2018 Champs
CHICOPEE – With just under eight minutes to go in the Pioneer Valley Suburban League Girls Basketball Championship game, with our Westfield 8th grade girls in an unfamiliar position, down three points to a tenacious Tantasqua squad and our three leading scorers in foul trouble, the only thing on my mind as I looked up at the scoreboard in the heat of the moment, was; “damn, it sure would be nice to be able to use the term ‘Three-Peat’ when looking back and telling everyone that will listen about the incredible Suburban basketball career these girls had.” I mean there were plenty of other accolades that we’d be able to mention; a 19-0 2018 Suburban Championship season, three preseason tournament championships, a 58-game win streak spanning Summer, Suburban, and CYO leagues, a 2019 Suburban Championship with 7th grade starters in a predominantly 8th grade division, far too many individual accomplishments and standout moments to even think of listing, and then of course this year’s season, 16-1 so far, with eight minutes remaining.
What an exhilarating final eight minutes of basketball it proved to be.
With a packed Westfield side of the bleachers stomping and chanting DE-FENSE on every Tantasqua possession, it turns out this team would not deny us the right to use “Three-Peat” in any of our future basketball lores. After 16 points from Lexi Sanchez, 11 from Lindsey DeLand, nine from Gianna Strange, seven from Kelsey Bouchard, and five from Ali LaPanne, the girls used their final eight minutes to turn that three-point deficit into a 48-42 Suburban Championship victory, their third consecutive Suburban title. A Three-Peat.
2019 Champs
But oddly as I sit here one day later trying to re-tell this amazing accomplishment on paper, the term “Three-Peat” isn’t really even on my mind. Neither is the thrilling game, the exciting finish, the phenomenal four years of stats, and plaques, and trophies. The only thing on my mind is what an incredible four-year experience I just had with my daughter; that we just had with our daughters. How much I enjoyed every single minute of every game watching her play. Every postgame ice cream consumed while rehashing every detail of every game with her. Every practice. Every car trip to every practice. The only thing I could think about now was how lucky we all were to be able to spend four years with our little girls, watching them have fun, watching them learn, watching them grow from innocent 4th graders into young ladies headed off to high school.
So probably in a fashion similar to most dads coaching their daughters, we treated every practice like it was the most important thing in the girls’ lives that day, over-analyzed every game like our jobs depended on it, and definitely devoted more energy to basketball than anything our wives had asked us to do in the past four years. But at the same time little did we know we were each painting a portrait that would last us a lifetime. Our own work of art more memorable than any play or any game or any winning percentage. A portrait we can go back and admire as often as we’d like no matter how old our daughters become.
And as it turns out those final eight minutes of Sunday’s game didn’t impact this four-year journey one bit. The memories had already been made. The experience was already cemented. The quality time with our little girls was already spent. The painting was nearly dry and nothing was going to, or is ever going to change that. Not even a Three-Peat. – Courtesy of John DeLand
2020 Champs
