From the time the ref tosses the ball into the air at the opening buzzer, and Lettie Nice swats the ball to Mac, and she hits Karly Sweeney breaking to the basket for the layup, then you see the Lady Lions set up in the “32 Minutes of Hell Defense” you know you are in a battle. Leah Miller then deflects the inbounds pass and Mac dives on it, grabs its and makes a rollover pass to Hope Tomlinson for a high arching “thrrrreeeeeeeee pointer”. The opponent steps out of bounds with the ball and faces the defense, makes a pass over the top to mid court and another pass to a player breaking for the basket for what appears to be a layup, but Lettie Nice swats the ball out of the air and Karly Sweeney heads the other way with the ball you thought was a sure layup a second earlier. Two more quick passes result in a Leah Miller layup and you are right back where you started, standing out of bounds facing what appears to be 25 Lady Lions on defense backed up by 2000 screaming Salem fans led by an army of black & gold clad cheerleaders whose voices are deafening in the contents of the gymnasium.
You feel relief when you notice that Coach Hickey is making three substitutions. You realize just after Natalie Noel steps into the passing lane, knocks the ball down and Lexi Garloch picks it up and hits Callie Backherms who has already made it to the other end, that there is no lull in the Lady Lion defense. You notice Coach Jerry Hickey standing on the sideline, arms folded smiling with enjoyment and head nodding up and down. All this time you notice Abigail Ratts, Maci Tomlinson, Brooklyn Brown, Wade Tomlinson, Don Burton, Joe Jackson, Kristi Noel and Abbi Shields on the sidelines doing jumping gyrations and screaming hysterically while The Lady Lions inflict pain to your entire team.
When you see Lettie Nice being replaced by Olivia Weber, you think maybe this is our chance but your thoughts are squashed when Ashton Thompson threads the needle from the right wing to Olivia, who quickly drop steps left and turns right, bangs the ball softly off the backboard and into the net. You ask yourself, “when will the punishment end”? Certainly not as long as Hope, Leah, and Karly keep reigning down threes from the perimeter like Skud Missiles and Lettie Nice and Makenzie Underwood keep grabbing the misses and sticking them back in the basket. All this time as you face the Lady Lion defense, you notice they are all smiling at you, not with look of“the eye of the tiger' but more like the look of “how you doin”!
You realize that this is what they were born to do, take apart their competitor one limb at a time, and enjoy every minute of it in pure jubilation! At this point you realize you are not just facing the Lady Lions but opposing an entire zip code.
WE ARE SALEM!