BERLIN — Stephen Decatur’s boys’ varsity basketball team held up its end in the battle with Pocomoke for the Bayside South championship with a win Monday, but the Seahawks lost a fateful coin toss on Tuesday morning to the Warriors.
By virtue of the coin toss win over Decatur, Pocomoke won the Bayside South championship and earned the right to move on to the conference championship game against Bayside North winner Cambridge-South Dorchester. The championship game was scheduled for Wednesday at the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center, but was postponed and moved to Thursday at James M. Bennett High School in a game played too late to be included in this edition.
The Seahawks and the Warriors waged a remarkable battle all season for the Bayside South title as each finished with identical 15-1 conference records. Pocomoke had its season finale last Thursday and awaited the outcome of Decatur’s game on Monday at Cambridge-South Dorchester, a make-up game from an earlier cancellation, to see who would advance to the Bayside Conference championship game on Wednesday.
After the Seahawks beat the Vikings on Monday, the Bayside South title came down to a coin toss on Tuesday morning, per conference by-laws, and the toss went Pocomoke’s way, sending the Warriors to Thursday’s title game.
Decatur Coach B.J. Johnson praised the Pocomoke team and Coach Derrick Fooks, a Seahawk alum, but said the coin toss loss left the Seahawks with an empty feeling in terms of their conference championship goals. Johnson and Fooks met with Worcester County Public Schools Athletic Director Clarence Johnson on Tuesday at the Board of Education headquarters in Newark for the coin toss to decide the Bayside South title. Each coach pulled a number, either one or two, and Pocomoke chose one. Fooks deferred and let Johnson call heads or tails.
Johnson called heads and the coin toss went the other way, handing the Warriors the Bayside South title. Ideally, the two teams would meet in a head-to-head matchup for the Bayside South title, but logistics, the conference by-laws and the start of the state playoffs made that impossible. Many, including Johnson, questioned the coin toss policy this week.
“To me, it just doesn’t make any sense for this to come down to a coin toss, but the powers that be have decided this is the way it is going to be decided,” he said. “The kids on both teams worked extremely hard all season to get to this point and it all came down to a coin toss. We really can’t complain about it because that’s just the way it is.”
While the Seahawks were left on the outside looking in for the conference championship, their remarkable season lives on with a good shot at a state regional title and possible a state championship still out there. The state regional brackets were released on Tuesday and as expected, the Decatur boys earned the top seed in the Class 3A-East regional and a first-round bye. The Seahawks will face the winner of the first-round game between Chesapeake and Northeast early next week and will remain home as long as they keep winning until the regional championship.
“The goal of winning a state championship is still out there and that has been the goal from the beginning,” said Johnson. “Winning the Bayside championship was one of our goals, but that was only a stepping stone for the larger goal for this team. We are the top seed and everything will have to come through us until we reach College Park.”
Pocomoke is top seed in the Class 1A-East region and also has an excellent opportunity to advance deep into the state tournament. However, there is no opportunity for the Seahawks and Warriors to meet again this year because they play in different classes in the state based on student population. The two teams split their head-to-head regular season games with each winning on their home floor. Pocomoke beat Decatur, 64-58, on Dec. 21 just before the holiday break.
The Seahawks returned the favor on Jan. 26 with a resounding 67-48 win over the Warriors at home in front of a huge crowd. The stands began filling up hours before game time and capacity was reached well before the national anthem and the opening tip-off. The Worcester County Fire Marshal’s Office was on hand to monitor the crowd size and Sheriff’s deputies blocked the entrances once capacity was reached. Fans filled every seat in the bleachers and the standing-room-only crowd lined the court two or three deep on both ends of the floor. Decatur beat Pocomoke by 19 points, while the Warriors beat the Seahawks by six points.
However, a third game to decide the Bayside South championship was not in the cards, even with fans on both sides clamoring for the title to be decided on the court.