RICHMOND HEIGHTS, Ohio — In Richmond Heights, the streak lives on—whether they know it or not.
“I didn’t even know what the number was,” sophomore guard DeErick Barber Jr. said of the Spartans state-best 49-game win streak.
The streak was never mentioned, said head coach Quentin Rogers.
“We never brought it up. Someone else brought it up,” he said. “We never boasted or talked about it. We kind of stayed under the radar.”
Staying under the radar though may be an unrealistic goal going forward, for a team that’s played in four straight final fours, and just won its second state championship in a row — beating Convoy Crestview by a state-record 44 points in the title game.
“Everyone doesn’t get to make it, this is something that we talk about,” said Rogers. “There’s going to be 800 schools, only four of them are going to be able to say they’re champions.”
The odds are good that Richmond Heights will get to say just that — again — next year. The Division IV champions will only graduate one senior this year, while bringing back the state’s D4 Player of the Year, Dorian Jones.
“I wasn’t really expecting to get that,” Jones said. “I knew what I was doing in the games and practice, working hard, just lead me to being the player of the year.”
The hardware is continuing to stack for a team that has a chance to make history — and could very-well put together one of the best runs in Ohio history. The goal: be legendary.
“(We want to be) legendary. To the point where our kids, our kids’ kids, everybody, once we’re gone, we still want to make sure we’ve got a stamp somewhere and people talk about us,” said Barber.
Down the road, this is something future children will be talking about this moment.
“One day, their kids will come walking through, taking pictures of the trophy cases, that their father won a state championship or back-to-back, things of that nature,” said Rogers.
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