A 31st anniversary seems like an odd reason for a celebration, but that’s exactly what’s going on in one of my ol’ stomping grounds Thursday night.
Members of this year’s Atwater High School girls basketball team are honoring the only Falcon team to win a Sac-Joaquin Section title in a ball sport, the 1987-88 squad, before the game against Central Valley in Atwater’s new gym. Game time is 7:30 p.m.
And what a team that was!
It went 31-2 in winning the school’s first Section title with a 70-67 win at the original ARCO Arena over Nevada Union and eventually advancing to the NorCal Final Four at the Oakland Coliseum Arena (no Oracle needed to write that), losing to an Oakland Fremont team that went on to win the state title.
What may amaze modern-day fans and players alike, in this era where sports specialization seems to start before the teen years, is not only were the core players on this team multi-sport athletes, but only two played basketball a higher level (Robin Dame and Shalounda Rittenhouse, at College of the Sequoias).
Also, only three other athletes played any sport at a college: Susan Flatt (nee Milani) on Fresno Pacific’s NAIA champion volleyball squad; Beth Williams (Norman), tennis at CSU Stanislaus; and Melissa Whitaker (Vieira), volleyball at Merced College.
It’s also worth noting: Coach Gary Parreira was a baseball player at San Francisco State during his college days.
Yet, put them all together on a basketball court and it all jelled.
“Not only was it a great experience, but it was a great time,” said Williams, who later went on to coach at Mariposa High. “We were like a family and we are still friends today. We had good players, but we were a team before any individual goals”
Next to the Section title, it didn’t get any better for these Falcons than on that January night they took on archrival Merced at the East Campus gym.
Dame sank a 3-pointer from beyond the top of the key at the buzzer to force overtime in a game the Falcons went on to win and preserve a perfect CCC mark.
Atwater defeated Merced again to conclude the regular season, after securing the No. 1 seed in the Section playoffs.
It was Dame who, after not scoring in the first three quarters of the game, engineered a fourth quarter rally against a Nevada Union squad that would go on to win the next three Section Div. I titles.
This year’s Falcons appear ready to pick up the torch held by the championship team, entering the game tied for first in the CCC with El Capitan at 5-1. On the season, they’re 16-6 and ranked No. 21 in Section and No. 9 in Div. II by Maxpreps.
This mark has come against an ambitious schedule that’s included Central Section powers San Joaquin Memorial, Buchanan, Bullard and Clovis.
And, as fate would have it, there’s even a 63-46 victory over Nevada Union back in December.
An omen? Perhaps, but that’s why they play the games.
Rich de Give says 