In what folks around Pittsburgh are calling one of the strangest boys basketball games in the 106-year history of the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League,
Mohawk Area (Bessemer, Pa.) beat
Lincoln (Ellwood City, Pa.) 51-4 last week.
We're not trying to embarrass the good folks at Lincoln here (by the way, the school goes by either Lincoln or Ellwood City). Quite the opposite.
Surely what makes the score even more odd is that Lincoln beat Mohawk 53-33 earlier in the year. By our calculations, that's a 67-point swing.
It wasn't like the Wolverines (7-10) were missing players. The team was at full strength. Longtime coach Al Campman told the
Pittsburgh Post Dispatch, "You had to be there to comprehend it. … The word baffled doesn't do it justice."
More newsworthy than the swing or cold-shooting night – Lincoln was 1-for-38 from the floor – was how Campman dealt with the defeat. He was exemplary in every fashion.
Campman, 57, has been coaching more than 30 years. He said earlier in his career "I might have destroyed four lockers." But now, with more perspective and patience, he sees things much more clearly. It was simply one of those strange, perhaps windy and cold-shooting nights. It wasn't for a lack of effort.
To clear his mind and spin a meaningful thought on the outing, he sent out an e-mail to about 1,000 followers in his weekly "fellowship message."
"I have to continue to just coach," he wrote. "I have to coach on how to attack a zone better. I told the kids that if this is the worst thing that is ever going to happen to them in their lives, then they're going to have a successful life."
To show that Campman's message got through, that the lopsided loss and shooting performance was an aberration, the Wolverines came back and won their next game 64-43 over Laurel.