It was a night to behold. One last game to live up to as a team before the season ended. While it was only considered the end of yet another basketball season to the underclassmen, for the seniors, it was the end of their high school basketball journey.
In addition to the game being the last game of the 2025-2026 season, CSW and Newark Charter debuted it to the B+ Foundation. The CSW girl’s basketball team wore blue B+ T-shirts, and the Newark Charter team wore red B+ T-shirts. Rivalries aside, the two teams got together and alternated with blue and red T-shirt colors to pose for the picture, then dispersed to their respective benches to prepare for the announcements and the playing of the national anthem before the game began. During the half-time break, there were guest speakers promoting the B+ Foundation’s goals to the crowd.
The B+ Foundation was founded in honor of Andrew McDonough, a Sallies student who was diagnosed with childhood cancer and passed away. His B+ blood type gave inspiration for the foundation’s name and became the perfect message to “Be Positive.” The goal of the foundation is to combat childhood cancer by allocating its resources to providing financial assistance to families of the children with cancer, advocating for the funding of cancer research, and supporting childhood cancer research initiatives.
Prior to the start of the game, CSW convened and agreed to battle hard to give Newark Charter a tight competition, with an attempt to clinch the win. In the first few minutes of the game, CSW scored the first bucket of the game from the short corner on the left side, courtesy of Tamiyah Burley. Tamiyah led the team with the most points scored in the game, and nearly reached 300 total points in this season. Additionally, congratulations to Tamiyah Burley for making the Blue Team in the Blue-Gold All-Star Game!
The game fluctuated a lot, with CSW taking the lead, then Newark Charter taking the lead. One second, you would think that CSW would win, but then next, Newark Charter seems to be winning. However, it wasn’t until the last quarter that the game became an intense match, between the Newark Charter crowd and the CSW girl’s basketball bench, on who could chant the loudest and cause the other team to lose their composure. In the team spirit, the CSW bench yelled and chanted “Defense” at the top of their lungs, almost making themselves hoarse in the process, whenever Newark Charter had the ball. It seemed to be an effective strategy; the Newark Charter team lost possession of the ball a majority of the time, and especially had difficulty inbounding due to CSW’s strong defense in denying them the passes.
With 50 seconds left in the game, CSW was up by 1 point. The CSW team took multiple timeouts to assess the scoreboard, identify the threats, and strategize the next moves. Newark Charter fouled CSW and reached 5 team fouls, leading to subsequent free-shots every time CSW got fouled in the sparse seconds remaining in the game. Against the loud Newark Charter crowd, CSW managed to make almost all of our free-throws to bump up the score to a 4-point difference.
At the three-second mark, CSW held the ball and ran the clock down to end the game. The post-game glee was a memory to treasure. Before the clock reached 0 seconds, some of the CSW team were already jumping out of their seats to celebrate the win. As soon as the buzzer went off, the whole team screamed with joy and ran out to the players on the court. The court was a mixture of jumping, cheering, congratulating, and crying. No words could describe the miracle that had come around.
There was even more cheering and locker banging in the post-win locker room celebration. Every time Coach Kathy spoke, the team collectively cheered and banged loudly on the lockers. The euphoria was present in everyone’s wide grins and gleeful attitudes.
Not only does this game end the girl’s basketball season perfectly, it is also another win to add to the Charter Cup competition between CSW, DMA, and NCS. The Charter Cup currently sits in Mr. Bartnik’s office and it awaits for the final results of the 2025-2026 school year sports games. Whichever school accumulates the most wins in the matchups between each of the three participating schools is the ultimate winner, and they are allowed to take home the Charter Cup. However, Mr. Bartnik wants CSW to win this competition, so we all need to make a combined effort to pull this scheme off.
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