by Jonathan Vander Lugt

They say that good things come to those who wait.

In 2013, they sat, mostly on the end of the varsity bench, as Julian Moore, Nick Lindner, and Greg Dotson led the team to a conference title.

In 2014, the team belonged to junior Timmy Guers, and Devon Goodman got his first taste as Germantown Academy rolled to a second straight crown.

The next year, as seniors, Guers and Sam Lindgren (with Goodman's help) pushed GA to a three-peat.

Now seniors, Goodman, Gabe Alter, Bailey Whitman, Joe Stinson, Eathyn Allen, and Miraj Dudhat have one that they can call their own. The Germantown Academy basketball Patriots locked down a fourth consecutive Inter-Ac championship with Friday night’s 64-51 win over Episcopal Academy.

“Ever since the first year, we said that we wanted to go for four,” said Goodman. “This is a great win—I don't think any other team in GA history has won a four-peat.”

He'd be correct. The Pats have won three-peats numerous times, but never have they broken through to snag a fourth.

“For a high school kid to be able to say that for every single year they've won,” GA coach Jim Fenerty said, “that's priceless.”

It couldn't have come out of a better contest either. Episcopal Academy, the only conference team to deal a losing blow to the Patriots (a 58-56 match in mid-January) came in hot, winners of six consecutive in the league. Both teams had just one conference loss, so the game had become a de facto championship tilt, with the winner guaranteed a tie, at the very worst, for the league crown.

“Getting four in a row was really what we were focusing on,” said Alter. “That's really all we were saying. We had to go out strong.”

“After winning the first three years,” he said, “this one was ours.”

It could have been either team's after three quarters of play. Nick Alikakos, EA's junior forward and leading scorer, was giving the Pats all kinds of trouble. After heading into the second quarter up narrowly, his bucket early in the frame opened up a five-point, 14-9 lead.

That's when things turned though, and Germantown Academy ripped off a 14-2 run to take a seven-point lead of their own. The run stalled, and faced with the possibility of a four-point halftime deficit (it was clear by this point that each tally mark in this one was going to have to be clawed out) Alikakos nailed a heavily contested three-pointer off of an inbound as the clock expired, sending the game into halftime with a 24-23 GA advantage.

The third quarter featured much of the same, but with a bit more scoring. It ended in a 42-40 Patriot lead, and it seemed like the gym at GA was in for a classic ending to what looked like a classic game.

Not so, however. The tables turned, and after Gabe Alter cleaned up the glass and converted on an Evan-Eric Longino transition miss, the Pats found themselves up by eight with just two to play.

“I thought we were much more composed,” Alter said. “We slowed it down, even though we didn't have that big of a lead.”

This is where that senior experience comes in handy, one would think.

“Yeah it does,” Alter said. “Evan-Eric (a junior) was poised, and so was Kyle (McCloskey, also a junior), but we all just played within ourselves. We didn't try to do too much.”

Free throws decided the rest of it. Despite spending the last two days sick as a dog, (he missed school Wednesday and wasn't nearly himself Thursday in practice) Longino got to the line for four more tries and drilled the set of them. McCloskey hit three of five in the frame, and Goodman nailed both of his chances.

By the quarter's end, Germantown Academy was up 64-51, shared title in hand.

Therein lies the rub, though. After all of the emotion that flowed Friday night, they still have to take care of business against Malvern Prep on Tuesday to call the championship their own. Should Episcopal sweep Springside Chestnut Hill next week (they play a Tuesday-Thursday home-and-home because of Winter Storm Jonas), the Churchman will be 8-2 in the conference, with a 1-1 record against Germantown Academy.

If GA loses to the Friars, they too will be 8-2 in a conference, with a 1-1 record against EA. So yes, winning Friday was nice, but to really sweeten the deal, they're going to want the title outright.

Is Fenerty worried about a letdown?

“Nope,” he said. “Not at all.”

“There are a lot of nice kids on this team,” he went on, “but none of them like to share.”