Normal Community High School’s basketball team had a 39-26 lead on mighty Chicago Simeon with under seven minutes remaining Tuesday night.
The Ironmen needed the Redbird Arena clock to run. It wouldn’t budge.
Well, a second here and there, with free throws in between.
It inched along, putting the biggest win in school history on hold. A sea of orange in the stands tried to will it to :00. Senior forward Tyler Seibring was as eager for that as anyone … but not just because a win for the ages was within reach.
“I have a test tomorrow,” Seibring said. “I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to get any studying done.’ ”
Studying? Really?
“It’s in AP calculus,” Seibring said.
Really.
Ultimately, the Ironmen made it to the final horn in the Class 4A super-sectional. The numbers read: NCHS 64, Simeon 50. They were the ones that mattered on this night. Seibring will deal with the others on Wednesday.
The fifth-ranked Ironmen had knocked off the top-ranked and seven-time state champion Wolverines. It left Seibring and his teammates to make sense of it all, to put it into words.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Seibring said. “It’s even more fun to say we have practice tomorrow.”
As words go, those are pretty good.
So were the Ironmen, who despite a 31-1 record at the opening tip were decided underdogs to the machine that is Simeon.
A span of about 21 seconds in the third quarter turned the game. Seibring, a fine long-range shooter, hadn’t hit a 3-pointer all night. In the first half, he had one barely graze the front of the rim. At halftime, the first 3 he attempted was so long it missed everything.
He shook his head.
But with 3:27 to go in the third period, he sank one from the wing. Then, he assisted on a 12-foot bank shot by Mason Maier at the 3:06 mark.
A four-point lead suddenly was nine. This thing was getting real. It actually could happen.
Then the fourth quarter intervened. It lasted longer than some marriages. There were NCHS students who walked into the arena as freshmen and left as sophomores.
Yet, senior guard David Boyd said the Ironmen kept the faith. They had it all along. It was the rest of us who doubted they could pull this off.
Boyd’s ear to ear smile afterward was accessorized by a bit of a shiner below his right eye. It was discolored and a bit swollen.
“That happened in the third quarter,” he explained. “They were coming down on a fastbreak and I was trying to stop it. I caught an elbow.
“I’m all right with it. It’s the sign of a victory.”
Boyd wore it proudly. It was that kind of night.
Behind the Ironmen bench, Coach Dave Witzig’s parents beamed as brightly as Boyd and everyone else. They make a lot of their son’s games, cheering with heart and soul.
Especially mom.
“She’s the biggest Ironmen fan we have,” Witzig said.
There was a lot of competition for that title Tuesday. There will be again at 8:15 p.m. Friday when NCHS plays in the state semifinals at Peoria’s Carver Arena.
In 36 years of scribbling notes and chasing stories, this one ranks among the best. Maybe there have been more improbable wins. Few have been more impressive.
“We’ve had an unbelievable athletic year at Normal Community,” Witzig said. “We’re just trying to continue it on.”
They have passed every test.
Bring on AP calculus.
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