Down 17 with 4 minutes left to play. Our last JV game looked like it would end our season in a big loss to Medical Lake on our own court. Our team consisted of just about all sophomores and freshmen playing against the best JV team in our league that year. Sophomore year was a year where I was swinging between JV and Varsity so my minutes on JV were being restricted so I could have minutes available to play in the Varsity game if we needed it. The first three quarters of the game had honestly been a drag with very low energy. There was a varsity girls game going on in the gym next door which attracted most of the fans after they had stopped by and checked the score of our game which left our stands pretty empty.

As we began the fourth quarter, the energy from our team still wasn’t there. The coaches had decided to sit me because of the minutes restriction that we had decided on previously to the game, and nothing had made me more mad than this decision. I remember just begging my coaches to let me play because the guys on the court during this game, were the guys that I truly loved playing with. I had never wanted to play in a game more than this one. The coaches finally gave in and put me in about 2 minutes into the 4th. As I checked in, our team was fully capable of getting back into this game.

As we huddled and regathered our minds, our energy rose and the wheels began rolling. We were ready to go get the ending we wanted. Big shot after big shot started to fall for us, and our intensity on defense continued to increase as we forced turnover after turnover for them. We were in the final seconds and were down one. I was at the free throw line shooting two shots. I made the first, and made the second which put us up 1, but there was still time left for them to get the last shot. Their point guard dribbled the ball down the court as they ran their final play, the ball was shot and missed. I grabbed the rebound, threw it ahead to my teammate and he scored on a reverse layup right before the buzzer sounded to win the game by 3 with a cherry on top. The crowd erupted as our players stormed the court and the once lifeless gym we started in, became a sanctuary overflowing with energy. 

Down 17 with 4 minutes left to play. That is when I imagine our fans left the girls game and came to watch ours. I don’t truly know when they all came, but by the end of the game, the gym was packed full with fans sitting and standing all the way around the court, and we couldn’t have given them a better game to watch. That game is a game I will forever remember when I think of my high school sports career and my school in general. In my eyes, Freeman High School in Rockford, Washington will always be one of the greatest high schools that you could have any student or athlete attend.