Remembering another epic Cedar Crest comeback

Assuming you don’t live under a rock, you’ve already heard plenty about the Cedar Crest boys’ basketball team’s comeback win for the ages over Central York on Tuesday night at the Giant Center.
And hopefully you’ve seen colleague Chris Fidler’s superb video of Andrew Eudy’s game-winning basket at the buzzer and the ensuing raucous celebration that capped a furious comeback from a 13-point fourth-quarter deficit and propelled the Falcons into Saturday’s AAAA district championship game.
While watching and reading about the play that Cedar Crest players, coaches and fans will remember the rest of their lives, I thought back to another epic Cedar Crest rally that took place nearly a decade before Eudy, Evan Horn and the rest of the Falcons did their best impression of Christian Laettner and Grant Hill’s magical connection that lifted Duke over Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA Tournament.
It was mid-March 2004, and the Cedar Crest girls’ basketball team was nearing the end of a thrilling era of hoops that saw it accumulate numerous pieces of championship hardware. Section titles, league titles, district championships, the Falcons had captured them all (only a state title would elude them) in an era of brilliance that began in the 2000-01 season.
But on this day, it looked like Cedar Crest’s magical powers had run out.
It trailed District One state power Cheltenham and its future University of Maryland center, Laura Harper, 37-20 at halftime of an Eastern semifinal clash at Garden Spot High School.
The Falcons, led by the dynamic backcourt duo of Alyse Hoover and Aubrie Dellinger, had been in some tough situations before and escaped with wins but this one looked liked too tall an order.
I covered that game, and spent most of the halftime break thinking about how I was going to respectfully write the Falcons’ obituary. Because they were dead. Buried. Finished.
And then, incredibly, they were not, rising from the ashes and rallying for an improbable 58-53 victory that until Tuesday night stood as the most memorable come-from-behind win any Cedar Crest basketball team had ever pulled off.
Somewhere, I imagine , the members of that team (coached, ironically, by current Cedar Crest boys’ assistant Todd Scipioni) might have smiled to themselves when they learned what the new generation of Cedar Crest faithful had experienced and accomplished.
They’ve become yesterday’s news now, I suppose, but the members of that team – Hoover, Dellinger, Amy O’Byle, Leah Snyder, Ashley Moyer, Courtney Rudegeair, Trisha Trosper, et. al – will always have the spotlight in their memories.
Just as the Cedar Crest boys of 2013-14 do now. Just as they should.