Small School has Big Season

Durham Herald-Sun Article: March 18, 2005

The small school with the stellar basketball team traveled around the state all winter, with a pastor behind the wheel and a caravan of parents and fans trailing their bus. They knocked off one big school after another and went on to win the state championship. "Hoosiers," right? Actually, it was the Fellowship Baptist Academy boys' basketball team, which recently finished its first season in the N.C. Christian Schools Association with a 30-2 record and the state 1-A title. Along the way, the Eagles won two invitational tournaments -- their own and another at Winston-Salem Woodland Christian -- and placed eighth out of 24 teams at the Hammond Baptist National Invitational Tournament in northern Indiana. "For the size of the school we have, this was an incredible season," Coach Ken Finley said. Finley is a 1981 graduate of Fellowship Baptist Academy, which closed down until reopening 10 years ago with an enrollment drawn solely from members of the! Fellowship Baptist Church. He started the boys' basketball program six years ago, when only 38 students were in the school. The enrollment increased to 101 students this year, with 29 boys among them -- all basketball players. "If you're a boy in fifth through 12th grade here, you play," said Finley, who kept 11 on varsity and played the other 18 on the junior varsity. "We don't have tryouts. We don't have cuts. We just teach." Finley, along with assistant coaches Kevin Dail and Luke Hamilton, apparently teaches it well. Fellowship Baptist dropped its independent status and joined the NCCSA this season, playing in the Coastal Region against 1-A teams from Reidsville, Roxboro and Stoneville. The Eagles went 26-0 against nearby teams and often traveled outside the area to take on bigger schools. Finley's brother and Fellowship Baptist's pastor, Rick Finley, drove the team bus as Fellowship Baptist knocked off teams from Goldsboro to Winston-Salem to Virginia Beach, Va. "When we first started, I'd call and say we're a small school just getting started, and people were kind and gave us a game," Finley said. "Even today, with the bigger schools, we have to go there if we want to play, and we'll have about 50 people who'll go with us. "You have to be in the church to be in the school, so our church is totally behind our team, because it's their team." When it came time for the state tournament, which was played in Stoneville, the Eagles survived a pair of overtime games to win their first state title. In the championship game, Fellowship Baptist had to rally from five points down in regulation and from five points down again in overtime before beating Mount Airy White Plains Christian 75-74. The Eagles got their typical balanced scoring en route to the win, with Michael Graham scoring 25 points, Nick Holloway adding 17, Jesse Frazier 12 and Brandon Smythers 10. "It was the most unique team I ever coached, because no two guys brought the same thing," Finley said. "And every guy knew what he brought, and he didn't try! to do anything more than that." Fellowship Baptist beat teams from Nebraska, Indiana and Minnesota in the national tournament in Indiana before being eliminated by a team from Kentucky. The Eagles plan to return to that tournament next year, and with several players coming back, they hope to be in the hunt again for the NCCSA's 1-A crown. And if the NCCSA ever held an open-class tournament, with the 1-A and 3-A schools all in the same mix, Finley thinks his Eagles might have a shot at winning that crown, too. "Then your "Hoosiers" movie would really come true," he said.