By Bobby Wilkins

This 1992 Hendersonville team was a group of great kids.  They were nice guys who everybody in the school liked.  Each one of them was a top-notch student, who the teachers liked having in their class.  It was a dream team for any coach.

The ‘91 team had lost in the state semifinals and should have won it.  Our star player hit a shot at the buzzer that was determined to be after the buzzer, but after the game was settled, we looked at the video, which showed it was good.  This took a big toll on all of the kids on the team because we thought we could have won the state championship that year.

With three starters back from the ’91 team, we felt we had a chance to win it again.  We also added my nephew, Bobby Britt, who moved from Winston Salem.  He was a good player but had not played at his previous high school.  So, with the three returning starters and Bobby coming in, we knew we had a chance for the title.  That was before the season started.  Then the wheels came off, and we lost two good players to off-the-court issues.

The ones who were left, they did everything I asked them to do—and more.

The first seven games gave us a chance to try and figure out what we needed to do with the talented players we had.  After Christmas is when things changed.  We practiced over the Christmas break and I was determined to convince the guys that they were good enough to go a long way.  This time was a really neat and building time for these guys.  They became a team of eight players who cared about each other and cared about winning and doing the right thing all of the time.  We were more of a family than a team.  Coach Goebel, my assistant coach, and I became the dads of these children.  We treated them as our kids just like we did our own families.  We took care of whatever they needed on and off the court.  We were a family.

The players supported each other and made sure they played as hard as they could every second they were on the court.  The only game they lost after Christmas was to our county rival, West Henderson, a 3A team that ended up losing in their state championship game.  All of their players and our players were friends, so it was like we lost to our next door neighbors in the neighborhood game.  The rest of the games were proof that we all had our minds set on one thing: winning the state championship.  We had very few problems the rest of the year.  They had fun every game and looked forward to practice every day.  I had never had a team like this.  They wanted to win and would do whatever I told them to do to get the win.  With eight players, I was in great shape.  Coach Goebel and I practiced every day to make 10 players on the court until the JV ‘s season was over and we could take a couple of them up to finish the season.

We did have to put together some great performances during the second half of the season.  We played some really good teams through January, February and March.  One of them was in our conference, Polk County.  They lost six games that year and four of those were to us. When we got into the playoffs, we handled each team by making sure we did everything the way it needed to be done.  It is a rare occurrence for a team to beat a very good team four times in one season, but we beat Polk County for the fourth time in the state semifinal game. .

Not one Bearcat player looked to be the star.  They all worked together, every game, to make sure we won.

Then came the state championship game against Bladenboro. Our biggest player was 6-foot-4, so we had to make sure Bladenboro’s height advantage did not make a big difference.  We knew we could control the game with our man-to-man defense because we always helped out whenever it was needed.  We also had an offense that controlled the tempo of the game.  We played the state championship game just as we had prepared to do—controlling the tempo on offense, working to get a good shot every time down the court. Our defense did an even bigger job by holding the other team to only 44 points—the fewest Bladenboo had scored all year.  We controlled the game throughout and won by 11 points.  It was the biggest loss they had suffered all year.  Our guys wanted to win and knew exactly what they needed to do it.  They never lost their concentration and it showed in the end.  A great group of boys won the 1992 state championship.  I was proud to be a part of it.  It still means a lot to me.