Abigail’s basketball team won the girls eighth-grade-sliver city championship Saturday. For those of you scoring at home, that’s back to back championships with only one regular-season loss in two years. That loss was to Bonham Middle School in the first game of the season. Maddie, one of the mainstays of the team, wasn’t available in that game because she was needed to fill in for a girl on the gold team and without her Bonham eked out a narrow win over Crockett. It is said that revenge is a dish best served cold and so it was on Saturday, 35-24. I couldn’t really get myself to be nervous about the outcome because not only were they at full strength with Maddie in the lineup but our Abster was not the same player she was at the start of the season. She always hustled and she contributed on defense but she wasn’t comfortable with the ball in her hands and would always pass off as soon as she could. She had no points in the first game and probably didn’t take any shots. Saturday she was the top scorer with 10 points, three for 12 from the field and four for six from the free throw line. That wasn’t a fluke, either. She had been producing those kinds of number for the last month. I just figured if both teams played about the same way as the first time around, Maddie and Abigail’s scoring production would make a difference.
Bonham’s girls were game and, while Crockett lead by six or eight through two and half quarters, Bonham began to chip away at that lead toward the end of the third and into the fourth. Abigail played most of the game but she was on the bench when the Pioneers took the floor at the start of the fourth. The coach sent her in about halfway through the final period with Crockett’s lead down to four points. Bonham had clawed their way back into it and seemed to have the momentum on their side. Almost immediately after going back in, Abigail drew a foul. She drilled both free throws to put her team back up by six. Call me a homer but in my opinion those points blunted that momentum and re-energized her team which then cruised to the decisive win.
Our weather was beautiful Saturday and Kari invited the team and their families to a weenie roast, win or lose. Only a few of Abigail’s teammates couldn’t make it, having prior engagements. As you might expect, everyone was in high spirits. Crockett feeds into Amarillo High and Abigail will go to Tascosa so this group of girls will move on in different directions. Joyce and I will miss them. Over the last two years they have provided outstanding entertainment and if there is a nicer bunch of girls it would be so close it would be hard to tell the difference.