Members of the 2001-02 Douglas High school girls' basketball regional championship team got together for a five-year reunion at the Lady Tigers' game against Elko Friday night.
It wasn't until the bulk of the roster stood together at midcourt five years after the fact that it became truly apparent how special that particular class of athletes was.
Put aside for a second that this group posted a school-record in wins in a season (26), and captured the school's first regional basketball championship since Douglas made the jump to the large-school classification.
As high school athletes, they were nearly unparalled, as their contributions in other sports led to a total of five league titles, four regional titles and one state championship during their stay at Douglas.
But it didn't stop there.
Seven players on the roster " in other words, more than half " went on to play at the next level. Four of those did so in a sport other than basketball. Five played at the Division I level.
We may never see another group with the same amount of success and talent come through the gym at Douglas, but it was nice getting a chance to take a look back Friday.
While the girls were taking a look back Friday night, the boys were busy about 45 miles to the north giving us a glimpse of what might be in store for the rest of the year.
Douglas picked up an impressive 66-54 win at No. 1 Galena Friday night.
From all accounts, this may turn out to be the statement game of the year for the Tigers.
Sure, it's a preseason game, and the Grizzlies were coming off a tough win against highly-touted Reed the night prior, but Douglas came ready to play.
Both teams will head back to the drawing board before league play begins and you can be sure Galena coach Tom Mauer will have his squad retooled and regrouped in time to make another patented run in the playoffs.
But for the time being, Douglas has become the darling of the north " So much so that one Reno publication, who didn't have the Tigers listed among the options in an internet poll asking who this year's regional champ would be, ranked them No. 1 Monday morning.
We'll see what the next few weeks hold, but this Douglas squad has all the makings of being something truly special.
We had a bit of a mishap last week in the girls' basketball rankings voted on by the Sierra Nevada Sports writers.
Our voters are based all over the region and keep a keen eye on how every team they cover is performing. This leads to a fairly accurate ranking process (coupled with the MaxPreps.com computer formular).
Every once in a while, however, we get a complete miss.
Such was the case this last week when the Reno girls' basketball team dropped to No. 2 despite garnering five of the six first-place votes cast.
This happened for two basic reasons, the first being that one voter, in placing Manogue at No. 1, forgot to include Reno on their ballot completely.
It's not that they believed Reno didn't belong in the top 10, they just simply forgot to include them.
Now normally, later in the year, such an omission wouldn't be a big deal. We tend to gain voters as the season rolls along as several tend to lay back during the early weeks and wait for league play to start before they begin voting.
The larger collective vote leads to a sort of automatic correction when it comes to accidental omissions.
Needless to say, Reed and Reno will probably battle it out for the No. 1 spot all the way up to the regional title game, but until then I felt it necessary to note that without that mistake last week, Reno would have been the No. 1 team.
That being said, Reed's blowout win over No. 3 Galena last week may be enough to keep the Raiders in the top spot for another week.
