Cougars and their fans enjoy rousing semistate send-off
Latrina Peterson handed her son, Quimari, a plastic bowl containing a fruit salad and gave him a hug Friday.
Other parents offered last-minute embraces and many followed in their cars as two firetrucks and a police car escorted the West Side boys basketball bus through the city.
The bus was bound for Interstate 65 and Lafayette Jefferson High School where the Cougars (22-4) meet Carmel (24-2) in a Class 4A showdown at 2:45 p.m. Region time Saturday.
The winner gets a trip to the state finals April 3 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
The West Side-Carmel game is sold out and officials said no tickets will be available at the door.
For West Side, it’s the first trip to a semistate since 2005. The school’s lone state championship came in 2002 and that roster included current head coach Chris Buggs and his assistant, Sean Smith.
Buggs understood the significance of the trip for this group of Gary kids who carry the hopes of Northwest Indiana, along with Kouts (28-2), a Class A contender, which plays Southwood (17-10) in
the semistate opener at noon at Lafayette.
At stake for Kouts is a first trip to the Final Four.
“I want them to enjoy this moment,” Buggs said of his Cougars. “These are opportunities they’ll enjoy for the rest of their lives.”
Senior guard and Division 1 recruit Quimari Peterson, 17, planned to savor his fruit salad on the trip to Lafayette. He said he’s trying not to get too amped up.
“I want to enjoy every moment of it,” he said. “Hopefully, we get a win.”
To his mom’s surprise, Quimari set his sights on West Side after graduating eighth grade from Aspire Charter Academy in Gary.
“He was being recruited by Mount Carmel. They were going to come pick him up,” said she said of the private Chicago Catholic school. “But he begged to go to West Side to put them on the map.”
Mayor Jerome Prince joined the small group of supporters gathered at West Side for the send-off.
Prince said he and his wife, DeAnna, and Deputy Mayor Trent McCain and his wife, Akilia McCain, a member of Gary’s school advisory board, will attend Saturday’s game together.
“These boys are looking really great,” said Prince, who also attended the sectional championship game.
“This is exciting, especially coming after this year of COVID,” he said of the pandemic that wiped out the tournament last year for the first time in its history.
Before boarding the bus, team members walked West Side’s halls to cheers of their classmates. As they walked out the school doors, they grabbed boxes of water bottles, snacks, oranges and boxes of hand sanitizer, the ever-present reminder of the times.
Wearing a bright orange West Side T-shirt, Latrina Peterson still seemed in shock.
“I graduated from Wirt. I never thought that I’d be this excited for West Side,” she said.