Every other week during the season, South Shore’s VCU-bound senior Jenice Winter, one of the city’s top girls basketball players, takes us into her life and times. In this exclusive diary for NYPost.com, Winter chronicles South Shore’s quest to win its first PSAL Class AA city title after making the Garden two of the last three years.
When that buzzer went off at the end of the game on Friday (a loss to John F. Kennedy), I was flabbergasted.
During Coach’s (Anwar Gladden) after-the-game speech, I felt that feeling that I have felt every time at the end of the season. All he could say was that he warned us. He warned us that everyone wants beat to us, and that if we don’t come to play every day, we can be beaten any day. He just kept saying it over and over again. Every time he said that I kept getting angrier. It made me upset because he was right, and we hate it when he is right.
But after he left, the room was extremely quiet. No one said a word. I couldn’t even look my teammates in their face. Normally I would say a few words while we get dressed, but at that moment I couldn’t even say anything to the team because I was upset.
Rah (Radasha Pope) broke the silence. She said, “Everybody stop what you doing and listen.” Everyone stopped and looked. She continued, “Now we’re wounded, but it doesn’t matter. We’re going to man up and bounce back from this, best believe it.” Then she looked at me and said, “right Niece?!” I said “Yeah, we are!” Then I looked at Box and Cooley (Fannisha Price and Aliyah Cooley) and both replied, “right!”
We had the weekend off. All weekend I was still feeling it. I slept all day both Saturday and Sunday. I felt drained going to school on Monday. I just wanted to go home, but we had practice that afternoon. In the beginning of practice the energy was down. We must have went through about two drills before Coach stopped us. He had us lineup across the baseline and screamed at us to pick it up.
As practice continued, the energy went up. After practice we felt better to know we were getting our bounce back. As a team, we just hope it continues because this week we have two games at the [Kennedy Classic].
We have to come to play this weekend because we never want to have that feeling again.
Check back with Jenice Winter every other Thursday during the season. Her next diary will run Feb. 9.