Rock Bridge seniors strive to fulfill pact

The clock is ticking and the last of the sand is about to fall through the hour glass. If three Rock Bridge boys basketball seniors want to make good on a pact, the time is now.

Alex Austin, Chad Jones-Hicks and Brett Gifford have been playing basketball together since the sixth grade. They met on the Columbia Storm, a summer league team, and have played together ever since. Although they didn’t attend the same middle school, they came to Rock Bridge to play together.

After their sophomore year, coach Jim Scanlon brought a tape with him to the Rock Bridge Winter Sports Banquet. A tape of the 1996-97 Bruins team winning the District 10 Championship against Jefferson City.

“It was amazing,” Austin said. “Watching the people at the end of the game running on the court and celebrating. It made us want to do that.”

And so the quest began, right there, in that banquet hall. All three players came together and made a pact between them that they would win a district championship before they graduated.

“Coach played the tape and told us what it took to win it,” Jones-Hicks said. “We all (three) came together and knew that that was what we wanted. It was something that just happened.”

They knew that they had only two more chances to accomplish the goal. They practiced hard in the offseason before their junior year, only to come up short in the championship game — also against Jefferson City.

“That was a horrible feeling,” Jones-Hicks said. “We don’t want to feel like that again.”

So now the three are on their final chance of upholding the pact and they are coming down the home stretch.

The Bruins (22-1) will start play in the Class 5 District 10 Tournament, Tuesday, Feb. 20.

The Bruins have one final regular season game left, Friday at Rock Bridge against Helias.

“This is it, we’re now seniors” Jones-Hicks said. “This is our final shot to do this. If we don’t accomplish it, the season will be a failure.”

Gifford attributes the pact to the amount of hard work the three have put towards basketball.

“We play as much basketball together as we can.” Gifford said. “This is more motivation for us to work harder, especially this year.”

Basketball is the only sport these three play. In the offseason they always practice together, but this offseason they said they practiced more and harder than they have in the past.

“This offseason we played more basketball than conditioned,” Gifford said. “We joined a fall league for the first time. We made sure that we practiced together a lot.”

The Bruins might have to try to win the district tournament championship without leading scorer Austin, who has been out since Jan. 30 with a torn ACL in his left knee.

“I think that it would make it more special for us even though Alex wouldn’t be able to help us,” Jones-Hicks said.

Please see Bruins, page 4B

continued from page 1B

“It would show that we can play without him. Besides, he has helped us get where we’re at. And we would still be accomplishing our goal.”

Although the status of Austin is unsure for the district tournament, he believes that the relationships between the three have grown since the pact.

“It has brought us closer together,” Austin said. “We have become better players and it has also kept us motivated.”

If the Bruins were to win the district championship this year, it would be the first time since the 1996-97 season — the same season that was on the tape that inspired the three to make their pact.