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Lowndes Academy varsity boy’s basketball team earned Alabama Independent School Association Class (AISA) A Runner-up at a championship game with a 68-36 loss on Feb. 10.

Heritage Christian Academy overcame the Rebels, 68-36, on Feb. 10 at championship game played at Cramton Bowl.

Lowndes Academy head coach Barry Mohun said his guys worked hard to try and bring home the championship, switching up their fast pace style and instead worked to slow down Heritage.

Despite the change of pace, the Rebels were unable to ground the Eagles who flew to 26-7 in the first quarter.

Heritage Academy coach Chris Stoutermire coached his team to a third consecutive title, but had nothing but praise for Lowndes Academy players.

“I want to congratulate their school,” Stoutermire said. “ When I looked up and saw boys and girls representing AISA in the Class A finals, that’s a big accomplishment. They’re well coached; they got back and played good help defense. They were unselfish. So my biggest thing was, I wanted to make sure our guys played to our standard and respected the team across from us. You don’t want to have regrets when the game is over.”

Lowndes Academy players knew they were fighting an uphill battle before the game play started.

“We knew it was going to be a challenge when we came in here,” Clayton Hussey, Lowndes Academy junior said. “It wasn’t going to be given to us. When we came in here our goal was to try and slow the game down and I think we did a pretty good job of that.”

Senior Luke Lovell took the loss in stride.

“They are a good team and very disciplined,” Hussey said. “They play really good together. It just wasn’t our day I guess.”

Despite the loss of the championship, Mohun said the Lowndes Academy boys played hard and gave it their all.

“It was a good challenge,” Mohun said.”I am proud of our guys. They played real hard and got after it.”

The road to the championship started with a handful of guys at the beginning of the season, but Mohun said he didn’t give up and knew after a break from football, they boys would be ready.

“When we started practice we had eight guys (for basketball) coming off a football championship,” Mohun said. “We finally got some more guys to come on out. You know football season is so long, I don’t blame them saying ‘I need a break.’ We took time and got better and better. We practiced long over the Christmas holiday and I think we really started playing good in January. We ended up winning our area.

“Coaching guys like this makes my job. “ It’s really why I am here. I really enjoy it. So many times throughout the year I told them to just play hard. It brings joy to me to try to get the maximum out of their abilities. I told them they can take that, not only in basketball, but do the same thing in life to be really successful.”