YOUR SEMINARIANS
A Roaring Success
Coach Fr. Charles Fox stresses teamwork to the
Sacred Heart Lions during a game timeout.
Playoff run and
unlikely buzzer-beating
win make a season to
remember for Lions
and first-year coach.
T
he season ended with
a semifinal loss in a
hard-fought tournament,
but Coach Fr. Charles Fox
and the Sacred Heart Lions
should consider the 201415 basketball season a
success nonetheless.
14
The Lions entered the
Josephinum
Tournament the weekend of
February 20-22 with a
4-3 record and hopes
of a deep championship run. The Pontifical College Josephinum
sponsors the ten-team
matchup of Catholic seminaries at its campus in Columbus,
Ohio. The tournament traditionally
ends the winter basketball season.
The Lions had reason for confidence.
The team had brought back first-place
tournament trophies for four consecutive
years, 2011 through 2014, and had won
the championship in 2009, too.
The Lions began tournament play
with a sturdy win over the Diocese of
Buffalo’s Christ the King Seminary. “Our
seminarians shot the ball particularly well,
which was gratifying because shooting has
been a struggle for us most of this season,”
Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Spring 2015
says Father Fox, the first-year coach who
had taken over the coaching duties this
season from long-time coach Fr. John
McDermott, SJ. “Every player had a
chance to play and competed well.”
Game two ended with a victory over
the Pontifical College Josephinum’s Bteam. The Lions picked up championship steam with a third win, over St. Paul
Seminary of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
“This was also the game in which the remaining players who had not yet scored
a basket in the tournament did score,”
Father Fox says, “which is always a boost
for those players and the team.”
With a fifth consecutive championship
trophy in sight, the Lions entered the semifinal round against their arch-competitor:
the Josephinum A-team. The Lions led
late in the first half, but the “Papal Bulls”
of the Josephinum clamped down on defense and won comfortably, 35-18.
The tournament topped an enthusiastic season for the Lions despite the
semifinal loss. The highlight of the year
had to be the improbable win over “The
Guards,” a rough-and-ready team made
up of Sacred Heart security officers and their friends (ringers). Center Colin Fricke
hit a buzzer-beater to send
the game into overtime.
With the Lions down by
a point, 72-71, with two
seconds left in overtime,
Colin heaved another
desperation shot, this
time from mid-court, that
banked straight into the net
and sent the team, the crowd, and
team mascot Leo the Lion into a “Can
you believe it?” frenzy.
The eighteen members of the Sacred
Heart Lions should be pleased with their
7-4 season record. The hard practices and
hardy competition certainly encouraged in
the men an increase in virtues—teamwork,
self-discipline, and resilience in the face of
adversity, to name a few. These will serve
them well in the more severe competition
against “the world, the flesh, and the
devil” when they become, one day, God
willing, Catholic priests.