Heads Held High

Wednesday, March 24. Real time said it was 8:59 p.m. But real time is not what the starters, bench, fans or coaches were staring at in disbelief while their lofty dreams faded away like tears in the rain.

Walled Lake Central, an upstart, scrappy, run-and-shoot team which surprised the high school basketball world with its undefeated record and was considered a "sleeper" pick by high school basketball experts, had been a huge underdog to Detroit Pershing. The Vikings had been determined to prove the doubters wrong, but their faithful were now eyeballing the scoreboard hanging over the Calihan Hall hardwood, its light bulbs ticking down toward the inevitable triple-zero formation.

No time. Game over. End of the road.

With it, the Vikings had seen a remarkable campaign come to a sudden end, with defending Class A champion Detroit Pershing using an array of weaponry to wake the sleepers from their dreams. Central had been dealt its first loss of the season, and 89-67 massacre which knocked the Vikings out of the Class A playoffs.

But they didn't go down without a fight. Even with everything the Doughboys threw at them - five first-quarter slam-dunks, a high-pressure defense and a 14-2 run to end the first half which gave Pershing a 48-27 halftime lead - the Vikings kept their heads up and their concentration on the job at hand. After all, wasn't it just eight days prior that Central used a 10-2 run the last 75 seconds of regulation to forge an overtime victory over Pontiac Northern? And then erase a 15-point difference down the stretch in regional finals action to stun hometown Port Huron a few days later?

So there was Central, with more lives than Catwoman, hoping there was still one more trick up its collective sleeve, one more magical performance in its Houdini bag. And the Vikings opened the second half with the word "comeback" etched in their souls, determined to erase the biggest margin they had faced all season and prove to the 4,000-plus fans that they were better than the scoreboard indicated.

It wasn't enough. For every Central spurt, Pershing responded with one of its own. Each Viking feed to Chris MacFarlane drew three Doughboys like a magnet. Central triples clanged off the rim (only 4-of-13 for the game). The flow of Pershing turnovers (and there were a lot of them) was balanced by its suffocating defense. And if the Doughboys weren't blocking a Central shot or playing near-perfect transition offense, they were capping showtime performances with demoralizing dunks.

Perhaps most telling of the way things were going was evident in the crowd reaction to a foul called on Central's Justin Cherfoil with about four minutes remaining. A chorus of boos filled Calihan - from Viking fans upset with the call on one of their boys, and from Pershing followers because the whistle stopped Carlos Williams from completing another uncontested slam.

Tears in the rain. Central, giving up three inches per man to the Doughboys, gave everything it could. But emotion can only carry you so far, and while the Vikings hustled and sweat and pushed and hustled well, Pershing did it better. And as the clock ticked down and the cheerleaders and fans enveloped their heroes, I was reminded of a poem penned by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master,
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster,
And treat those two impostors just the same ...
If you can fill the unforgiving minute,
With 60 seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth, and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a man, my son!

Congratulations to Coach Steve Emert, his Vikings, and all the Central faithful.

This article originally appeared in the Spinal Column Newsweekly.