I’ve been thinking a lot about Wes Leonard the past few days. I’ve been wondering about how his teammates are holding up. I’ve been awed by the footage of his coach talk about what happened… somewhat stunned by how he had to answer questions that there was no way he could answer…. thinking that if it was me who had lost a player, I would have been more of a wreck than he.

The team, after asking Wes’ parents for permission, decided to play their state playoff game tonight. I thought about them several times today… how could they prepare for emotion of this game? How do you, as the coach, honor the fact that they were clearly playing this game to honor their fallen teammate while also trying to temper the emotion of that. I kept thinking about how I would try tell them that, win or lose, the decision to play at all was to honor Wes…. to try to let them know that they didn’t have to win the game… that playing at all was the point.

I thought about how much those boys mean to each other. The bonds that are created on a high school sports team are incredible. So many coaches – myself included – have preached the "twelve players, one goal" mantra at practices and games… and while it may sound cliched or trite, it isn’t. The love you feel on a team is hard to explain. I still remember a time-out late in a playoff game where I just looked at my girls and said, "There is nowhere in the world I’d rather be than right here, right now, with you all. Let’s win this game." Even seeing the words on the screen make them seem silly now, but they weren’t. I just loved coaching those girls more than I could ever express. It was clear from the interviews that the Fennville coach felt the same way about his boys.

The boys won tonight, 65-54, after announcing only four players in the starting line-up to honor Wes. The photo that goes with the article shows the emotion that they felt after the game. I want them to win States. Odds are against them, but I want them to. But even if they do, at some point in time, the season will end and all the adrenaline that is sustaining them through their loss will end, and Wes’ loss will be final. The hope is that the grief counselors will know to come back then to help those boys and their coach.

But for now, the boys won their game. They have another one. They will take the court to honor their teammate and try to achieve that common goal.

They have more fans than they could possibly know.