Owls Show Grit in Courageous Defeat

I am brainstorming headlines as Google’s AI bot chatters back at me:

“Synonyms for lopsided victory include “rout” and “romp.”

[deep inhale]

The Country School’s boys JV basketball team lost their game on Thursday. It was a hard game. 

Was it a lopsided victory? The scoreboard would say yes. 

Was it a rout? The definition of rout is “a disorderly retreat of defeated troops.” So, no, there was no retreating and only a little disorderly behavior.

How about a romp? The definition of that is to play roughly or energetically. There was rough play and energy, but romp is just too playful.

The reality is that sometimes words fail. Sometimes words and metaphors and expressions just don’t do justice to a human experience.

When we talk about someone’s heart sinking, their hearts are still right there in their chest. When the DJ blows the roof off the place, the roof is still attached.

But to have felt your own heart sink? To have been there when the DJ blows the roof off, turning the dance floor into a trampoline? There is just nothing–no words–that do it justice. 

That’s what it felt like to be in the gymnasium at Foote School on Thursday as our Country School Owls JV basketball team walked onto campus, shoulders held high (especially Coach McDonough who had just successfully parallel parked the 15 passenger activity van on the hilly streets of New Haven) and stopped in our tracks, jaws agape, as we watched a team of hulking 7th Graders sharpening their teeth as they readied to play us.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s hero, Atticus Finch tells his children, “Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

To our team’s credit, I will tell you that it took an entire quarter of basketball before we knew we were licked in this one. Reconfiguring the starting lineup, Coach McDonough elected to go with an all-6th Grade group, hoping their height would hold ground against the Falcon front court. Despite the long-limbed zone defense of the fully-grown Falcons, the squad was able to hang within two baskets’ reach. The first quarter ended with 12 of our 14 players having seen the floor and a score of 6-10 in the books after two twisting drives by Harper Merrill and a high arcing bucket from Oliver Molloy. Yet our full-court press could only last for so long as legs tired and the sheer size of the Falcons took its toll. It felt as though TCS players were taking four steps for every single loping stride of the opponent. Furthermore, in their first game facing a zone defense, the Falcons extended their press to ¾ court, trapping the ball handlers at mid-court and forcing a handful of tough turnovers.

Nevertheless, there was so much courage shown by the young Owls as they took the floor each quarter with an intrepid willingness to take on the challenge. In the second quarter, Sam Collins and Gideon McDonough connected on great sideline passes, driving the ball up the floor and into Harper on the block who banked in the third of his four baskets of the game. In the half-court, Sam Gagliardi had his play of the year when he forced a jump ball on the defensive end, tying up a falcon wing who made the mistake of trying to beat him off the dribble.

Lucas Ferguson-Cormier and Jake Svitila continually harassed the Falcons on the wings, limiting penetration and ensuring success in the half-court game. “To be fair,” Coach McDonough praised the team after the game, “we really didn’t give up very many points off of set plays Foote was trying to run. The combination of that team defense and our willingness to compete even when the game was out of reach are the two things that impressed me the most.”

And it was true, most of Foote’s points came off of fast breaks or offensive rebounds. These two elements are the hardest variables to control when a team is two years older and significantly taller. Still, the experience of Kyle Jacobson and Edward Barney couldn’t be understated. Any time they went to battle in the paint, they still did their best to box out and to create space for rebounds. The Falcons were just too big.

Throughout the third quarter, the trio of 5th Graders–Cam McNamara, Mason Brown, and Gideon McDonough–shared the court for an extended period. Mason continued his streak on the boards, securing many a rebound with his sure-handed strength and positioning; Cam deftly zipped passes to the wings and post; and Gideon scored for the third consecutive game on a devastating pump fake followed by a 16-foot swish.

While the third quarter ended with a score of 12-30 in favor of the Falcons, that would end the scoring for Country School. When the final buzzer sounded on the game, the score was 43-12. Yet in the fourth quarter, one of the most inspired efforts came from the duo of Logan Maloney and Ben Nathanson. With 2:30 remaining on the clock, Coach McDonough pulled them over to his end of the bench. “Do you two want to finish off this game?” Both boys nodded confidently. With that, they checked into the game and just simply played hard. Neither of the two of them had played for TCS in the past, but both showed grit and resolve throughout their run. Logan, especially, when he bounced back up after a crushing illegal screen from a Falcon player sent him sprawling to the floor. Undeterred, he jumped right back in and scurried to the wing to set up the offense before Coach McDonough could even get a response to, “Logan! Are you okay?” He was. So too was Ben as he spread the floor, inbounded the ball, and showed how deeply he cares about giving 100%. 

 

The silver lining of this game was that the ride home with JV hoops super fan Mrs. Hornyak, onboard the bus, found the group of boys reminiscing about their Lower School experiences with her and how much they’ve all grown up and evolved since those days of learning to read under her guidance, huddled together on the second grade carpet. To hear them reminisce about their early days at TCS and to see the courage they showed (even once they "knew they were licked") on the court, it was a proud moment in their collective journey as classmates and learners.

That’s the beauty of games like this. We are granted the opportunity to forget them quickly; just like an Etch-a-Sketch, we can flip it over, shake with all our might, and return to a blank slate. Words might fail sometimes, but experiences never do. Courage always begets courage, and that was certainly the case on Thursday afternoon in New Haven.

The team was led in the scoring column by Harper (8), Oliver (2), Gideon (2) and will return to action next Tuesday for a home game at DeFrancis Gymnasium versus the Hamden Hall Hornets.