It’s too bad nobody on our staff majored in history—at this point it might come in handy.  It seems like every time Poly’s girls’ basketball team wins another game, they’re setting another record, or extending their own.  Last year, their fourth-straight Division 1 state championship made them the first D-1 team to ever do so.  However, a lower-division team had won four in a row before, so a win this Saturday would make Poly the first team in state history, on any divisional level, to win five championships in a row.

To date, over the last five years, the Jackrabbits have won 23 straight state tournament games, also a record; that number may be even more impressive than the title string, given that it’s essentially a full undefeated season.  One loss anywhere in that streak would have ended their hopes to make the kind of history they could make Saturday.

On a personal level, four players—Thaddesia Southall, Ashley and Brittany Wilson, and Jazzmine Shirley, are trying to become the only players in state history (besides Poly’s Kelli Thompson, who did is last year) to have a state championship ring for every year they were in high school.  The win would mean that much more to the four of them since they’ve been playing basketball together since middle school, when they filled out the roster of the Compton Magic.

Poly coach Carl Buggs says the impact of the streak, and of the game this Saturday shouldn’t be looked at on a small level.  When a reporter asked if winning a fifth state championship would be a validation of him as a coach, Buggs said, “It’s not about me as a coach—it’s about the players, and about Poly.  And it’s about Long Beach.  We’re Long Beach Poly.  If one more person hears about Long Beach because of us, that’s a good thing for the city.”

If things go well this Saturday at Rabobank Arena against Oak Ridge, it would be hard not to have heard of this team—they will have done, once again, something nobody in state history has done before.