It was my senior year and it was also my last chance to accomplish a goal that my teammates and I had set for ourselves to win the district championship. We had fallen just short of that goal in the previous two years so naturally, we were bound and even more determined to win it on our third chance.
In San Antonio, or at least at my high school, football and baseball were the sports of choice for the fans. Hardly anyone paid any attention to the basketball program, but things sure did change after the first few games of my senior season. After our first four games of the season we were making headlines in the San Antonio paper because of the performances that we displayed. All four teams were ranked in the city's top ten and we beat them all by more than 20 points. According to the paper, we weren't even ranked in the top twenty in the city. Surprise! Surprise! We had something in store for the whole city that year. .
As the season went on, we kept on working hard and by the time we knew it we were ranked in the top five in the city. The highest my high school had ever been ranked was eighth in the city and that was back in the 80's. Things couldn't have been any better for us. I mean we had gotten off to the best start in school history, we were ranked in the top five in the city and on top of that, we had the whole south side coming to our games and supporting us. We couldn't have asked for more. But then out of nowhere, we hit a cold streak losing the next three out of five games. All of a sudden we were no longer in the top five. We weren't even ranked in the top ten. In the San Antonio paper an article came out that read," Too Good To Be True The South San Bobcats in a downward whirl." We never got the chance to thank the person who wrote that article, but we should have. He didn't know it, but all he did was throw fuel on a fire that was still burning. Our coach, Gary Durbon, made copies of that article and put it all over our lockers.
