Big Green Rumble!

What a fantastic day for Shannon Forest Christian athletics!

Early this evening, both the SFC girls and boys Cross Country squads took 1st place in the state competition. It was the second consecutive year for the boys team, coached by Alvin Sell (my Bible/History teacher), to achieve that honor. Many of the boys I know on that team were only freshmen when I graduated, so they're seniors now. I'm very excited for them. They've worked their butts off in practice and training for these meets, and it's paid off.

The other big news concerns the SFC varsity girls volleyball team. After finishing their season with a phenomenal 18-7 record and placing 2nd in the CAA tournament, the girls kicked off the NCISAA tourney earlier this week. To our delight, the committee chose Shannon Forest to be one of the two host sites (the other was Simpsonville United Methodist), giving us a major homecourt advantage. Tuesday night was our opening series in the field of 16, and our crowd showed up in droves. I wasn't there to see it, but Susannah assured me that we were rowdy. Anyway, we won our first match Tuesday night to advance to the quarterfinals, which were played this evening.

I returned to my dear old high school with Anna Kate at 3:00 to watch our Crusaders play. We had some time to revisit some of my old rambles and visit with old friends and familiar people. Susannah and her friend Aimee had a bake sale going on just outside the gym. Their peanut butter cookies were excellent, by the way. So we got seated and watched as our girls and the girls from Stateside Christian did their warm-ups and started play. We came out strong and pretty much dominated the first game, winning 25-16. The second game, we lost our steam down the stretch and allowed the Lions to jump on us, and then rallied but fell short, dropping a 27-25 decision. The third game started out close and Stateside kept pace with us most of the way, but we started to pull away late and finally eked out a 25-22 win. The fourth game, we were much more dominant, and played error-free volleyball to cruise to a 25-14 victory to capture the match 3-1 and advance to the semifinal game!

It's worth mentioning right here that our fans in the gym were much louder and crazier than I've ever heard them. I was pleasantly surprised because usually, we only tend to get loud for our basketball teams, let alone virtually pack our bleachers to capacity. But we had everyone wearing "Crusader Crazies" T-shirts (not to be confused with Duke basketball's Cameron Crazies, mind you), our senior guys, several of whom had just come from the Cross Country meet, painting their chests green and white (Baxter joined them!), and our senior girls pulling out the old rally cries from cheer-leading. So it was terrific to see the volleyball squad get some love from our fans.

Anyway, my family, Anna Kate and I left after the quarterfinal game to get some dinner and relax a bit before the semifinals at 8:00. We watched a bit of Bernie Mac on television; it was the first time I'd caught anything on TV on a Friday evening in...I don't know how long. Then we had a nice dinner at Pizza Inn on Woodruff Road, and I had my fill of apple/cinnamon-topping pizza, so I was happy. Conversation also made dinner so very enjoyable.

When we got done, it was game time again. Back we went to SFCS, and once again we had a capacity crowd. I found out later that the team we played was the #1 seed going into the tourney, so that only added to the hype. Right from the start, I knew this was going to be a tightly-matched series. In our first game, we held the lead for much of the time, but the other team was never far behind. Finally, we put them away in a close 26-24 victory. Kayla O'Kelley is probably the best hitter in our whole conference, but the other team had more hitters. A real strength in numbers scenario, but we managed to keep things fairly balanced and do enough things to pull it out. The second game's flow was pretty similar to the first, but we pulled away near the end and won 25-21 to pull within one game of the championship match. Naturally, that was when things got ugly. To the consternation of Crusader Crazies with visions of a title in their heads, the girls came out sloppy for the third game. It started off on the wrong foot, and we never could find our rhythm. We found ourselves facing a deficit as high as 15-7 at one point, and even though we finally rallied back, it was too little, too late. Our opponents took the third game by a score of 25-20, leaving us fans scratching our heads and wondering what happened to our concentration.

To our relief, game three was a hiccup. We came out for the fourth contest much more focused and determined to put away our rivals quickly and efficiently. With some timely blocks, a few aces, and an unwavering will, our Lady Crusaders vanquished their rivals 25-16. Congratulations to Shannon Forest, NCISAA semifinal victors!

So we'll move on to the championship game tomorrow at 1:00 against High Point Christian. It will be a huge deal for SFC if we can claim the victory, but even if we don't, I'm proud of these girls. They've come a long way over the years and have really gelled together as a whole unit. Win or lose tomorrow, they're all winners in my book.

"We say green, you say white!
Green! WHITE!
Green! WHITE!
We say number, you say one!
Number! ONE!
Number! ONE!
We say Shannon, you say win!
Shannon! WIN!
Shannon! WIN!"

Song of the Day: John Paul Trimble - "My Only Hope"

Verse of the Day: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." - John 7:37-38