More counties heard from
The SCISL did not get a lot of responses to the proposed debate on whether the 2009 Christian Learning boys varsity basketball team ever to don uniforms in the League, but the ones we got underlined the now global reach of the website.
Tim Swope, captain of the 2008 Christian Learning team, wrote in from Bethel College in Indiana with this possibly somewhat equivocal comment on the 2009 team’s place in history: “As far as being the best team, I believe that they are definitely one of the best ever.”
Juan Manuel Salas, who played for Cambridge from 2005 to 2008, wrote in from Lima, where he now lives (and plays), with a counter-proposal: the 2006 Cambridge team:
“Yeah I still read the SCISL News. But I don’t agree with the article you posted about the 2009 Christian Learning team being the best team ever,” he wrote.
“Let me take you back to 2006. The Cambridge starting lineup was Manfred Grote, Jorge Yuan, Anibal (The Animal) Ibanez, Diego Lopez, and me. With the obvious exception of myself, all giants who once walked the Earth. I was just a little kid (ninth grade) but I did get to play with them, and I can tell you that they were incredible.
“We finished the entire championship tournament undefeated. We allowed less than 23 points per game, and scored over 45 in all of them. The only game SCCLC actually kiiiiinda had a chance was in the final, where they only lost by six points.
“Not only that, but for most of the games we had Oscar Vargas Vivianni, probably the greatest player ever to set foot on an SCISL court, mainly sitting on the bench. Riding the pine. Why was that?
“Yes, that’s right, this was the year of the supposed “recruiting scandals.” Lopez and Vivianni both came to the school as seniors, both knew our PE teacher, both wanted to play basketball, both enrolled late, and were, through a clerical error, left off the team lists submitted to the League. But none of this, to my mind, constituted a “scandal.”
“They both had good reasons to enroll at the school. Vivianni wanted to learn English and go to the US to play basketball (which, incidentally, he did). Lopez´ family had just moved back to Bolivia from the US. His younger siblings, Raquel and Alvaro, also enrolled and are much admired as players and as persons in the League today.
“Nonetheless, much fuss was raised about all this, and the two boys played under a cloud all season. Finally, in a bizarre ruling, only one was allowed to play at a time. One can only wonder what kind of scores we could have run up with both on the court. However, the rest of us – the supporting cast, so to speak – were no slouches, as we proved by winning the championship the following year – 2007 -- with all home-grown talent.
“We were very good in 2007. But we were much better in 2006. In fact, I would say we were the best ever.”
