“No matter what happens, we won.”
That’s what Griffith High’s coach, Gary Hayes, told the community the day after the team overcame what could have been so, so much worse.
What so easily could have been a tragedy, turned quickly into a shining embodiment of what The Region is all about.
We’re tough, we’re strong, and we display our greatest strengths during times when it is needed.
View the photos from last night's Semistate game.
I watched the last shot for Marion split the cylinder and fall heavily to the ground tonight, giving the Giants the win over Griffith and ending what could have been a fairytale ride to a State Championship.
I was heartbroken for a team that overcame so much in so little time, but then I reminded myself what Coach Hayes told the Griffith community just a few days before.
“We won.”
Northwest Indiana, we won.
We followed the lead of a coach, a team, and a group of players that took a lifechanging moment and rallied around it. We watched the Region’s electric company donate a charter bus to the team to make it down to Lafayette today, escorted to the county line by police officers with sirens blaring in pride. And no matter what city or town we lived in or identified with, today we were all from Griffith.
What happened today, long before the game even started, we watched what happens when someone wins.
Because make no mistake about it, that bus was filled with the best examples Northwest Indiana had to offer; winners in every sense of the way.
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