Bonner-Prendergast’s Malik Edwards puts a shot up against Roman Catholic in a regular-season game. Photo by: Digital First Media/Pete Bannan
By Matthew DeGeorge
It wasn’t easy for Kevin Funston to address his Bonner-Prendergast boys basketball team last week.
The conversation was freighted with disappointments, so many of them frighteningly familiar to us all. Of a season ending prematurely. Of careers ending early. Of disruptions to routine and habit.
But Funston and his Friars carried something else, deep in their hearts.
“I’m sure every other team that was still playing thinks this,” Funston said Monday. “But I think this was our championship to win.”
Funston’s Friars had evidence on their side. The Friars had won their two PIAA Class 4A games by an average of 36 points. Ahead lay District 3’s Bishop McDevitt in a never-to-be-requited quarterfinal, then either Pope John Paul or Tamaqua. The state final could bring Imhotep Charter, which Bonner-Prendie had beaten in the District 12 final, with a chance to avenge last year’s state-final loss against a Panthers team that had graduated three Division I players.
What-ifs abound in the time of coronavirus, but the one Bonner-Prendie harbors is among the most salient.