The Kindreds came to Virginia in the 1770s from Northumberlandshire, England, on the country’s northeast border with Scotland. My mother’s side, the Holzaepfels, worked in Germany’s coal mines before emigrating in 1880 to Logan County, Illinois, where they again dug coal out of the earth. Maybe this has nothing to do with a girls basketball game. But in the Potterdome tonight, I kept thinking about where we come from. All of us, Americans. All of us once, foreigners.

It was Pink Night. The game – won by the Morton High School Lady Potters over Pekin, 68-50 – was an occasion for raising money for the Illinois Cancer Care Foundation. Like many in the crowd, I wore a T-shirt with the words, “Hooping for a Cure. Mama Schultz, 1961-2014.” On the wall at the visitor’s end, these signs:

OverCome
ThroUgh
CouRage
&StrEngth

They called Mary Schultz “Mama” not only because she had two daughters playing for the Lady Potters. For years every Potter was her daughter. Mrs. Schultz was one of the parents who make high school athletics worth doing. She did whatever her daughters’ teams needed done. Kept the official scorebook, arranged dinners, decorated the Potterdome for Pink Nights before her own cancer. Gone three years now, there she was tonight. We saw her on the gym’s video screen, again doing what she had done so many times before, singing the Star Spangled Banner. And it was lovely.

Such a cliché to speak of “pure Americana.” But words become clichés because time certifies the power of their truth. To see a small-town high school gymnasium alive with cheerleaders and dancers, basketball players, mothers, fathers, grandparents . . . to know they kicked in a couple thousand dollars for a raffle and a 50-50 drawing and a bake sale (with the players pointing out which cookies they’d personally decorated) . . . everyone hooping for a cure, the crowd a sea of sun-shiny pink . . . to hear Mama Schultz’s lovely voice, reminding us what the night was about . . . only in America.

For five minutes tonight, a good Pekin team competed. It came in with a 17-6 record, 7-3 in the Mid-Illini Conference. It led, 14-12 at 3:01 of the first quarter. But then, as is their habit, the Potters went on an extended run of dominance. It gave them a 27-14 lead. They had outscored Pekin, 15-0, in 3 minutes and 28 seconds.

They did it the way they always do it to lesser teams. They created relentless pressure at both ends. They contested every pass and sent help to block any Pekin movement toward the basket. Offensivfely, they were perpetual motion, creating space both inside and out. Few teams at any level can maintain their poise against a superior opponent that dares you to make even the most fundamental of basketball plays. However small that number of teams might be, it is miniscule at the girls high school level. In winning back-to-back state championships and building a 24-2 record this season – that’s 90-8 in three seasons so far – the Potters have done it with an unique blend of athleticism and pressure. They first wear you out physically, then psychologically.

One example: Pekin’s all-conference star, Sidney Diekhoff , scored 6 points of her team’s first 10 points in the game’s first four minutes, helping it to that 14-12 lead. But she didn’t score again for 17 minutes. By then Pekin trailed 49-31. Defended man-to-man by four different Potters, Diekhoff wound up with 11 points.

Let’s do play-by-play of the Potters’ game-turning 15-0 run:

Brandi Bisping, a layup. Lindsey Dullard, a free throw. Caylie Jones, a nifty reverse layup. Josi Becker, a breakaway with a steal. Dullard a 3-pointer after stuffing a shooter. Tenley Dowell a 3. Bisping another power-move layup.

Morton’s lead grew to 16 points, 41-25, before Pekin made a move that brought them within 10 at the end of three quarters, 53-43. Thoughts of closing the gap went away quickly. Morton scored the fourth quarter’s first 10 points in 4 ½ minutes.

Those points came this way: a right corner 3 by Kassidy Shurman, another Caylie Jones layup (off a bullet of a pass from Josi Becker at the top of the key), a 3 by Bisping (back at nearly full speed after the mono), and a Jacey Wharram layup off a Becker bounce pass in the paint. Morton 63-43. Game Over.

Almost incidentally, the victory assured Morton of a share of the Mid-Illini championship. It is 11-0 in league play and everyone else has at least three defeats.

Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 22. Dowell had 13, Dullard 9, Shurman 8, Caylie Jones and Josi Becker 4 each, Maddy Becker 3, Wharram and Megan Gold 2 each, and Courtney Jones 1.

Again good from outside, the Potters made 10 3’s – by five different players – and now have 186 3’s in 26 games. That’s 7.1 a game, 22 points a game from behind the arc. Their first four field goals tonight were 3’s.

I went to the Potterdome tonight for all the usual reasons, and one more. At a New York airport today, some Muslims were handcuffed and detained because the White House had ordered a ban of Americans returning to America if they were Muslims. I went to the Potterdome for a small, wonderful dose of real America.

I learned that Brandi Bisping’s ancestors, on both her father’s and mother’s sides, arrived from Germany in 1880. Kassidy Shurman’s family tree reaches into Sweden, Germany, and Lithuania. Centuries ago, Jacey Wharram’s people left a town in England named Wharram Percy.

After the game, I said to the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, “Here’s the oddest question you’ll be asked anytime soon. Where’d the Beckers originate?”

“Whoa,” he said. “Let’s ask Mom and Dad.”

The coach’s father, Robert Cantley Becker Jr., said, “The story always was that they ‘escaped the hangman’ in England. And they wound up fighting in the Revolutionary War.”

Hooray for immigrants.