It’s hard to be a state champion and almost an afterthought, but that’s the fate that seemed to face Richards and Zion-Benton after the Chicago Public League coronation in the Class 3A championship game Saturday afternoon.
Marshall vs. Simeon was the game of the day, if not the year, and after the former grabbed the 3A championship trophy with a 69-61 victory, you could almost feel some air escaping the state finals balloon.
Richards would win the 4A title at the Peoria Civic Center, and while the Bulldogs’ hardware and smiles would shine as brightly as the 3A champ’s had hours earlier, it didn’t figure to be quite the same.
You knew Richards or Zion-Benton wouldn’t care, nor should they. And you knew that the Illinois High School Association insists that its jump to four-class basketball is all about more smiles, but you also knew the Class AA weekend always had been special and that it felt a little less special at this inaugural 3A-4A extravaganza.
That’s because until now the Class AA champion was the state champion. This year it happens to be clear that Marshall is No. 1, but it sure was nice to have the issue decided on the court instead of on message boards and in bars.
Richards and Zion-Benton deserved better. They are talented, well-coached teams, and their enthusiastic crowds provided much more energy than the electricity-free zone that accompanied Marshall and Simeon, who produced a terrific game but simply don’t bring many fans.
That’s the big reason for the sadly sparse 3A crowd, but it’s likely the four-class system isn’t helping.
Marshall and Simeon are state finals veterans, winners of three titles each. Richards and Zion-Benton are finals rookies, but they staged a great 4A finale before Richards held on for a 67-63 victory.
Their performance pumped some madness back into March, and it didn’t hurt that a Richards grad named Dwyane Wade added a little star power when he showed up near tipoff. It certainly energized his distant cousin, Carl Richard, and the Richards forward proceeded to score a game-high 19 points.
“It felt great for him to be here,” Richard said of the Miami Heat superstar.
The basketball gap between Wade and Richards coach John Chappetto is the size of a canyon. Chappetto never played high school basketball, no doubt because he was 5 feet 3 inches and 115 pounds when he attended Brother Rice. Sounds more like a soccer player, and that’s what he was, though he also kicked for the football team.
His late father, Charlie, was a basketball referee in the Chicago Catholic League, so Chappetto always hung around the game, and he got a break when then-head coach Jack Fitzgerald hired him as a sophomore coach at Richards in 1994.
“He gave me a chance,” Chappetto said. “I think of all the guys who never had the opportunity to coach here, and here I am, on top of the world.”
Richards made it thanks to the likes of Richard, guard Tommie Thomas and forward Shaun Pratl, the latter two of whom finally got the bad taste of failing to win a state football title last fall out of their mouths. But credit also has to go to Chappetto, whose team didn’t figure to get this far but improved when it mattered most: the postseason.
“He’s the best coach I ever had in my life,” said Richard, who transferred from Young to Richards before his junior year. “He works with kids. He’s patient with kids.
“We had some kids who were struggling, and he was always there for them.”
When he became head coach in 2002, Chappetto never expected “there” to include Peoria unless he bought a ticket.
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“A lot of coaches take a job to play Downstate,” he said. “I just wanted the job at Richards.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would get here until 2006, when we played Simeon in the sectional championship and were down by just one in the fourth quarter. I went, ‘Wow, it’s possible.'”
For Richards on Saturday, all things were possible, though Chappetto admitted he never would have believed that the old soccer player would become a state championship coach.
“No. Not at all,” he said. “I used to dream of waking up and being 6-5 and getting to play for my high school team and winning a state championship.
“It never happened, but here I am.”
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Read Barry Temkin’s blog, “Upon Further Review,” at chicagosports.com/temkin