They didn’t get to finish what they earned. But they sure finished on their own terms
The best, most inspiring, coolest moment in Kansas City sports this week happened just after the worst, and isn’t that the way things often go? Darkest before the light?
Maybe we should set the scene.
You know by now that the Missouri State High School Activities Association joined the other 49 states, Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL, the NCAA, NASCAR and virtually every other sports governing organization in canceling events this week because of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Officially, the decision was made Monday morning — two days after the biggest two classes’ state quarterfinals, and four days before the scheduled start of the annual final four.
Coincidentally, the determination to cancel what was left of the tournaments was made during the middle of practice for the Blue Springs High School girls team.
The players were maybe 30 minutes into their daily workouts when the athletic director’s assistant walked into the Blue Springs gym to summon coach Mark Spigarelli.
“Obviously that was not a good sign,” the coach said.
Spigarelli walked in on a conference call. He does not remember the exact words he heard. He doesn’t even remember who said them. But the message stopped him cold, sank his heart, ruined his week — even as he figured it was coming.
No more basketball. The tournament was canceled, and one of the best teams in school history was no more. Blue Springs had won 24 of 29 games this season. The Wildcats beat fellow semifinalist Columbia Rock Bridge in the last game of the regular season, and then beat previously undefeated Liberty to qualify for the final four.
More than that, these girls bonded. Seniors called it the closest team they’d ever been on. Spigarelli, in his 26th season with four state championships, said he’d only seen a small number of teams work so well together. They were still improving, even this late in the season.
All of that was done now, and it was Spigarelli’s job to tell them. He walked back to the gym with an empty look on his face. He called the girls together, sat them down on the Wildcat logo at center court. They all knew what was coming.
“Toughest thing I’ve had to see as a coach,” he said, and that’s the awful part.
Then came the best part.
They cried, of course. What other reaction is there? Then, Jayla Sample, one of the team’s four seniors, stood up. Maybe she wanted to walk off. Maybe she wanted to say something. She doesn’t really remember. She just stood, and then she cried some more, and before anyone had another thought they were all hugging — not two girls here, three over there, but the whole group, all 15 of them.
“It was weird — just one big group, crying together,” Spigarelli said.
Aliyah Bello, another of the seniors, tried to say something. She wanted to say something. To talk to her friends, gathered in one place for perhaps the last time.
“I tried,” she said. “But nothing came out.”
Sample talked. She thanked her teammates for allowing her to lead them. She told her teammates this was the best season she’d had in her life, and not just because of their record or who they beat.
“It’s because of our sisterhood,” she told them. “And who had my back.”
The players hugged their coaches, then went back to center court. Coach’s turn again. Spigarelli joked that maybe they could call themselves state champions. They’d already beaten two of the other three finalists, plus the state’s No. 1-ranked team.
Spigarelli told them he’d talk about this group so much that, from now on, every team he coaches will be sick and tired of hearing it. He thanked them, not for their success as much as for the way they played for each other.
“Later in life they’ll realize that’s as valuable as a state championship,” Spigarelli said. “They’re not going to be able to say they won a state championship. But they did things that most teams don’t do. They’ll remember that for life. They’ll be friends for life.”
After the announcement, and after the tears and after the speech and after more tears, it was time to leave the gym.
Except nobody wanted to leave.
“I’m not ready to go.’” Sample remembered thinking. “If we leave, it might be our last time at school, period.”
So — and this is when the story gets really good — the girls did what basketball players do. They played basketball.
They played Knockout. They did their favorite drill — Scramble — and when one of them missed a layup, she shouted I’m gonna run an ‘O’! — the standard punishment for a missed layup (a lap around the gym) was now both a privilege and reason for the rest of the team to bust up laughing.
This is some of the best stuff that sports are capable of eliciting in us. Competition is essential to the mission, and teaching kids to compete has value that will serve them well the rest of their lives. But the real stuff — the best stuff — is in what happens along the way.
This group isn’t unique, unfortunately. Lincoln Prep’s girls team also qualified for a final four that will never happen. Same with the boys teams at Staley and Raytown South. Altogether, 16 basketball teams lost their postseasons. They won’t get the chance they earned, the chance to be crowned champions, and it’s not fair and it’s only beginning.
They’re not alone. Proms will be canceled, too. Graduations. Parties.
But that doesn’t have to be the end of it. Doesn’t have to be the final say. Intentional or not, that’s what Sample and Bello and their friends were showing us when they heard there was no more basketball and responded by playing one last round of basketball.
This thing called coronavirus happened.
But they get to choose how to react.
“That told me everything I already knew about them,” Spigarelli said.
“I’ll remember the good parts,” Bello said.
“Stuff can get taken away from you,” Sample said. “But there’s a lot of good things that you still have.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2020 at 5:09 PM.