The Legend of Whitburn County

Jared and I managed to find a few quiet moments in our hotel room in Morgantown. Coach Mason and my dad had arranged that we'd be alone, away from the throngs of reporters and other people who wanted to grill Jared.

We talked for a long time. He told me that he was going to propose to Tami at the graduation ceremony in June. I laughed. "How romantic," I told him. "After all of this grief."

"Hey, why not," he told me. "She's stuck with me through this, the rest of our lives should be a cinch."

I started this whole story by saying that things just happened the way they did, and that I never planned for things to wind up the way they did. Well, I never planned that we'd be in the state finals. I didn't plan that we'd win it on a last-second buzzer-beater shot over Riverton North.

I didn't even plan on taking that shot.

I also didn't plan on Jared not being on the court with me when I took the shot. Jared had fouled out of the game moments before, which led to Riverton taking the lead with four seconds left. Jordan had contained Jared pretty well, but Jared had taken Mitch off his game at the same time. The game was close, and when Davey lobbed the pass down the court to me, I just tried to get a clear shot away.

It went in.

I still have that photo today, showing me lofting the ball towards the hoop, looking for all the world like Greg Louganis about to do a jack-knife dive for double difficulty.

I remember landing on the floor, seeing the ball go in, raising my arms in triumph, and being mauled by the entire team. I remember having one of the nets draped around my neck like a scarf, and squeezing Jared hard while our pep band kept playing the school song.

All these years later, the framed photo of the team around the trophy hangs in my office. The kids look at the photo, and usually make some comment about how goofy I looked. But then, when they step outside the PhysEd office and the boys' locker room and look at the Whitburn High School trophy case, they see the State Boys' Basketball Championship trophy sitting there, large as ever.

And I can tell they are really in awe.

A voice behind me brings me back down to earth:

"Ah, Mertzen, I'd have made that shot if Jordan hadn't been in my jockstrap all day."

And I turn to laugh at the snide remark of my boss, the head coach at Whitburn High School.

"Yeah, Jared, but don't forget that I took that shot - and made it."

"Bet you a soda I can take you in one-on one," he says. I laugh again.

"You're on." And we both jog into the fieldhouse for another game of impromptu hoops.

Just like old times. Just like it's always been.

AFTERWORD – I wrote this for a friend of mine who happened to work at the Whitburn Intelligencer. He was from Lakeside, and I had met him when I went to Lakeside Tech for my degree in education.

We kept in touch after we graduated, and last year, he managed to get the position of Sports Editor at the Intelligencer. It wasn't a move upward, but he knew it was a step in the right direction.

Anyways, once he set foot in the county, he was inundated with stories about Jared. The people of Whitburn and Thompsonville were still abuzz over his performance and how he was seen as the primary force behind the Panthers' state tourney championship run. He knew that I was a good friend of Jared, so he asked me to write the truth behind the stories he was hearing.

So, I got on my computer and started typing away. When he read the finished product, he raised his eyebrows a few times, and shook his head several more times.

"This isn't a biography, Bill," he told me. "This is a legend. There's no way all this stuff could have happened to one guy." I laughed, because I knew it did. So that was where the title came in: The Legend of Whitburn County.

I let Jared take a look at the story, and though he wasn't too thrilled about the little bet that he and his future wife made back in his junior year, he gave his approval. The story was published in the paper, and many people involved said it was accurate. MacGwire, of course, had no comment.

The story was chosen as a feature of our 10-year high school reunion a year ago. So many people were influenced by Jared's life and our state championship, and they said as much in our reunion memory book.

There was one thing I was asked about frequently, however: What happened to the other people I mentioned in the story? Well, I think you know what happened with me and Jared, and Tami and Katie – and even Luann. But some of the other people had very strange twists of fate.

MacGwire, for example, moved out of state after he lost the job at St. Mary's Immaculate to Coach Mason. We haven't heard much about him since then – last time I heard anything, he was a coach at some Indian reservation school in Arizona or such.

As for Mason, he's had a relatively successful run at SMI, getting the team to the NCAA Division II title game a few years ago. Most notably, it was Coach Mason's move to St. Mary's that gave Jared the head coaching position here at Whitburn.

Petroski made an unsuccessful bid for the Congressional seat that was open in the Whitburn County area. Most notably, he was faulted for wasting the surplus over the sale of Thompsonville High on his own salary. He managed to get a job at a political think-tank in Morgantown, a group called Focus On Education. I get mail from them every now and again – and it's somewhat laughable the ideological stuff they throw in these pamphlets.

Jared's uncle, Jerry Thompson, successfully ran for County Supervisor a few years ago. He's been one of the best County Supervisors we've had in the county in a long while.

A couple of years ago, the ISAA, as a result of budget problems, ceased operations as an organization. The HSAA took over supervision of all public and private interscholastic sports in the state, and consolidated the state team sport tournaments into separate divisions.

By doing this, unfortunately, Whitburn will never get a chance to go up against Riverton North for a rematch of the state title game – Riverton's high schools are classified as Division A schools, and we are a Division B school – barely.

As for some of my teammates: Chris Smith is now an investment advisor for Morgantown State Bank's Whitburn branch. Davey Wilson is partnering with his dad in the family business of home building and real estate. Jason Wiemer is in the furniture business. Mike Martino, after his brush with Jose Gonzalez, ended up becoming – what else - an EMT. Jerry White is the news director of WHIT radio, dabbling as a photographer for the Intelligencer. Of course, George Kryzniki had the last laugh on all of us – he was elected Mayor of the city of Whitburn this past November.

And what of some of our opponents? Well, the Gonzalez brothers are executive VP's of Save-All Foods down in Riverton. I already mentioned Conrad Horton – last we heard he was living down in the Carolinas, but no one was quite sure what he was doing. Barry Thomas and Mitch Jordan both went on to play at Morgantown State, but neither managed to get any sniffs from the NBA. Jordan is now the Head Coach at his alma mater, Riverton North. Thomas is an assistant coach at Morgantown State.

Father Michael Parrish is still the principal at St. George's, and Rod Maryland still gets upset as Woodfield's head coach when Jared employs the slowdown against his team. Maryland got the last laugh, though, when Woodfield finally won a state title two years after our run.

A few other things – the "Streaker's Alley" has been remodeled so the hallway doesn't exist anymore. The renovation project was one of the many reasons why Petroski was run out of town on a rail after the election. HSAA rules now prohibit coaches from leaving the school building while students are still under their supervision. Also, the HSAA has eased restrictions on transfers, especially ones regarding disciplinary actions. Essentially, if a transfer results because of disciplinary action, and it is proven that the student did not violate any state statutes, the student may transfer to another school without penalty.

Our championship trophy, however, still sits in the trophy case of Whitburn's Fieldhouse. And Jared and I still smile when we walk past it – even if those who weren't there still find it hard to believe the Legend of Whitburn County.