Students Claim Victory Over Faculty in Last Seconds of Annual Student/Faculty Basketball Game

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You’d think they’d won the Super Bowl.

In a way, they had. In the eight years since the Middle School began staging its annual Student/Faculty Basketball Game, this was only the students’ second victory. The first occurred in 2003—so long ago that not a single current middle-schooler would remember that historic game.

This one they will surely remember.

With only about 11 seconds left on the clock, eighth-graders
Bennett Nalley and Jeff Benedict scored the final goals that demolished
the faculty. (Caution: is there extra homework in their futures?)

But, from the start of the game, long before victory was assured, the students were pumped.

A staff member was awakened from reverie in the annex by the sounds of cheering and stomping coming from the student stands. The students’ spirit was not only palpable—at times it was downright deafening.

The cheerleaders did their lively part to keep it that way.

It was the kind of game where students played with such zeal that one seventh-grader collided with and even knocked over a (MUCH taller) eighth-grade teacher. (Another caution: teachers have long memories.)

So, in the age-old battle of youth against experience, this year, fate (perhaps skill) came down on the side of youth, speed, and spirit.

Of course, members of the defeated team could be heard mumbling as they left the court that they deliberately gave away some of those plays.

But, kids, you don’t believe that for a minute, do you?

Congratulations to the winning student roster!

To fifth-graders Sterling Duke, Maggie Hamberis, Miles Hauser, Sammy Lynagh, Rudy Johnstone, Chisholm Nicholson, Jack Runge, and Michael Stone.

To sixth-graders Alex Benson, Rainey Fowler, Olivia Lucas, Reeves Major, Phillipp Schmitz-Justen, Caroline Vaughn, and Jim Yarborough.

To seventh-graders Andrew Absher, John Grant, Preston Hall, Heward Hodges, Mattea Koon, David Moore, and Alexander Olson.

And, especially to eighth-graders Jeff Benedict, David Brodsky, Conor Carrigan, Haywood Duke, James Elliot, George Greene, Bennett Nalley, and Cole Sieler.

As for the faculty, who thought they knew something about the “art” of basketball, apparently they can still learn a thing or two from their students. Some, like Joe Britt, who had boasted earlier in the day that he was sporting his EMS shirt because he expected to have to carry at least a few students off the court, will have to eat their words. But you have to give the faculty credit for going out there and making fools of themselves!

What more can we say about the faculty roster: Caroline Bethel, Donna Burns, Deborah Davis, Andrea Fox, Michael Fox, Kimberly Morgan, Brent Roberts, Russell Shelley, Diane Talbert, Diane Triplitt, and Jane Williams? Or their coach, Jennifer Eley?

Assistant Middle School Director Betsy Burton, at least, had the good sense to serve as a student coach.

And, students, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll have the good sense not to rub salt into an open sore.