CCC TOURNEY: California team visits Capital City for annual tournament
Marina's (Ca.) Shane Gloger drives for a shot over , Trinity’s William Hughes in CCC Tourney action on Friday. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
Trinity coach Matt Arrighi is always looking for a new team to include in the annual Jack Schweers Capital City Conference Tournament, but he wasn’t ready for an email he received last spring from Marina High in Huntingdon Beach, Calif.
“I saw California on the email list and I assumed it was spam so I didn’t even respond,” Arrighi said. “I sat on it for about two weeks and I googled the school name and the guy’s name to see if it was a real school and a real basketball coach. And it checked out.
“He said every two years, they pick a place in the country to go and take their kids to see and go see some colleges and play some basketball. So my next great question was, ‘How in the world do you choose Montgomery, Alabama?’”
Nick Racklin, now in his 15th year at Marina High, started the biennial tradition in his second year at the school.
“I decided we were going to take a trip somewhere in the country where they have a Division I college-rich basketball environment,” Racklin said. “We went to a game at Duke and a game at UNC. We watched N.C. State practice. We did a lot of cool stuff on that trip. I figured how much that trip cost and then we do a fundraiser in the spring. Two of those fundraisers equals one trip.”
They’ve visited Lexington, Ky., northern Virginia and northern Illinois, adding Philadelphia to the list in 2023. Apparently, the success of the basketball teams at Alabama and Auburn in recent years has made the Yellowhammer State a destination site.
“We packed the trip in,” Racklin said. “On this trip, we’ve been to a University of Alabama game, we watched Auburn practice, we’re going to the Troy game (on Saturday), we did all the civil rights tour stuff (on Friday) and we’re going to Atlanta on Sunday to go to a Hawks game and check out Georgia Tech. It’s good for these kids to see something else other than southern California.”
The team arrived in Montgomery late Tuesday night after a four-hour delay or else Racklin might have added the Salute to Veterans Bowl to his list. Along the way, they’ve played a little basketball as well, beating Prattville Christian Academy in the opening round of the tournament on Thursday.
“Good athletes and an interesting zone (defense) that we haven’t seen before,” Racklin said. “There’s not a lot of people in California that play zone.”
Arrighi was silently pulling against PCA coach Jason Roberson and the Panthers, wanting an opportunity to play the Vikings on Friday.
“It was really cool for us to have somebody from the west coast to come to one of our tournaments,” Arrighi said. “It’s been a treat for us to have them here. I put them on our side of the bracket because it’s kind of neat to play somebody from California. Nothing against Jason, but I was hoping (Marina) would win. I wanted the chance to play against them. And Jason was pumped, too.”
Be careful what you wish for. The Vikings are in a rebuilding mode this year and left California with a 3-6 record, but after beating PCA 57-52 in the opening round on Thursday, they followed up with a 64-61 win over Trinity as Shane Gloger scored 44 points.
“It’s different competition than we see back home, which is cool,” Racklin said. “It’s good for us to be in these close games so these young guys can learn how to win. When to foul, when not to foul, how to take care of the ball late. We have zero experience with that.”
The Vikings ran into foul trouble -- and the hot shooting of Trinity’s Wilson Cherry, who finished with 26 points -- but was able to hold off the Wildcats down the stretch.
“You can get away with a lot less here,” Racklin said. “All of our games are two officials (as opposed to three in Alabama), so there’s a lot less that’s seen. I don’t know if that was a regularly officiated game or not, but there’s a lot of touch fouls. No flow to that game, both directions. A huge adjustment for us is no shot clock. And we still play like we have one.”
Marina High will play Gulf Shores for the tournament title on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. -- the game was moved up from 1:30 so that Marina can attend Saturday’s game between Marshall and Troy at 1 p.m. -- before closing out the week in Atlanta on Sunday and flying back to California on Monday.
Like the previous trips to other parts of the country, Racklin found this trip rewarding.
“In terms of basketball, the Auburn practice was cool,” he said, “because a lot of our guys left that saying, ‘Hey Coach, you say the same things they do.’ So I thought that had a lot of value for us.
“This morning, going through the civil rights museum and the Rosa Parks Museum and seeing all that stuff had a lasting effect on our guys. We had a good talk about being inclusive and not judging a book by its cover and being prideful in where everybody’s from. That builds good team chemistry. From that aspect, it was really good for us. There’s minimal stuff in California in terms of U.S. history that had that significant of an effect on our country.”