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Mohawk Mania grips community eager for state championship

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By Rick McCrabb, Columnist 8:13 PM Friday, March 19, 2010

MADISON TWP. — There was a time, believe it or not, when girls basketball consisted of three girls playing defense, three on offense.

The players weren’t allowed to cross midcourt, and when they weren’t on offense or defense, they cheered their teammates.

The 2010 version isn’t your grandmother’s — or your great-grandmother’s — girls high school basketball. Playing girls basketball is cool — and the coolest place this side of Anchorage is in Madison Twp., where Mohawk Mania is an epidemic and no one wants a cure.

By Saturday morning, March 20, about every Madison Twp. resident will have made their way to Columbus to watch the Mohawks, 27-0, play Findlay Liberty-Benton, 26-0, for the Division III state championship in Columbus.

One of those is Mike McGee, former PGA member and owner of McGee’s Golf Training Facility in Madison Twp., who has watched about every girls game this season.

He’ll be there, too.

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” McGee said Friday, March 19, while watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in his pro shop. “It’s unbelievable, really.”

McGee, a 1977 Madison graduate, is most impressed by the Mohawk basketball feeder program, which is producing winning teams at every level in the elementary school. As he talked about the season and the possibility of a first team state championship, he choked back tears. “It makes you want to cry,” he said.

Regardless of the outcome today, tears will fill every eye in the arena. On the court, and in the stands.

Donna Hoskins, whose daughter, Lindsay, is a standout senior on the team, realizes this is Lindsay’s last high school game. Next year, she’ll play for Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. “This has been the best year,” Hoskins said after picking up her son from school, then heading back to Columbus. “It’s been a great ride.”

Cindy Watson, a Madison High secretary, said the girls basketball players are idolized by younger students in the district. She called the girls “rock stars up here.”

Before the team left for Columbus Wednesday, the players were given “Sweet Dreams” and “You Rock” pillow cases made by second-graders and good luck notes written by sixth-graders.

You don’t get to the top without a solid foundation.

As first-year football coach Joe Snively said: “This is exciting stuff.”

More exciting than six-on-six girls basketball.

Contact this columnist at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.