Looking Beyond the Score
Reasons Vary for Lopsided Result of Many Girls' Games

By Jeff Nelson
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, February 19, 2008; E01

In the time it took for Brittney Salter's three-pointer to drop through the net to the hardwood floor, there was a discernable, if brief, silence.

Then, an eruption.

The girls' basketball players for Maya Angelou Public Charter School started to backpedal on defense, some with smiles, some with arms momentarily raised or outstretched in triumph. The boys' basketball players seated behind the girls' bench shouted and high-fived. On the sideline, Coach Kate Schrepfer jumped once, then shrieked to no one in particular, "Oh my God! We're winning!"

This was not in the game's final seconds or in some championship contest. It was in the first quarter on a Tuesday night in early February and Salter's three-pointer gave the Rebels -- who one week earlier had lost 101-1 -- their first lead of the season.

Only 34 seconds later, the lead was gone, and Maya Angelou eventually lost to Marriott Charter, 31-18. But when Salter, who had scored the Rebels' lone point the week before, connected on her NBA-range three-pointer, it had all the drama of a buzzer-beater.

Such moments give teams like Maya Angelou the incentive to keep playing, even though they experience some extremely humbling defeats. And to be sure, Maya Angelou is not alone when it comes to being humbled.

On nearly every night that girls' basketball is played in the Washington area, there are a few scores of eye-catching proportions. There have been 88 games reported to The Washington Post this season in which one girls' team scored 20 points or fewer and lost by 40 or more.

On Jan. 31, four of the 19 scores reported were 50-8, 76-11, 88-12 and 61-15.

By contrast, only seven boys' games all season have met the above criteria.

This season isn't an anomaly, either. During the 2006-07 season, 86 girls' games finished with the losing team scoring 20 points or fewer and trailing by 40 or more, whereas only 18 boys' games ended that way.

Coaches cite many reasons for the talent disparity among some teams, including: fewer feeder programs for girls than boys on the youth level; more boys dedicated to playing year-round, both in organized leagues and on playgrounds; many of the most athletic girls play more than one sport on the high school level, leaving them less time for basketball; and girls who can play tend to gravitate toward already established teams, often the area's private schools or the best public school teams in D.C., where transfer rules allow students more freedom of choice.

The bottom line, coaches say, is that even as participation has exploded in the past 20 years, the talent pool of girls is smaller than boys and not big enough to sustain all of the high school teams in the area. At least one school, M.M. Washington, did not have enough players to field a team this season after experiencing numerous blowouts last season.

"There are a lot of teams that have only one or two girls who can really play basketball," said Hyde Coach Reginald Stevens, who has coached boys for nine seasons and girls for two. "That's just the fact of the matter."

Tough Adjustments

In the fall, Rebecca Portillo reveled in winning. She had a breakout season as the field hockey goalie for Patuxent High School, which won its first 17 games and reached the Maryland 2A semifinals.

These days, any victory would do. Patuxent has been a contender in the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference this decade, but has yet to win a game this season. That gives Portillo, a sophomore on the young and rebuilding Panthers, the same motivation as other girls on winless basketball teams in the area.

"We're the only people that believe in us," she said. "It'd be great just to prove them wrong one time. But it just looks like we're going to have to improve over the years and we're going to be a patient team and wait for our time."

Brittani Lewis, a Maya Angelou freshman, said: "Winning a game, [we talk about that] all day. We'll cry. Tears of joy."

Most of the teams on the losing end of lopsided scores have at least a few wins this season, and a handful have records around or above .500. Those teams simply had one or two extremely poor games that stemmed from a few temporary absences.

The rest generally fit into three categories. Some, such as Maya Angelou and Bell Multicultural School, have a varsity team for the first time in a long time -- or ever -- so they're starting from scratch. Others, like Patuxent and Fairmont Heights, have been respectable in recent seasons, but because of injuries, youth, inexperience -- or a combination of all three -- are struggling. The majority tend to get blown out a few times every season simply because they don't have the comparable talent. For those who frequently lose by massive amounts, the most common solution is simple: Ignore the scoreboard. They have to, coaches say, in order to make the games both mentally tolerable and fundamentally worthwhile.

