CHAMPS AGAIN! Cards win state title for second time in five seasons

By Matt Cizek | The Winchester Sun

On Saturday, March 21, for the third time in four games, the George Rogers Clark High School boys bas­ket­ball team trailed at half­time in the KHSAA Sweet 16®. This time, a state cham­pi­onship was on the line.

Yet, for what Head Coach Josh Cook con­sid­ers one of the tough­est teams he’s ever coached, the game was far from over. It took an extra four min­utes, but the Cards ensured that vic­to­ry, and cham­pi­onship glo­ry, was not to be denied.

GRC went toe-to-toe with #1 St. Xavier, and came away with a 58–50 over­time vic­to­ry to claim its sec­ond state title in the last five seasons.

With the Lady Cards hav­ing won a state title one week pri­or, it marks the first time since 1928 that a Kentucky high school has won the boys and girls cham­pi­onships in bas­ket­ball dur­ing the same year.

“(I’m) just thank­ful. I actu­al­ly tried to fig­ure out what I would say if this (were) to hap­pen again, and am just blessed,” said Head Coach Josh Cook.

“We talked about (how) our goal was to play on Saturday when we first started…and we’re the 2026 state champions!”

To begin Saturday night’s game, the Cards start­ed out with a 7–1 run. However, demon­strat­ing why they earned the state’s #1 rank­ing, St. Xavier ral­lied late with a 13–3 response to take a four-point lead at the end of the open­ing quarter.

Complicating mat­ters fur­ther for the Cards, sopho­more Ryder Akins was forced to momen­tar­i­ly sit after injur­ing his shoul­der on a play and, lat­er in the game, had his vision tem­porar­i­ly impacted.

“I couldn’t feel my arm at first,” Akins said. “We know how tough we need to be, espe­cial­ly at this stage. We’ve got tough play­ers. Ultimately, we want to win.”

Akins returned to the game, fin­ish­ing with 10 points and 5 rebounds. The Cards outscored the Tigers 14–12 in the sec­ond half, yet still trailed by two points at half­time. They also trailed at the end of the third quar­ter, 32–31, in a back-and-forth battle.

During postgame inter­view, St. Xavier Head Coach Kevin Klein not­ed that, while the scor­ing may not have been plen­ti­ful, the Cards were able to knock down shots that were improb­a­ble. “I don’t think we’ve seen a team make as many tough (two-point shots) as GRC did,” he said, offer­ing par­tic­u­lar praise to Akins and juniors JaMylyn Johnson.

“(They) just made some incred­i­ble shots where I was extreme­ly excit­ed about them shoot­ing. Our defense has car­ried us, and (the shots) kept going in.”

The Cards had tak­en their first lead since the first quar­ter late in the third. Yet, in the fourth quar­ter, they were still trail­ing in the game’s final min­utes, includ­ing a four-point deficit with three min­utes remain­ing. Nevertheless, they came back. Gay man­aged to get open near the bas­ket and fin­ished with a game-tying slam dunk with just over a minute remaining.

The Tigers had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to win on a last-sec­ond shot, but the Cards kept it from hap­pen­ing with a defen­sive stop.

Notably, St. Xavier sopho­more Josh Lindsay, who fin­ished with 11 points in the first half, was held score­less through the remain­der of the contest.

“He’s a great play­er. He has crazy athleticism…coming out (for) the (sec­ond) half, we just had to be the more phys­i­cal team,” said Johnson. In over­time, as expect­ed, the Cards were faced with the need to over­come adver­si­ty. However, they would again rise to the challenge.

“We (have) faced adver­si­ty all year,” said senior Amari Bartelson. “We said we had to get a cou­ple (of) stops to win the game. We all came togeth­er and got stops. We switched defens­es and con­fused them a lit­tle bit, and it worked in our favor.”

“I was just try­ing to stay calm,” said Gay. “I knew we didn’t have (any) pan­ic. I knew we trust­ed that we could gut it out and win the game. Being in that moment, it’s a blessing.”

In over­time, the Cards, who had been resilient all year long, showed such strength one last time. Having strug­gled from the free-throw line in the pre­vi­ous two con­tests, they knocked down 14 of 16 free-throw attempts, account­ing for all of their over­time points.

Senior Malachi Ashford, who would be named the Most Valuable Player of the KHSAA Boys Sweet 16® tour­na­ment and fin­ished with a game-high 18 points, con­nect­ed on nine of his ten over­time attempts.

“Before the game, I told myself I already got all the miss­es out of the way,” he said, some­what in jest. “I just had to go to the line and not think about it.” In addi­tion to Ashford win­ning MVP hon­ors, Bartelson and Gay were named to the All-Tournament Team.

As the game con­clud­ed, with the Cards hav­ing outscored the Tigers 14–6 in over­time, jubi­la­tion filled the air both inside and out­side Rupp Arena, as vehi­cles lined Bypass Road to wel­come the ath­letes and coach­es back to GRC Arena, where an impromp­tu assem­bly was held in their hon­or.
The vic­to­ry comes just under one month after the Cards (33−4) fell to Montgomery County in the 40^th District Championship Game, a loss they lat­er avenged in the 10^th Region cham­pi­onship game.

“(Adversity) makes you make a deci­sion (about) who you real­ly want to be, and after that game, we got tougher,” said Cook. “Honestly, I’m prob­a­bly thank­ful for that loss, although I don’t like losing.”

It exem­pli­fied a spir­it that has car­ried the Cards all season.

“Adversity made them state cham­pi­ons,” Cook added.