By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The head coaches of the Benton boys and girls basketball teams look back on a special season for the high school.
Boys coach Jared Boone says it felt special to get the boys to their first championship since 1941.
But he says what also felt more special, was getting to share the moment with the girls basketball team, and their coach Chris Michaels
“You know, for the past four years I’ve sat and watched this guy to my right (Michaels) do it time and time again, and I’m like man it’d just be fun to get there, I’m trying to be on that court down there with him, not be watching him from the stands,” Boone tells KFEQ News.
Michaels says it was special to share the moment with Boone and the boys, and says the two shared a moment following the semifinal wins
“You can call it a blackout moment if you want to, I have no idea what we said to each other, I have no idea what we screamed at each other,” Michaels says. “All I know is, boy if someone would have been down there to catch me jump from the stands, I would have jumped out of the stands to go give him a hug.”
Since the second-place finish for both teams at state, the teams have been recognized by the St. Joseph School Board, and most recently the City of St. Joseph.
Michaels says what hasn’t quite fully sunk in just yet is a promise he made to his two graduating seniors as freshman that they would hold up a state title
“It was a promise not a hope, and I didn’t get done with that, that didn’t happen for my seniors, so there’s two girls that I broke a promise to and the crazy thing is I think they feel the same,” Michaels explains. “I think that they felt like they promised us state championships, and the good thing that I can tell them is they did not let us down at all, they did everything that we asked them to do, and I’d tell them that we didn’t let them down either.”
Michaels says he’s told people that while he’s tired of crying after state championships, he’s grateful to be able to.
Both coaches were also able to take in the moment of being at state, with the southside of St. Joseph taking over Columbia
Boone says normally before games, he is off in a corner mentally locking himself in, but says this time he really took everything in and looked around
“Looking up in the stands and seeing the majority of our section covered in Benton red, and even some of the upper sections, it was pretty cool,” Boone says. “I told myself when this happened, I wanted to take everything in, because this is something that doesn’t happen all the time, and so I just wanted to not overlook that and have the memories stored in my brain of what it was actually like down there.”
Boone says it meant a lot to be able to do what his team was able to do this year.
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