AKRON, Ohio — After a decades-long championship drought, Archbishop Hoban won the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division I Boys Basketball state title on Sunday.
"It's still sinking in," says Hoban head coach T.K. Griffith.
Griffith is in his 30th year at the helm of the boys basketball program.
"You kinda think you're gonna lose because you always end up losing at the end of the season, right?" Griffith said.
Instead, he got the opposite outcome. Griffith led the Knights to a 53-47 win over Pickerington Central for the title.
"I don't coach for state championships," Griffith said while tearing up. "It was more about the culmination of a lifelong passion for something bigger than yourself. It wasn't really about the championship, per say," says Griffith.
This is just the second time in program history that the Knights have won the state championship. The last time was in 1989 and Griffith was on that team.
"That memory and that moment of winning the state championship made me wanna coach, but I never thought I could really bring one home in Division I ," Griffith said.
Thirty-four years later, Griffith is hoisting hardware again. This time, he's doing it alongside his son, Andrew, who is a senior on the team.
"When the buzzer sounded, I went straight to my dad because I knew that was the first person I wanted to go to," Andrew said.
That moment was a culmination of years in the gym together.
"Since Andrew's been about as tall as my kneecap, he's been in a gym with me. He was raised with Hoban basketball," Griffith said.
All of those hours built up to the shining moment for the team.
"All the time and all the work and all the practices I went to as a kid — everything matters. It was all set in stone," Griffith said.
Carly Mascitti is a sports anchor at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on Twitter @carlymascitti.
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