Chandler Ryan wept.

It was December 15, 2015.

Now she has wept again.

It is March 5, 2016.

The Morton High School Lady Potters have made the improbable happen and they made it look implausibly easy, 58-41 over Chicago North Lawndale. It’s the Potters’ second straight state championship. Only five other schools in 39 seasons have won back-to-back titles in Morton’s class, and the Potters are the only downstate team to do it.

I will sing the Potters’ praises as soon I finish singing of Chandler Ryan because I love what she has done this season as much as I love what her team has done.

Do you remember that day in December? I made notes . . .

“5:39, Ryan down. Crying. Knee? Holding Becker’s hand. Saying something. Taken off to locker room.”

On that day in Dunlap, her high school basketball career ended.

Notes from that day’s third quarter: “5:16, Ryan on bench, crutches.”

In the season’s first eight games, Ryan, a 5-foot-6 guard with a shooter’s gift from behind the 3-point arc, had scored 21.4 points a game. Twice she had scored 26. A consensus all-stater the season before when she led the Lady Potters to their first state championship, Ryan was a captain, the team’s offensive heart, and its go-to guy when all else failed.

With her, the Potters were undefeated in eight games and worked with an unspoken commitment to a bold idea: Not only would they repeat as state champions, they would go undefeated.

Then, flying to the basket on a fast break that day, Ryan took a bad step.

“I heard the knee pop,” she said later. “I was telling Coach Becker, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”

Without Ryan, the Lady Potters could have no bold ambitions.

But on March 5, 2016 – today – the Potters played for a second straight state championship. They had re-invented themselves as a defensive machine with a grind-it-out offense and had made their way to the title game with a 32-3 record, identical to their record the year before when Ryan had lit up scoreboards and had predicted a state championship by saying, “33 and 3 — I’m all about 3’s.”

On this March day, at halftime of the state championship game, here came Chandler Ryan to the Potters’ bench.
No news there. She had become a kind of associate coach. Since surgery to repair her torn anterior cruciate ligament, she had been at every team practice, at every meeting, at every game. First time on the bench, she was so into it as to shout, “Timeout,” and save a Potter possession. She admitted to embarrassment at her unauthorized intrusion, but, it should be noted, she didn’t apologize. She’s a gamer, after all.

No news, then, in Ryan coming to the bench for the second half today at Redbird Arena with Morton leading North Lawndale, 25-13. For weeks she had been a mentor to the team’s young guards, Tenley Dowell and Josi Becker. For weeks she had talked tactics along the bench. One of the great Lady Potters players ever – the fourth-leading scorer all-time – made herself content, if not happy, with the hardest thing she had ever done. She sat and watched and cheered.

Now, in March, 81 days after Dunlap, here she came to the bench as the second half was about to begin.

I didn’t see her at first. I saw an odd thing. Morton players were looking down-court. They began to clap. Here came Ryan walking from the locker room not in her black warm-ups but in the Potters’ red-and-gray game uniform.

Next, the Morton student section saw her – saw her as if she were ready to play – and they knew what they saw. They saw Chandler Ryan in the uniform she hadn’t worn since, like, forever. They saw the number 4 on her back. They sent up a waterfall’s thunder of celebration for her.

And Ryan wept.

She touched the corner of an eye, and her face was flushed, and she smiled, and she touched the corner of the other eye, and she took a seat on the bench, everyone now knowing that, at some point, she would walk onto the Redbird Arena court, not to play – she’s months from that – but to make an appearance, to be honored by her coach and teammates, to be where she has meant so much to the Lady Potters.

Some days and nights, the Potters needed Ryan playing. Not this day. Morton allowed North Lawndale one point in the first quarter. It was 12-1 before the Potters allowed the losers a field goal. It was no contest, one team so superior in so many important ways – fundamentals, poise, basketball IQ — as to make the other seem foolish. Brandi Bisping led Morton with 19 points and 8 rebounds. (She had Final Four totals of 40 points and 16 rebounds, and don’t get me started on the Illinois coaches’ association that gave Bisping only honorable mention in its all-state voting. If the inarguable MVP of a two-time state champion is not an all-stater, it’s not an all-state team worth knowing.)

There were 29 seconds to play this day when the Morton student section sent up a chant.

“We want Chandler . . . We want Chandler . . .”

Bob Becker, who had held her hand in December, looked at Ryan.

She nodded.

Becker went to a referee to explain that he would put Ryan into the game but only so she could stand at the sideline, not to move, just to be where she belonged for one more moment. “A great kid,” Becker said later, “one of the greatest Potters”.

With 27.9 seconds left, Ryan stepped onto the court, and now the hundreds of Morton fans in Redbird Arena let her know what they thought of her.

She blinked against tears.

A second later, during a dead-ball moment, she left the game. Becker met her with an embrace and her teammates surrounded her, all reaching to touch her.

After all that – after winning back-to-back titles – after giving Chandler Ryan the thanks she had earned in three glorious seasons – I had only one question.

Can we start next basketball season now? Like tomorrow, or Monday at the latest. This is too much fun to stop.

“The future is bright for Morton basketball,” Becker said this afternoon. Seven of today’s 11 Potters, including three starters, return next season. An hour after the game, Becker stood outside Redbird Arena in the chill of a fading winter’s day. He watched those players pass around the big trophy that goes to the state champions. Yes, state champions. Again. Look at the trophy. It says so right on the thing: State Champions 2016.

That’s back-to-back state championships for the only small-town public school ever to win one Class 3A state championship, let alone two.

By the way, no one has won the big trophy three times in a row.

“Three-peat?” said a Lady Potters’ assistant coach, Megan Hasler. “It we three-peat, I’ll get a tattoo.”

Say again, please?

“A tattoo.”

What kind of tattoo?

“On my back, I’ll get a tattoo of Brandi Bisping’s face.”

Yes, let’s start next season now.