Welcome to Manteca.
The “Championship” City.
On Thursday the Manteca High School boys basketball team did the unthinkable by rolling into Sleep Train Arena, sweeping up the CIF Division III State Basketball Championship, and bringing it back to its rightful place in the trophy cabinet at the nearly 100-year-old high school.
Thanks for coming everybody – this is ours, and we’re going to take it home now.
And they did it with a style and a form of panache that has become all their own in the quest to silence doubters who didn’t believe they were real enough.
They did it “For The City.”
It wasn’t a pretty win. Manteca came out guns blazing, and effectively used their size to stop the perimeter-shooting Ayala Bulldogs of Southern California in order to build up an impressive lead in the process.
But Ayala quickly showed why it was a 33-3 team in the third quarter when they roared back and cut the double-digit deficit down to only three points and gave Manteca the scare of the postseason.
Ultimately those big men – chiefly, Kenny Wooten – won out over the scrappy shooters, and Manteca danced their way across the court of the Sacramento Kings hoisting the second California State Championship trophy to be brought back to this city within the last school year. Sierra High claimed a state football championship in December.
The storylines here are ripe for the picking. You’ve got the head coach who attended and coached at the “school not to be named” only to make his way to Manteca High and take a team further than any other boys basketball program in San Joaquin County in the last half-century.
You’ve got the Nevada-bound senior (Wooten) who didn’t even play organized basketball until his freshman year going on to net 26 points, pull in 19 rebounds and power up for nine blocks to flirt with a triple double in the biggest game of his athletic career.
And you’ve got the team as a whole that played bridesmaid in both its own league and the Section Championship only to find a stride that couldn’t be matched against the best teams when all of the chips were truly on the table.
But don’t forget the mantra that this talented group of players adopted as they made their push towards glory – “For The City.”
The full scope and magnitude of that hit head coach Brett Lewis squarely in the face when the bus carrying the team to the Sleep Train Arena wound out of the parking lot and past the throngs that had gathered to wish the boys well in their historic quest – the first time in this entire run that he’s been overcome with emotion.
Tears began to well in the press conference too with the trophy in front of him as he recounted what was going through his head when he saw the outpouring of support from people who put aside their high school rooting differences and united behind his squad before the biggest game of their lives.
“I don’t think that anybody saw but I started crying man – I did,” Lewis said. “I had so many different emotions going through me. It was insane – I felt so loved and I felt like this team has brought a community together and brought a school together and just the number of people from other schools that have reached out to us was huge. It just showed me that the support is there and our little battle cry ‘For The City’ really was true. The city really was there for us and they had our backs – we were doing this for them and they had our backs.”
It was a poetic run with the ultimate redemption at the end of the long and winding road.
Regardless of whether Manteca has all of the brass to show at the end of this season, they have the ultimate piece of the puzzle and the one that no other school can lay claim to.
Thank you Buffaloes.
Like Wilt Chamberlain said, “everybody roots for David, but nobody roots for Goliath.” With three starters pushing the seven-foot mark, you were a team of Goliaths this season and proved that even the big guys can be worth pulling for.
And when Wooten broke away with the ball late in the fourth quarter for what would be a statement dunk on the season? That’s as close to a  Wilt Chamberlain moment as a high basketball player can hope for.
You rolled on Buffs – all the way to American Canyon and over to Sacramento and your travels brought home a piece of hardware that will stand the test of time.
Nobody can ever take that away.
Nobody.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.