"The focus is definitely not on the score," said Bell Coach Miriam Kenyon, whose team has lost five games by 60 or more points this season. "What we're trying to do is break the press, get the ball downcourt and get a shot attempt. I'm not going to focus on a score that's unattainable. And when it's not about the score, when it's about getting better throughout the game, they enjoy playing basketball. They enjoy competing and getting out there. They set small goals, and they like to play."

Various Perspectives

Friendship Collegiate Coach Tesha Nixon understands why there might be some resentment toward her team, which has walloped its fair share of opponents this season, including Maya Angelou in the 101-1 game. But Nixon said she's sensitive to being perceived as a villain.

When she first took over her program five seasons ago, her team lost, 99-13, to Riverdale Baptist.

"I definitely understand both sides of it," Nixon said, "but I also feel that when you lace up, and you are a team, you have to be ready to play, and whatever happens, you have to go with it. Because I've been there, and it made me a better coach and it made us better players. If you have it in you, you become stronger."

In 2003, the National Federation of State High School Associations decided to do something about such games. The basketball rules committee gave states the ability to create rules that would allow the clock to run without interruption (except for coaches' timeouts) if the lead grew to a certain number at a certain point in the game. The intent was to end blowouts quicker and lessen the outrageous margins of victory.

Neither Maryland nor Virginia has adopted the rules on a statewide basis, but Maryland has allowed individual counties the freedom to implement so-called mercy rules. Bill Burroughs, the coordinator of officials for the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, said only Prince George's uses them. That county runs the clock when one team leads by 30 or more entering the fourth quarter.

The D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association implemented what it calls the "speed-up rule" in the past three years, executive director Allen Chin said. In D.C., the clock runs if the margin reaches 30 points, regardless of when that happens.

"When we had observers from our office go to some of the games, we noticed some of the attitudes of the kids being beaten," Chin said. "It was not good for their self-esteem."

'We're Not Quitters'

Players say they are not immune to the pain, anger and frustration of watching their deficits reach 40, 50, 60 points or more, but coaches said they see uncommon maturity during and after those games.

"The first few [losses of that nature] were really emotional for them," Patuxent Coach Sonja Carroll said. "And I'm not going to say they got used to losing, but the girls say: '[The opponent] is really better than we are and we're not there yet.'

"The girls are happy. I know we're losing and I know it looks bad on paper and losing is not a good thing, but they're handling it very, very well."

And no outcome, no matter how lopsided, can make them walk away. "We love the game of basketball, that's why," said Maya Angelou's Salter. "We're not quitters."

Maya Angelou's bus rides are full of folksy children's songs -- "The wheels on the bus go round and round" -- and new ones -- "We gonna win, we gonna win, yaaaay girl, yaaaay girl".

At Patuxent, the locker room features music, some dancing and frequent jokes.

"That's what we've done a lot of," Portillo said. "Laughing more often, cheering each other up, making jokes and making it more fun."

Even on the court, even in a blowout, there are lighter moments.

Patuxent junior Morgan Lake is in her first year playing basketball at any level, and she's a good athlete with a strong distaste for repeating her own mistakes. When she was called for traveling for the third time in the same game while trying to make a post move, frustration and guilt got the best of her.

As the other team went to inbound the ball, Clark sprinted to the sideline and hugged her bewildered coach.

"I just ran over and said, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm going to get better,' " Clark recalled. "And she was like, 'It's okay, it's okay, get back out there.' "

Later in the game, Clark caught a pass near the basket, executed a dribble-drop step and scored.

When the deficit has well surpassed the threshold of a blowout and another defeat is inevitable, even the winless teams find small victories.

"I go out there without a lot of confidence because girls have been playing longer than me and I'm always trying to match up to their level," Clark said. "But when I do something right, it feels wonderful."