Team finds the good in a tough, tough season

EDMOND, Okla. — This isn’t “Hoosiers” — a feel-good story about a small-town basketball team overcoming steep odds to win the state title.

In fact, the Lady Eagles of Oklahoma Christian Academy went 0-14 this season, losing by scores of 67-21, 43-11 and 85-10.

But their story is every bit as inspiring as that of the fictional Indiana team coached by Gene Hackman.

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OCA, associated with Churches of Christ, is going through a growth spurt. Enrollment is at a record-high 560, but a lot of the increase is in the lower grades. Sometimes there aren’t enough student athletes to field teams. The school had to stop playing varsity football a couple of years ago and hasn’t yet been able to restart it. Students (and parents) say they miss the cold bleachers, warm hot dogs and Friday night lights.

The Lady Eagles in action.

The school almost didn’t have a varsity women’s basketball team, either. There were only two returning players. And not having a women’s team would have adversely affected the men’s team.

Unlike football, volleyball and other sports, high school basketball needs teams for men and women, said Jennifer Hayden, a first-year teacher at OCA with experience coaching basketball. Women’s and men’s basketball teams usually play one right after the other, so it’s tough to schedule opponents when you have only one of the two genders.

Not fielding a team also hurts teams in future seasons, said Jeremy Román, athletic director and head coach of the men’s basketball team.

“When a team cancels their season, many of the teams on your current schedule (boys and girls) will drop you,” he said, “and you have to start over from scratch to find games the following year.”

OCA needed players, fast. So teachers started shoulder-tapping athletes in other sports. When Gracie Graham’s volleyball season ended, her mom, English teacher Meredith Graham, asked Gracie to help with basketball practice.

Gracie, a senior, thought she’d just be scrimmaging with the players.

“But I ended up liking it,” she said. “Well, maybe not liking it. … It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.”

She agreed to play in a couple of games if they needed her. “And they needed me every game,” she said.

Another volleyball player, freshman Hope Glavan, described basketball as “not, like, a sport I hated.” So she joined, too.

Coach Hayden scraped together a squad — some of whom had rarely touched a basketball — and started working on fundamentals as the first games approached. Some of the Lady Eagles’ opponents went easy on them, but others “just would not care,” Gracie Graham said. “They would do a full-court press, which was really hard on us because we’re like, ‘We barely know what we’re doing anyway!’”

Oklahoma Christian Academy’s women’s varsity squad takes a team photo.

Enduring the opposing teams’ fans was just as tough. Some would react in amazement when OCA scored, yelling, “they finally made one!” and the like. More than once, players left the court in tears.

But they kept coming back.

Between games, they’d find ways to encourage each other — even if it meant saying, “Keep going! We’re almost done!” Gracie Graham said. “Four games left! Three games left!”

As they endured loss after loss, Glavan said, “we learned to be able to lean on each other — and on the people around us.”

Megan Rivera drives down the court during a Lady Eagles home game.

While their opponents’ fans were mock-cheering when the Lady Eagles scored, OCA’s student section was going berserk.

“When any of the girls who had never made a basket scored,” Meredith Graham said, “I mean, you would have thought it was the state playoffs.”

“When any of the girls who had never made a basket scored, I mean, you would have thought it was the state playoffs.”

Senior Evan Ashworth was one of the ringleaders. He consulted his social studies teacher (and basketball superfan) Ben Meaders to develop chants and cheers for the team.

“We focused on the good we saw,” Ashworth said. For example, “Gracie’s not bragging on herself enough. She made so many 3’s. When Gracie made a 3, we went insane — and when Berkeley (Pok), toward the end of the season, made her first point. If you had seen Berkeley when she started the season and then when she made that 3, it was like she had grown so much for somebody who had joined last-minute.”

Maybe it’s not the best thing for a Christian school student to confess, Ashworth said, but he enjoyed watching the players get aggressive when contesting the ball — especially Bella Graham, Gracie’s younger sister, and Tulle Jurney, who claimed that she only joined the team because Gracie bribed her with Starbucks beverages.

The constant encouragement was as uplifting for the Lady Eagles as it was baffling for their opponents, Glavan said. “Whether it was a rebound, a steal, whatever we did, we’d hear (our fans) yell and then we’d look over to the other team and they’d be like, ‘They’re down 40! Why are you cheering?’ But they didn’t care.”

The Lady Eagles also had a few fans they didn’t know about — the coaches of the teams they played against.

“I thought it was incredible to know and see the sacrifice that those girls made to participate in a sport some had never played before,” said Scott Wilson, who coaches the women’s varsity team for the public school system in Dale, an unincorporated community in Pottawatomie County, east of Oklahoma City. Dale, which plays in Oklahoma’s Division 2A, defeated the Lady Eagles 85-10.

“What an incredible example of serving others and not just yourself,” Wilson said of the OCA team. “Basketball is a long and difficult season under normal circumstances, but those girls were so resilient and positive. It was impressive to witness.

“Basketball is a long and difficult season under normal circumstances, but those girls were so resilient and positive. It was impressive to witness. It speaks to the character of those girls, but also their community in supporting them. In a world where it is easy to give up and quit, they never did.”

“It speaks to the character of those girls, but also their community in supporting them. In a world where it is easy to give up and quit, they never did.”

Describing her ragtag team, coach Hayden said, “I found their unselfishness truly inspiring. This group of young ladies has shown a maturity well beyond their age.”

Jennifer Hayden

Hayden has three daughters at OCA in grades six, three and kindergarten. “For them to have role models like these girls … I know we made a really good choice on where to be.”

Megan Rivera, a junior, was one of the only students who had played on the team last year.

She almost didn’t play this season.

But after she saw the scraped-together team play their first game, she said to herself, “This isn’t right. It doesn’t feel right for me not to help them.”

Even if it meant losing every game, she decided to reenlist.

Next year, Rivera’s senior season, should be better. OCA has several up-and-coming freshmen who played on a very good junior varsity team. One of them is Rivera’s sister, Reese.

But “the reason I played this year was not for the boys’ team or for future teams,” Rivera said. “It was for this team, now.”

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is president and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @eriktryggestad.

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