Zebra For Life: Team, Fans Show Hot Springs a Show
How You Like 'Em Now?
Oh, what a night!
The Pine Bluff Zebras won the 5A state basketball championship home against the Lake Hamilton Wolves, 67-51, in a packed arena in Hot Springs, the Wolves’ backyard.
I could recap the game for you, but words really would fail to capture the electric energy rocking the Hot Springs Convention Center Bank OZK Arena. (Whew, that’s a long name.) You just had to be there to live it.
Here are just a few stats:
Senior X’Zaevion “Zae” Barnett, who also played Zebra football, led like a general, as people have said, with 19 points. Junior Courtney Crutchfield, who was the game’s MVP and also plays football, crushed 16 points. Senior Jordon Harris landed 13 points and four blocks – the only Zebra with blocks. But what do you expect from a six-foot-six guy who landed a football scholarship, after playing only one season, at the University of Missouri?
The Zebra team hit the arena floor like an exploding nuclear bomb. Winning glowed in their eyes and an aura of superhero strength radiated. Nothing was going to stop this team no matter the opponent. They had been waiting for this night for years and especially since December when they lost the King Cotton championship game in Pine Bluff by only point at the buzzer against the Beaumont United Timberwolves.
The Zebras earned this win by grinding through each game this season, point by point. Winning was more than just a take-home trophy. They won it for their city.
“This means a lot to me,” Jordon wrote me in a message. “Why? Because this feeling has been long overdue for the city and team. The city of Pine Bluff needed this to bring some sort of sunlight to people because violence has been happening this past week.”
So true.
The Bluff
I’m from Pine Bluff. I was born and raised near Commerce Road. Has the city seen better times? Yes. Hasn’t every city seen better times? Yes. I lived in Little Rock for 30 years before moving back to south Arkansas. I watched Little Rock ebb and flow from a lot of crime to the glory days of the River Market and the William J. Clinton Library and Museum to crime again.
But people from Pine Bluff fight a stigma every day. I have experienced it so much and again last night. It is real.
When I first entered the arena, a girls’ game was about to begin. I walked to press row and got pushed out of a seat on press row that I believed was vacant. There was no taped sign in front of the seat. In fact, there was no sign with my name on it anywhere although I had gone through all the required hoops to get my media press.
But the Lake Hamilton radio guys appeared. I was in their spot apparently. Then one of them said, looking at my red and black scarf, “Pine Bluff?”
I said nothing. Soon enough, they got an official dude to come and move me to another seat. I argued but relented. Pick your battles, right? The new seat only put me closer to the basket action. Another Hot Springs man sat beside me. Nice enough man, but when he started trashing Pine Bluff? Watch out!
“You know Pine Bluff,” he said.
Now what does that mean? I have had this said so many times I’m tired of hearing it. It is coded, loaded language. I’m not stupid.
Then it got going: Crime, discipline problems with players (I shut him down as if I were Courtney slam dunking) and a bad education system (shut down again with me whipping out all the athletes on the Principal’s List, Honor Roll and Merit List and players’ scholarships and offers.)
“That’s my hometown you’re talking about,” I said, getting hot. “What about Lake Hamilton? Don’t they have problems?”
He shrugged.
“I feel bad for Pine Bluff,” he said.
“Why?” I asked with an eye roll. (It’s probably recorded somewhere on film.)
“They won’t have any many fans here,” he said. “I don’t know if Lake Hamilton will with the weather, but they will probably have more.”
Oh, Mister, just you wait.
And then the Zebras arrived. And more. And more. They circled the arena. They were loud and proud — and that was before the game clock started ticking.
The loyal Zebra fans who I have seen at every game (and I have been to most of them) showed up wearing t-shirts, waving fans with players’ faces on them, cheering like only a #Z4L would understand. One word: LIT.
I. Loved. It.
Little did those fans know that I had been sitting there doing everything I could not to do what my mom’s favorite L.L. Cool J song said to do in such a situation. If you know you know.
Parents, students and fans drove an hour-and-half on mostly a two-lane road in horrible rain to show up. I may have mumbled something like that to the man.
The rebuttal? Lake Hamilton can shoot. If they are on fire, the game will be close. They may win it.
“Someone will definitely win this game,” I said. “There’s always a winner and a loser.”
Then came the thing I loathe the most. A stupid sports cliché: A team seldom wins the third time they play the same team. (If you see me, don’t ever say this to me.)
“Not true,” I said.
“Yep,” he said.
“Nope, statistically, at least in college and the Zebras play like a college team, the team who has won the first two games, usually win the last,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
Truth. I had researched it earlier in the day. Over a 10-year period in college basketball including almost 1,000 games, the team that won the first 2 games won the third meeting 72.4%. (Read more here.) As I have been lectured, stats don’t lie.
“This is not college,” he said.
As my dad used to say: You can’t argue with a fence post.
The Zebras, and their fans, won my personal battle for me. As the championship hoopla occurred in center court, I said, “What you think now?”
The man had no words.
Boom!
Correction: The original version of this post said: Vendors even sold Zebra souvenirs with the players on them.
That's true. They did. However, I was under the impression that vendors who were fans from Pine Bluff were selling souvenirs with the likeness of the athletes on them. No, the Arkansas Activities Association sold those. Players or teams did not receive any profits from them.