Rarefied Air

Winning a state championship has often been compared to climbing a mountain, a triumph so rare and difficult to achieve that it’s reserved for a select few teams with the benefit of a tremendous amount of hard work, dedication and even a bit of good luck.

If the comparison holds true, this year’s Pierson boys basketball team might have scaled Mount Everest if not for coming up four points short in a state semifinal game in Glens Falls on Friday. After the game, Pierson head coach Will Fujita spoke about the unique “perspective” of his team’s accomplishment, put in the context of life dating back to the fall of 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our community in many different ways, closing us off from friends and neighbors while forcing the cancellation of important life experiences for two years and counting. Last winter, the Sag Harbor School District opted out of the high school basketball season, leaving a group of players without a team of their own.

Instead of just giving up, this group of Whalers, which included eight seniors, played together in an AAU league and showed up in the fall prepared to make up for lost time. The result was a 23-3 overall record, along with Suffolk County, Long Island and Southeast Regional Class C championships.

“It just speaks to their work ethic,” Fujita said immediately after Friday’s game, which was decided in the final seconds. “I think that this experience for the younger guys was very valuable. I just hope that they take what they did this year, use it as fuel. Ultimately, this is just a building block for better things to come.”

The Whalers lost the state semifinal to Newfield in a heartbreaker, 66-62. The final score will soon be forgotten, but the ride the team went on — with the community by its side — will long be remembered. After a difficult two years for basketball-crazed Sag Harbor, there was once again reason to hope and to cheer.

And in those fleeting moments, it felt like Whalers had, indeed, reached a mountaintop.