Last week Epiphanny Prince broke the girls national prep record by scoring 113 points for Murry Bergtraum High School girls basketball team in the Blazers’ 135-32 win over the Brandeis Bulldogs in New York.
Prince, a 5-foot-9 senior who is headed to play at Rutgers next season, told the Associated Press that before the game when she told some college coaches that she didn’t think that the competition in the Public School Athletic League wasn’t that great and she might get bored, they told her to keep playing hard and doing her best.
Finishing with 113 points in the game, Prince didn’t have time to be bored.
Bergtraum’s coach Ed Grezinsky told the Associated Press that at the half they thought she had a chance to break the record, “so we just let her go.”
This is an astounding accomplishment for a high school basketball player, but it begs the question of running up scores and embarassing a team at one player’s benefit.
Following the game, Brandeis’ coach Vera Springer told the New York Post that she thought Grezinsky made a poor decision by leaving Prince in the game once the score got out of hand.
“It’s nothing against Epiphanny. I have great admiration for her. This was an adult decision. Why would you do this against a team like ours?” Springer said to the Post.
Some might say that Springer is just spouting sour grapes, but I think I would agree that in a team sport like basketball, what is the point of embarassing a beleaguered team (and we are talking embarass badly, to the tune of a 105 point beating) so one person can break an obscure record? And what holding that obscure record mean when the other team admittedly stopped playing defense in the second half?
My concern is what kind of message are we sending to kids competing against less talented or skilled teams. Go for the jugular and tear apart at all costs?
Springer went on to tell the Post that Prince didn’t earn breaking the record because it was like picking on a handicapped person. And she definitely has a point. Her team could do nothing to prevent Prince from having a spectacular first half andputting up 58 points. So I can imagine her anger and frustration when Prince continued to play through the second half.
Put yourself in Springer’s shoes. What would you tell your team to keep them from being discouraged? How would you motivate them to continue to play hard for the entire 32 minutes?
Now the Brandeis Bulldogs will go down in history as the team that allowed Prince to break a national record with 113 points in a game. That type of notariety is not how any student-athlete wants to look back on their high school career.
I’ve coached a losing team, so maybe that’s why I can understand where Springer is coming from so well. But consider what would have happened if Prince hadn’t broken the record, what if she say only scored 99 points against the Bulldogs?
Then there’s no record broken but a team of girls that were still handily embarassed by a very talented basketball player.
Competition is important and helps build character, but when one player has the ability to severely beat a team basically single-handed, should she?
