Accomplished Southeast Raleigh senior class has a championship, just not the way it imagined

By Kyle Morton, HighSchoolOT producer

Raleigh, N.C. — After years of disappointment in state championship games, the Southeast Raleigh Bulldogs are state champions. It just didn't happen the way they envisioned it would.

On April 24, Governor Roy Cooper closed North Carolina schools for the remainder of the school year. The N.C. High School Athletic Association followed suit by canceling the rest of the spring sports season and the basketball state championship games.

On April 29, the NCHSAA announced that all 16 regional champions would be recognized as co-state champions, ending Southeast Raleigh's drought without winning a game on the biggest stage.

"We would have loved to play the game," head coach Nicole Meyers said. "That was something that we were really playing for, but just to have them recognized as co-state champions, I think that's something that they deserved. They needed some closure to this season."

"It was disappointing," senior Jamia Hazell said. "But in my eyes, our team, we will always be champions... we'd been there for four years. What other high school team has done that? I think we made history. There's always an upside to things, can't just always look at the negatives."

In the three years prior to this one, the Bulldogs have lost state championship games to Northwest Guilford twice and West Forsyth. Since their last state championship in 1999, the Bulldogs have lost five state title games.

Four of this year's ten roster players were seniors. Hazell, Destini Abramson-Lee, Anya Poole and De'Ja Morgan have played their last games as Bulldogs. The former three were all members of the varsity roster for each of their four years.

"Regardless of if we got to play or not, we were champions," Poole said. "Throughout the years we've had some disappointments and we've had some losses. Coming together as a team is always a win... being sisters and building bonds is always a good thing."

All four years, they stormed through the state playoffs and made the state championship game. This year, they didn't get to play it.

The three losses have been different. A tough fourth quarter stretch, a sharpshooter they couldn't find an answer for-- the kind of things that have cost the Bulldogs in tight championship games.

Would this year's game against Vance have gone differently? It's impossible to say, but the Bulldogs were seen as the favorites heading in.

"At the time... we were watching film on Vance," Hazell said. "We were seeing their tendencies and stuff and how we could win."

"We know that they had a strong post presence," Meyers said. "We were coming up with a plan on how to contain them. That was the main thing that we know we needed to key on."

The team's senior class is as accomplished as one can be without having won a state championship game.

Making four straight 4A state championship games, winning four straight conference championships, competing and winning games in out-of-state tournaments against high-end national competition have established Southeast Raleigh as a national power and one of the most prestigious girls' basketball programs in the state.

There have been impressive statistical feats. Older teammates graduated to college programs all over the country, but the seniors say that the hard work and the lessons learned will be with what sticks with them the most.

"[Coach Meyers] taught me life outside of basketball and working hard," Hazell said. "There's a reason why we made it to the state championship four years in a row. We all worked together as a unit... we're all close, and we're sisters, and we all wanted one goal."

"What I can say about Southeast that I'm going to take away is accountability and communication," Abramson-Lee said. "She always told us, 'When you get into the real world, you can't just fold. Life is going to be hard, and you've got to push through it.'"

Meyers will have her own memories of this class.

"This has been a really fun group just to watch to develop," she said. "Through the bumps in the road, the highs and the lows, this group just really persevered... We pushed them to their limits... They really did a great job of rising to the occasion. We definitely appreciate all they have done for our program and the standard they continue to put up."

In addition to the memories Meyers and the senior class will carry on with them, the team will have championship rings made up as a physical token of the achievement.

Celebrating a state championship that was won off the court while physically apart has proven a challenge, and the team is still working on planning a proper send-off.

"We are still in the planning stages of really getting a celebration that they definitely deserve," Meyers said. "We have to be creative with that. We will definitely find a way to celebrate them, because they are worthy of it."