“You guys are still champions,” Poly coach Raul Lara told his team as they kneeled around him, just after their 25-20 loss to the Grant High Pacers in the State Championship. The “You’re winners even though you lost” sentiment is one you’ll hear at the end of a lot of teams’ seasons, and, to an extent (perhaps a large extent), all those coaches are right. But Lara was talking to a team that really was champion, and of the state’s toughest section no less, after defeating Tesoro in last week’s CIF-SS title match.
They certainly couldn’t have picked a better way to lose, odd as that sounds. There were no dirty plays, no horribly biased officials, no freak accidents or twists of fate—it was indisputably a matchup of the two best teams in the state, an intense, thoroughly well-played game that tilted in the other direction. In other words, they lost a fair fight—and if you have to lose, that’s the kind you want to be in. Congratulating Grant players after the game, Poly DB Stan McKay said, “Y’all earned it,” and meant it.
There’s no more pure distillation of what competition is all about than a scene that includes one team at the height of their accomplishments, celebrating a win while just feet away another team is struggling to hold it together, at the low point of their year. Ultimately, it will probably be a long time before the 2008 ‘Rabbits get over that feeling. “A champion knows how to lose the right way,” coach Lara told them after the game. The Poly team, who should be putting in their CIF ring orders in the next few weeks, lost the way they did everything else this season—like champions.