Suffolk Christian Academy’s boys’ middle school basketball team completed its season with a championship this year after going undefeated in the conference.

For the season, they went 16-2. Coach Nathan VanDorn felt the season went far better than expected.

“After last year, we lost a lot of players to the JV and varsity level,” VanDorn said. “I was anticipating to be a little above .500 this season. The boys blew me away. The season went way better than expected.”

SCA defeated Friends School Virginia Beach in the championship game to complete their season. Before the championship game, they had defeated the same team twice during the regular season.

In the first three quarters of the championship game were pretty even between both teams. During the fourth quarter, SCA lost four players to injury as the game got extremely physical. One of their team captains, George Rennie, went down first. At that point of the game, SCA was up four points. Friends School took advantage of SCA’s loss and gained momentum, cutting down their deficit and taking the lead over SCA.

SCA had more players go down to injury. VanDorn looked down his bench, and he saw blood, sweat and tears from various players on his team but also saw a fire in their eyes.

“It was a total team effort,” VanDorn said. “You couldn’t ask for anything more as a coach. They realized that it took a team effort. Even the players that didn’t play were a part of the fight we had as a team. The kids did it for God and for themselves.”

VanDorn said he stressed development for the whole season. Going through the season and watching his team develop was satisfying on many levels. Rennie, Logan Puryear and Cary Glover were the three team captains who put a lot of production for the Knights this year.