One question that I ponder every time I am covering a sports team and their season ends, does the typical fan continue to follow the sport or not ?
A few years ago, the Northside Vikings came to Cavalier Park for a regional semifinal game against our Lady Cavaliers. The visitors left that day with a victory by the slimmest of margins, and a couple of weeks later, I smiled after Northside steamrolled the rest of the field and won the Softball State Championship.
The next opportunity to see this play out was the season before last when Anthony Barnes led our basketball program back to the State Tournament after a considerable absence. We fell that night up at Penn Laird to a talented Spotswood High five and two games later, the Trailblazers were celebrating in Richmond after their State 👑.
This year, we followed the Lady Blue Devils of Duke University Women’s Basketball team in a manor that we hadn’t been able to do before. It included a bazaar eight game trek that took us to games in Paris, France 🇫🇷, Las Vegas, Tampa, and Lynchburg. Heck, we even played a game inside of a Hotel 🏨 ( The Greenbriar Resort ). We saw them play Stanford University out on The Farm 🚜 in Palo Alto and naturally a few times inside Cameron Indoor Stadium 🏟.
Last Sunday, the team watched their season end in the Elite Eight for the second straight year. Last year, it was Dawn Staley and South Carolina that advanced to the Final Four in our place, and this time, it was the UCLA Bruins that did the honors.
We had hoped to be in the building with them when the ride ended but chose instead to attend Coach Barnes’s annual banquet.
Since the moment that our 10 point lead turned into a 12 point setback, I have been pulling for the Bruins to be the team that cut ✂️ down the nets in Phoenix.
It would have been okay if Dawn had been holding the scissors ✂️ for the fourth time because the former Hoo is a class act. But my heart ❤️ was with the Bruins. We missed the first half due to assisting Vickey Ritchie with our Special Olympics Easter celebration, but the second half has been a fun watch.
UCLA is a team with seven seniors, and each one has a story. Up 29 (67-38) with 6:31 left to play, it appears that for the third time in four years, a team I pulled for with my heart ❤️ and soul, at least can say, ” It took the eventual Champs to end our season.”
I’m not sure if it helps others, but it helps me !
Enjoy the rest of your Easter !
A.S.P.N on The Hill 