A Hope and A Prayer

A Hope and a Prayer

It was supposed to be a blowout. The fourth place team playing at the home of the first place team, which had only lost two games all season. But basketball, like any sport, does not always go the way the experts would expect it to go. This city high school semi-final game was no different. The game proceeded in the expected manner until the final few minutes. It is in games like this that magic is possible, if the circumstances are right…

The teams were rivals, occupying a place on the same street, where only a few blocks separated the schools. The first place Crusaders, a Catholic team, were going to host the game and their gymnasium was going to be packed. The Protestant Marauders were sure to bring legions of fans to the game, even though they were likely going to be destroyed by the high flying Crusaders. The rivalry that existed between these two teams was fierce, even though many of the boys on both teams had grown up playing together in the parks, on the playgrounds and on community teams. By seven o’clock, they filled the gymnasium and students kept pouring in for the anticipated 7:45 p.m. tip-off.

The crowd was a frenetic mass of fans at tip-off, but the noise abated by the end of the first half when the home team took a nine point lead into their locker room. In the second half, both teams kept pace and the by the end of the third quarter, the Marauders had whittled down the lead to seven points. As the teams started the fourth, it was clear that the Crusaders were the better team. They slowly built up their lead, as was to be expected, to a high of thirteen points when only three minutes remained on the clock.

In basketball, a lead of thirteen points should be insurmountable within a three minute time frame. Yet three minutes can be an eternity in the world of sport. It certainly appeared to be so on this fateful Friday night. For, even as some of the students headed out to get an early start on the parties, there was a strange sensitivity in the air. An electric current permeated the gymnasium offering hope where none should be. The game should have been over. Over that is, until Destiny played her hand and stirred the certainty of what should have been.

But to truly understand the play, one must first understand the players. Those characters that act out the drama that unfolds are shaped by the world around them, by the aura that transpires an ordinary act into one to be remembered and retold. And furthermore, no play is completed in only one scene. Therefore, as a good playwright sets the stage for the climax of the play by weaving connected scenes together, so too must the scenes be reenacted to give you, the reader, a sense of the magic that unfolds on the basketball court. It is, after all, a stage.