Schools
Nothing more fitting than a loss
Lighthouse's basketball season crashed Thursday. For seniors who have ridden four years in every sport offered, it was a time to reflect.
A loss.
That was the end of Marcus Scribner's basketball season. That was the end of his 2019-20 sports. That was the end of four years of high school athletics. It's been a blast, with ups and downs, with friendships and frustrations, with more losses than wins.
The high school senior now looks forward to college and, of course, sports at college.
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"I love sports. I love being active," Marcus says. "It was a good basketball season. It was hard because it was our first season. You're not going to do amazing in your first season. I think we did better than expected."
The Lighthouse Christian Academy needed to win Thursday for a playoff berth. The varsity boys were winning until Santa Clarita Valley International Charter School applied a full court press in the second quarter and began stealing balls. Then SCVi began coolly sinking 3-pointers, and desperation overcame LCA players, with misfired shots being the result. It ended 44-56.
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Welcome to sports at Lighthouse Christian Academy, Santa Monica's microscopic private school, pop. 45.
The problem of "pop. 45," of course, is you have a minuscule talent pool to draw players from, so you're plagued by losses.
But there's a good side to losing sports, Marcus says.
"I love athletics at LCA: football, basketball, soccer, track, whatever. There's not a lot of kids, so you can have tons of playing time," Marcus says. "Because of that, every player improves drastically every game. Everyone becomes better athletes."
First and foremost, Marcus is a football player, and he led the Saints to a bruising 2019 season. As coaches previewed their players over the summer, they predicted a strong championship run and scheduled division 1 match-ups to prepare. But after four key players unexpectedly withdrew from the school, Lighthouse struggled to compete in those high-powered face-offs.
Marcus experienced an apparent miracle in his junior year, after he suffered a gruesome kneecap dislocation that should've ended his season but didn't.
The funny thing was that Marcus played soccer. It's funny because he knew nothing about soccer and didn't want to play because football diehards scoff at the not-so-physical sport. He wound up liking and thriving as Lighthouse striker.
"At first I didn't want to" play soccer, he remembers. "But my friends said, you gotta do it with us. And so I was like, 'Ok, I'll give it a shot.' And now I love it. You can be physical in soccer. You can express speed. I'm disappointed we didn't play soccer."
But soccer got spiked for 2019-20. Instead, basketball got a shot as a team and a coach were scrambled. Marcus was raised in Salt Lake City, where basketball is big because you get in the warm gym from the snow.
"I'm happy I got to do basketball my senior year," he says. "I'm happy with the group of guys who wanted to play. We had an amazing time."
There have been seasons in which Lighthouse has done track, and Marcus hasn't missed a sport or a season.
What's next for Marcus? Perhaps Azusa Pacific University, at which he plans to "walk on" their football team.
"I'm going out on a high note. I'm happy with life, with everything," Marcus says. "The losses are frustrating. But then I look back at the relationships, the memories of good little memories in the games. But winning and losing is everything."
Maybe not, though.
Here are the previous Lighthouse Christian Academy basketball games:
