Daniel Alcantara and Joey Chapman are Reading High basketball teammates and inseparable.
So when Chapman saw Alcantara on the ground writhing in pain in the third quarter Friday night at Geigle Complex, he couldn’t watch.
“I just turned around,” Chapman said. “I laid my head down. My emotions were getting to me. I couldn’t focus. I started crying. I feel just broken, to be honest. Broken. Broken. Broken.”
Alcantara, a 6-4 senior, left the court with an injury to his left hand or wrist, which dampened the mood after the top-seeded Red Knights’ 68-45 victory over No. 9 Wilson in a District 3 Class 6A quarterfinal.
Reading (23-3) advanced to the district semifinals and will play fifth-seeded Cedar Cliff, a 42-40 winner Friday over Hempfield, Tuesday night back at the Geigle. The Knights also clinched a berth in the PIAA Tournament, but they looked and sounded like they could not have cared less.
Their thoughts were on Alcantara, their second-leading scorer (16.5 points per game) and an important piece of their championship aspirations. They feared that they lost him for the rest of the district playoffs and the state tournament. They felt horribly for him.
“It was very hard to finish, but I kept playing through it,” Chapman said. “Coach P (Rick Perez) told us to push through it. Everybody was feeling the same pain I was feeling.”
With Reading comfortably ahead of the Bulldogs (15-9), Ruben Rodriguez dribbled down the court, threw a pass off the backboard to the trailing Alcantara, who dunked and fell hard under the basket with 2:06 left in the third and the Red Knights up 51-30.
The crowd became silent. Alcantara had suffered a broken back while dunking after a pass from Rodriguez last summer at a camp at East Stroudsburg. But trainers looked at his left arm and wrapped it in a towel before he walked slowly to the bench.
“It was heartbreaking,” Rodriguez said in hushed tones. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s just terrible to see this. It’s my second time seeing him get hurt. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
Perez’s eyes were rimmed with tears. He was more concerned about Alcantara’s health than about whether he would ever play again for Reading.
“I don’t care about Dan and basketball right now,” Perez said. “I just care about him and his health. That’s it. The first thing was his mentality. We have seen this on so many occasions. You see the look on guys’ faces. It has nothing to do with basketball. It’s that Dan is going through this again.”
The Red Knights dominated the first half against Wilson, their archrival, forcing 20 turnovers and building a 45-19 bulge. Rodriguez scored 14 of his 20 points in the first two quarters, and Alcantara had 11 of his 15.
It was the third time the Bulldogs played Reading this season and lost by a sizable margin.
“That’s a good team,” Wilson coach Matt Coldren said. “That’s one of the better games I’ve seen them play. They took advantage of our not wanting the ball. We were a little scared in the first half.
“That’s a crazy monster to deal with. They just keep coming at you. We’re not going to see many teams better than them.”
Foday Sillah scored 12 points for the Bulldogs, who need one win in their next two games to qualify for states. They will travel to Hempfield for a consolation game Tuesday, knowing that they fought much harder in the second half against Reading.
“We could have come in at halftime and just laid down,” Coldren said. “We won the third quarter by eight. We competed. I’m not dumb. When a team plays like they did in the first half. It’s hard to play like that in the third quarter. But there’s a positive that came out of tonight.”
The Red Knights couldn’t think about moving within one win of their fifth straight appearance in a district final. Daniel Alcantara was on their minds and nothing else.
Chapman said a few words to his best friend before he left the court.
“I told him I love him,” he said. “I love him to death no matter what the situation is. He’s my dog. He’s my brother till I die. He’s like my mama’s son.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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