A US high school girls basketball team is said to have proved \u201cthere are still good people in this world\u201d after taking the unprecedented step of returning a championship it had won after realizing they had actually lost the title-clinching game.<\/p>\n
The story stems from the Oklahoma<\/a> Secondary School Activities Association, where a crucial scoreboard error early in the game gave the girls basketball team at Academy of Classical Christian Studies the edge over its Apache high school counterpart, as CBS News recently reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n Academy coach Brendan King told the network: \u201cAs soon as I walked out of the locker room, my stomach kind of turned into knots. And I said: \u2018I\u2019m going to need to know if we really won this game or not.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n King went home that night and watched a recording of the game. He meticulously watched each play and recounted every basket \u2013 eventually discovering his team had actually lost.<\/p>\n The game ended with Academy, of Oklahoma<\/a> City, winning 44-43 on a last-second shot. But King discovered the score was actually 43-42, with the opposing team from Apache High having actually outscored his team \u2013 and Academy being erroneously given more points than they had actually earned amid confusion about the scoreboard at one juncture of the game.<\/p>\n King\u2019s team would have legally retained its championship had it stood pat on the result. The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association rules say that once a game is finished, the score becomes permanent, and there is no way to change the outcome of a completed game.<\/p>\n But King approached his team to tell the players of his video review\u2019s findings. And the players all unanimously decided to appeal their own victory with the association, asking for the other team to be recognized for their rightful win \u2013 and for them to be assigned a defeat in the game.<\/p>\n The appeal \u2013 described by CBS as having no precedent \u2013 succeeded. And King hand-delivered the championship plaque to Apache.<\/p>\n Apache\u2019s head coach said she was glad to have won the title. But the coach, Amy Merriweather, also said Academy\u2019s act of honesty and integrity meant more than the actual victory.<\/p>\n \u201cIt showed us, you know, there are still good people in this world,\u201d Merriweather said. \u201cIt\u2019s something we\u2019ll always remember.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Students from Academy also spoke with CBS. One student told the outlet that \u201cit would have felt wrong, I think, to have taken the trophy, regardless\u201d.<\/p>\n Another student from Academy said it was a \u201creally good teaching moment\u201d to establish that winning \u201cis not the whole point\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A US high school girls basketball team is said to have proved \u201cthere are still good people in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-215999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}