On paper, there was virtually no incentive for the Morgantown girls’ basketball team to play at Trinity Christian on Thursday.
The Class AAAA Mohigans had nothing to gain and everything to lose by playing the Class AA Warriors and what’s more, Morgantown, the largest public school in the state with an enrollment of over 1,800, traveled to Trinity for the game, a school whose enrollment doesn’t reach triple digits.
However, when I covered the game from high on the hill in Sabraton Thursday, I did not see any sort of David vs. Goliath scenario. I just saw a normal basketball game. A game that drew a great crowd inside Trinity’s gym kept the fans engaged the full four quarters, despite the final score being decided by 30 points.
Trinity’s gymnasium was as full as I’ve seen a gym be all season, quite frankly, and the fans on both sides were loud and engaged even when the outcome of the game was all but decided in the second half.
I’d like to commend the schools’ coaches and administrators for putting aside the things that would normally act as barriers to such a game — classification, state ranking, playoff seeding, win-loss records, etc. — and coming together to add a fun, local game to the schedule. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this either, as this is the third season in a row Morgantown and Trinity have played one another.
When I talked to Trinity coach Mike Baldy after the game, I asked him what I imagined a lot of people were wondering, why would little Trinity Christian want to schedule a Class AAAA powerhouse like Morgantown?
“Easy answer, why not?” Baldy replied. “There’s no reason not to play them. If we win this game, that’s going to help our seeding at the state tournament astronomically. If we lose this game, it doesn’t hurt our seeding at all. And if we happen to win the game, it’s an all-night party in that Trinity locker room and if we lose, we learn from it and we grow.”
I posed the same question to Morgantown coach Doug Goodwin, who was Baldy’s seventh-grade health teacher at Cheat Lake Middle School back in the day, and he gave a similarly positive answer.
“It’s always nice to play community games,” Goodwin said. “You want your community to come out and support your hometown teams. The score was a little lopsided, but it’s a good community game.”
The Mohigans are no strangers to community games — they play rival University this weekend in the first of two highly anticipated match-ups this season, and adding another one against Trinity is just a plus.
It was also the second time this season I’ve seen Trinity buck classifications in favor of playing in a meaningful game. Earlier this month, the Warriors traveled to Preston, another Class AAAA school, to play in the Knights’ second-annual Make-A-Switch charity game.
Like with Thursday’s game, when I went up to Preston to cover the game, there was a great crowd that stayed loud and engaged for all four quarters.
Nobody in the crowd that night cared that the teams are two classes apart or have a big enrollment difference or anything like that — they just enjoyed a fun game between a pair of local squads.
In both instances, Trinity was playing up two classifications and ended up losing, but I doubt that will dissuade Baldy from continuing to schedule such match-ups in the future.
“We try to put on blinders when it comes to class,” Baldy told me after the game at Preston. “We think more about ourselves; we’ll play anyone.”
Sports are supposed to be fun, both for the players and the fans, and so I’d like to commend Baldy, Goodwin and Preston coach Brian Miller for getting a couple more fun games on the schedule this season, classifications and enrollment numbers be damned.
TWEET @CodyNespor
