By Dave Morrison
Register-Herald Sports Editor
OAK HILL —
It was an entrance 21 years in the making.
The last time Oak Hill won a state championship, the team was escorted to the school by fire trucks, police cars and tons of honking horns.
It was 1989 and Oak Hill had just won the Class AAA state title.
The arrival was late at night, after the game — a game that was Jim Lilly’s final game as the longtime coach at Oak Hill High School.
Saturday was different.
But no less celebratory.
Fans screamed as the bus pulled in on a balmy late-March afternoon.
At 5:20 p.m., Kalif Wright got off the bus and, as the team assembled behind him, held aloft the state championship plaque the team had won with a well-deserved 55-45 win over Wyoming East.
No surprise it was Wright holding the trophy. He had a huge tournament.
But it could have been Jack Flournoy. Or DeAndre Leonard.
Or what about role players Thomas Booth? Kyle Colon? Steven Garris?
Each did what coach Fred Ferri had wanted all season. Contributed.
And the Big Three — Wright, Leonard and Flournoy, did their thing.
“It means a lot, especially to beat Wyoming East,” said Leonard, who had said, after Oak Hill beat PikeView in the co-regional to make it to Charleston, that Oak Hill was gunning for the Warriors.
“I meant it when I said that,” said Leonard, who had 11 points, nine rebounds, eight assists and seven steals in the title game.
“We wanted to show that we weren’t the team they beat by 20 in the (Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center) twice. And we did that.”
All three of the trio have some link to hopes in Oak Hill.
Wright’s cousin, Monty Wright, a former Devil great, is now an assistant.
“He told us all week, make the most of this opportunity, play hard because you never know if you’ll be here again.”
Monty Wright never got a chance to play in the state tournament because Oak Hill always had to go through Beckley.
“I’m so happy for these kids,” Monty Wright said. “I never had the chance to do this, and just to see how happy they are, how proud they are, well, it means a lot to me. I love each of them like they’re my own. All the screaming and yelling throughout the season, it’s worth it.”
Deandre Leonard wasn’t born when his uncle Merle Traynham was on the 1989 team.
But now he knows how it feels.
“We never really talked about it a whole lot, but I guess I know how he felt then,” Leonard said. “There’s no feeling like winning it all. I guess we get to have two championships in the family now.”
For Flournoy, it was a somewhat somber occasion afterward — even moments after he punctuated the season with an assist to Wright on a slam dunk as the final seconds ran off the clock.
His dad, one of the coaching giants in Fayette County, passed away before he got to coach his son. He had left Princeton to become an assistant at Oak Hill.
“I guess when you do something special, you want everyone you love and care about to be there,” Flournoy said as the lockerroom emptied and he got ready to head back to Charleston for the Class AAA state title game with a few teammates and coaches. “But I feel like he was with me. I know this is what we lived for; every year we would go to Charleston. But no, he was with me.”
For coach Ferri, it was a chance to show that, hey, this guy knows a little something about winning.
He has been underappreciated, underestimated, since taking over the reins at Oak Hill.
“Oh, I don’t care about that stuff,” he said. “This is a special moment for these kids and they deserve it.”
That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the man right there.
For everybody involved, it was justification. It was a title earned. A title built from the ground up, devoid of transfers and won by hometown heroes.
Perhaps Garris was the most proud, after his career-high 10-point outing in the semifinal win over Weir.
“I don’t know why,” the senior said, “but I was thinking on the way back home that only three teams have seniors and they get to go out with a win in their last game. And I am one of the three (the A and AAA state title winners’ seniors being the other) that gets to go out as a winner.”
A champion.
