RICHMOND — He’s had the tape for 14 years. Ben Breeden won’t watch it though. He hasn’t quite made peace with that moment just yet.
“The kids asked me if I was going to watch it if we won tonight,” the Madison County coach said. “I said I’d think about it, but I don’t know. It’s tough to relive that moment.”
Breeden played for a Group A championship against Northumberland in 1996, but his team ultimately fell short in overtime. That was the last time that the Mountaineers were in the title game until Friday’s showdown with Altavista. And before his team tipped off with the Colonels, senior Casey Campbell wanted to see the infamous tape along with the game film from the team’s semifinal loss last year to Dan River.
“I watched both,” Campbell said. “I watched them back-to-back. (The game in 1996) was heartbreaking to watch. The team was playing so well and Coach Breeden was playing so well, and then in last minute of the game everything fell apart and they just ran out of players. And we know that feeling from last year. We did the same thing he did.”
Well in his first year at the helm for the Mountaineers, Breeden assured that the last game of his premeire season − and the last game of his nine seniors’ career – ended with heartfelt smiles and not heartache as they held off Altavista to win the school’s first championship since 1977.
“I just didn’t want the kids to have that feeling,” Breeden said. “I know what it’s like. So we did everything that we could to practice and prepare so that we would be ready for this game. We tried to do everything the right way to give ourselves the best chance to win. I think we did that and it showed.”
As the scoring got tight in the fourth quarter, every Madison fan had to wonder if their squad was on the verge of another painful defeat. But with great resolve, the Mountaineers kept their cool in the final stretch of the game and when they left the arena, the game nets were in one hand and the state championship trophy was in the other.
“Redemption and relief,” Breeden said. “That’s how I felt after the game.”
No team had higher expectations coming into the season that the Mountaineers, and paired with the task of taking the step up from assistant to head coach, Breeden stuck to his team’s principles all-year round, consistently throwing minutes to his bench players to make sure that his big weapons, Jerel Carter, Logan Terrell and David Falk had their basketball legs in this second week of March.
“There was a lot pressure,” Breeden said of his first season. “But we never talked about it. We didn’t have to. We didn’t need to hear about it or read about it, we already knew. The kids, we just looked at it one game at a time, kept our composure, and this is a humble group. I think that’s going to be so beneficial to them in their lives.”
Breeden’s first bunch was a special group and its almost too perfect that he had this crop of seniors to kick off his tenure at Madison as a head coach. There’s little doubt that his season will be remembered and talked about in the same way as the squad from 1977, a team whose picture hangs in the Mountaineers’ gym. For Breeden, he couldn’t have coached a better team.
“I love this group so very much and I can’t say that enough,” Breeden said. “These guys are just so cool.”
So if Breeden does ever watch the tape of the dramatic loss 14 years ago, all he has to do to offset the gut wrenching feeling is pop in the last game of the year in 2010. Or if he chooses not to, as engrained in his mind as the defeat was during his playing days, his most recent victory as a coach should take front and center — they are now 26-0 and that will never change.
