The remarkable and courageous run of
Fennville (Mich.) has ended.
The small Western Michigan boys basketball team, which captured the heart of the nation, dropped an 86-62 Class C regional game to
Schoolcraft Monday in Vicksburg, Mich.
Fennville (23-1) had won three straight playoff games to take a district championship following the death of star junior player
Wes Leonard.
Leonard, 16, the team's leading scorer and starting quarterback on the football team made a game-winning shot in a regular-season ending victory on March 3 and shortly after a celebration on the court, he collapsed and later died from cardiac arrest caused by an enlarged heart.
The Blackhawks played in his honor and won three emotionally-filled games before more than 3,000 fans in each contest.
Schoolcraft (23-0) advances in regional play and will take on the winner of White Pigeon and Bridgman.
Afterward, members of Schoolcraft spoke with reporters. It wasn't easy playing against a team that was so beloved.
"They lost, but they went out on top in my book," Schoolcraft senior Blake Krum told reporters.
Said Kody Chandler, who scored a game-high 23 points: "I haven't played against a team with that much heart in a long time."
Fennville actually took a 21-19 lead at the end of the first quarter against its heavy-favored opponents. Schoolcraft's superior talent and cohesion eventually proved decisive. Fennville, certainly emotionally spent, simply had no more to give.
Blackhawks coach Ryan Klingler was overwrought after the game but tried to put it all in perspective.
"These are 15-, 16-, 17-year-old kids," he said. "To be able to do what they did. ...I think down the road they'll have a strength that will be almost unbroken."
Klinger said he learned his own lessons, especially about letting kids like Leonard, by all accounts an All-American kid with an athletic future, know just how he feels.
"Wes was pretty darned special to a lot of people," Klingler said. "I probably didn't take the time to tell him how great he was. So I got to do a better job letting people know how much I care about them. How important they are."
Leonard's mother somehow found the strength to tell reporters how important Fennville's playoff run was. It wasn't really a basketball tournament but an 11-day tribute to her son.
"You won't get over it," she said. "But you've got to get through it. We couldn't get through it without everbody helping us."