the season, including one night in Spencer, when the Pioneers showed just how high-powered their offense could be, blasting the Eagles for 105 points in a 30-point victory.
Then there was a three-game set against Oakland. In each meeting, the would-be district tournament champions had no answers for the Pioneer attack, and eked out three single-digit victories.
Three other squads got three looks at the Pioneers this season, with much more favorable results.
Cookeville, who gave WCHS its first district win of the season back in December, got a little payback in the meeting at their place. But after round three, thanks to some icewater in Matt Cotten’s veins, the good guys were the only ones left standing.
Coffee County fans watched their teams take three games on the chin, and Blackman, who scored upset wins over Riverdale in the district tournament and Columbia in the region, couldn’t handle the Pioneers, either, dropping all three of their meetings with WCHS, including the district third-place game.
When you think about this team years from now, you might not remember specific wins or players. But you’ll remember a heart, a willingness to win, that hopefully was just the tip of the iceberg for WCHS basketball.
You’ll remember a squad that brought pride back to WCHS basketball, and — like their classmates on the soccer and baseball teams — helped do their part to rebuild a winning tradition.
Let’s hope next year, and years on down the road, come close to being as memorable as this one.