STATE CHAMPIONS!!!

My 2015-2016 basketball season began in East Harlem at the end of October and ended yesterday in Albany. And it ended with a mother fucking STATE CHAMPIONSHIP. That's right, East Harlem Pride won state!!! We won the New York State basketball championship. I can't even believe it. I thought winning City was unreal, but this takes the cake. This was something I have dreamed of since I was younger and had hoped it would be as a high school player in Illinois, but it's just as sweet as the head coach of a high school team in New York. I literally can't believe it. It's pretty surreal.

Following last Sunday's city championship win, this week was a bit of a whirlwind. It was a week of planning and organizing for the weekend in Albany with my team combined with the stress and excitement of preparing for the actual Championship game. This was major. If we were going to Albany, I didn't want to lose. I didn't want our perfect undefeated record tarnished and I wanted that State title. I was hungry for it. It's known that city teams don't often fare well in the State tourney (and for us the city title is really the big deal. State is just the icing on the cake.) Our team went three years ago (before I was the coach) and got smoked in the first round and went right back home. I definitely didn't want that to happen to us, but at the same time it took a lot of the pressure off me because that's kind of what everyone expected. Except for us. We knew we could actually win this whole thing. We believed we could.

We did It!!!

OMG, OMG. We did it. We won the chip!!!!!

This is a post I have been waiting to write since last year. This is a post that I deserve to write. This is a post that I am proud to write. And this is a post that caused tears to stream down my face as I wrote it. This is a HAPPY post! Finally!!!!! (So yes, for a first time in a long time, these are tears of joy. It's about damn time I had some of these.)

Today my basketball team won the mother-fucking New York City title. That's right, we did it!! After losing a heartbreaker last year in the same exact championship game, we had our redemption this year and pulled off a one point victory. We went 24-0 for the season and are going to Albany on Friday for the state tournament. This is so surreal to me. I literally cannot believe this right now. We did it!!!! (FYI, my Illinois peeps, I know where we grew up it was all about who won State and that's what everyone cared about. It's different here. Because New York is so big, the city championship is like the equivalent of winning state at home so this is kinda huge. We'll go on to state and play there, but it's not a big deal. We got that city chip and that's all that really matters.)