Vikings Shoot for Top

By Ann K. Williams
Staff Writer

March 1 -- The Red Sox, The Steelers, The Vikings -- the last few years have seen some amazing turnarounds, and Tuesday night it was Samohi’s basketball team’s turn to give it a shot.

The team that finished 1 and 25 four years ago vied for a spot in its division’s finals Tuesday night, the first time that’s happened in 18 years.

“It’s kind of like a movie,” center forward Will Freedman said. “You wish it could be like this.” And it is, he said, as the whole school geared up to send the team off with a pre-game rally in the quad.

“Our whole fan base has doubled,” Freedman said, adding that they’d just brought in an extra bus to carry fans to Long Beach where they played the Panthers, a team that beat the Vikings earlier in the season.

Point Guard Terrance Boozer, Forward Akil Gainer and Center Forward Will Freedman before the game. (Photo by Ann K. Williams)

Freedman gathered with forward Akil Gainer and point guard Terrance Boozer hours before the game began.

They were ready to win, they said, and they play their best under pressure.

“When we’re excited, the energy, it works for us,” Gainer said.

“It’s not a distraction,” Freedman agreed.

And they were going in with a strategy. The last time they played the Long Beach team, the Panthers scored nine points early in the game, throwing the Vikings off.

This time, they planned to “cut off the drive, be aware of the shooters,” Boozer said.

“We know it’s going to be the last game” and “we want to end it on our own terms,” Boozer ended Gainer’s sentence.

This camaraderie, on and off the court, is what got them this far, they said, and their coach agreed.

“They’ve been playing together since grade school and middle school,” Coach James Hecht said. “They enjoy every day they spend together, they truly enjoy playing basketball together.”

This year’s seniors got together at the end of the season last year and made a promise.

“We’re not getting out of here without a fight,” Freedman said they vowed, and now it looked like they’d lived up to their word.

The three friends didn’t know exactly how many games they had ahead of them, only that if they won, “this season could be a whole lot longer,” Freedman said.

The important thing is that “we accomplish a goal we set for ourselves,” Boozer said. “It’s always been a goal,”

“Some said it couldn’t happen,” Freedman added, but “to us, it’s something that should have happened.”

As a bevy of cheerleaders whipped up the lunchtime crowd outside, aided by alternating strains of rap music and drum fanfares, Hecht and his team reveled in the spotlight.

Some onlookers wore t-shirts donated by Westside Rentals that read “In Hecht We Trust.”

“I’m very proud of them,” of their “determination and focus,” Hecht said. “Hopefully we’re peaking at the right time.”

And he had some advice for his players.

“It won’t last forever. Make the most of it.”

The morning after: Hecht’s advice was apt. Two buses full of fans followed the team to Long Beach, where it lost by three points. The game was exciting, supporters said, and everyone at the school was still proud of the young men who’d come so far this season.

And there’s more to come. Baseball season kicks off Friday at 3:15 at Samohi, and that team is hoping to pick up on some of the magic -- and some of the fan support -- won by the basketball team.