One is a budding dynasty. The other has been knocking on the state championship door since Ronald Reagan was in the White House.
The question Saturday night was whether Bolingbrook would win its second girls basketball state title in three years, moving out of the club of one-time wonders, or whether Young finally would be a wonder itself.
The schools entered their Class 4A championship game with some finals history between them. In 2005, the first of Bolingbrook’s four straight finals appearances, Young won their Class AA third-place encounter 56-43. The following season Bolingbrook defeated Young 40-38 in overtime in the semifinals on its way to the AA crown.
The Raiders returned to the AA title game last March but fell to Fenwick. They fell again Saturday, losing 54-45 to Young, which was making its title game debut.
Senior point guards D’Frantz Smart of Young and Janisha Gearlds of Bolingbrook have helped make every bit of their teams’ shared history. Each played 11 minutes in that 2005 third-place game as a reserve and became a starter the following season.
They seem a study in contrasts. The 5-foot-6-inch Gearlds plays without great outward emotion. The 5-foot Smart is every bit her team’s spunky QB, leading Young with blinding quickness and a jut-jawed defiance that dares you to sell her short.
Both are nails tough. Gearlds injured her left knee shortly before tryouts but returned quickly. In Friday’s semifinals she had nine points, six assists and seven steals in Bolingbrook’s 56-47 overtime victory over Marist. She had just four points Saturday but added five assists and two steals.
“She’s the heart and soul of this team,” Bolingbrook coach Anthony Smith said.
Smart had 14 points, four assists and three steals as Young rallied for a 38-32 semifinal victory over Buffalo Grove. She added nine points, three assists and two steals in the title game, scoring and setting up others on spectacular drives to the hoop as Bolingbrook kept putting different defenders on her.
“All year she has taken over when we needed her to take over,” Young coach Corry Irvin said of Smart, who has signed with Rice. “She has got a lot of heart. I think it comes from being little and feeling you have to prove yourself. She always plays like she has to prove something.”
Leadership has been a particular challenge this season for Gearlds, who has signed with St. Louis. Bolingbrook lost four Division I recruits to graduation, and then senior Miranda Tate, its most talented returnee, left the team in December in a dispute with Smith.
The team almost lost him as well. Last summer Smith became Bolingbrook’s boys coach, only to change his mind after listening to his players’ pleas.
“We basically begged him to stay,” Gearlds said.
Young’s biggest crisis came last season after it lost to underdog New Trier 45-43 in the supersectionals.
“Last year left us with a real hole, more so than the two third places,” Irvin said, referring to Young’s 2005 and 2006 Class AA finishes. “It was our slap in our own face. But I thought this group would be able to do it, stay focused.”
Young has been a power through most of the last 25 years. Its problem in winning a state title mostly has been Chicago Public League rival Marshall.
Young lost two of its three games to Marshall this season but didn’t have to worry about the Commandos here, thanks to the new four-class system. Marshall wound up in Class 3A, where it won its eighth state title Saturday afternoon.
Irvin reached deep into her bag of motivational tricks to get her team past the semifinals. She had players and coaches give up one of their favorite things for the stretch run.
Smart gave up her cell phone.
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“It’s probably blowing up right now,” she said during the postgame jubilation.
And so, finally, is Young.
“It’s history.” Smart said. “It’s history.”
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