It’s not often that a 27-year-old can say they have reached the top of their profession, but Marquette Catholic High School boys basketball head coach Donovan Garletts can.
March 29, 2014 will be a day Garletts, nor anyone in the Marquette family, will ever forget. That’s when the Blazers won the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) Class 1A boys basketball championship, pulling out a thrilling, 70-66 overtime victory over top-ranked Barr-Reeve High School at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
“I don’t remember anything,” Garletts said of the game’s final moments when the first boys basketball title in school history was made official. “I was numb. When you are coaching, there is an incredible amount of work that goes with that, and you don’t really get to experience it until you watch it on tape.
“I was engulfed by the moment and glad all the kids had smiles on their faces.”
The Blazers’ title game win was anything but easy, and at one point seemed pretty unlikely. Down by ten with five minutes remaining in regulation, Garletts said most teams would be “down and out,” but not Marquette.
“I have no idea how we were able to come back like that against a great team like Barr-Reeve,” Garletts said. “We just told the boys to stay the course and believe in the system. We turned it up a notch on defense, forced a few turnovers and pulled back into the game. Once we got to within three, we knew it could happen.”
After the game, Garletts was heard telling his team that the Blazers had “half the crowd,” but were “twice as loud.”
“We had about 750 tickets sold for the championship game and Barr-Reeve had something like 1,500,” Garletts said. “But our crowd was incredibly loud and proud to support our school and young men to victory.”
Not only had Marquette never won a state title in the 83-year history of their basketball program, 2014 marked only the second time the school won a sectional and was only the third season the team reached the 20-win plateau. Back-to-back sectional title game losses to Triton in 2012 and 2013 provided motivation for the 2014 Blazer squad to not only win the sectional, but reach basketball immortality in Michigan City.
“Anytime that happens to young men, they use it as motivation,” Garletts said of the postseason near-misses. “They didn’t want to take this opportunity for granted and lose in the sectional. It really did serve as some fuel for them.”
Garletts, who played basketball at Crown Point High School in the early 2000s, completed his fourth year as head coach at Marquette with the school’s first state title, but succeeding on the grandest stage is nothing new to him. In 2009, he was an assistant coach for Bloomington South High School, who won state that year.
“It is certainly a different feel to be able to lead your own program to a title, but I owe all my accomplishments to (Bloomington South Head Coach) J.R. Holmes, who had a huge influence on my coaching career,” Garletts said.
Garletts said he spoke briefly to Holmes after Saturday’s title win.
“We are both so busy, but it was good to be able to hear from him,” said Garletts, who decided to end his pursuit of a law degree while studying at Indiana University to go into coaching full-time.
“I made a decision to forget about the money and do something I love,” he said. “Ever since that point, I have never had to go to ‘work.’ This is too much fun to be called ‘work.’"
It certainly didn't seem like work when the Blazers’ bus returned to Michigan City on Saturday to a police escort, parade down Franklin Street and a heroes welcome as the team made it back to the Scholl Center.
“That really hasn’t even set in yet, ” Garletts said Monday. “Everyone had a chance to take a nap and talk to their loved ones on the ride home. It was incredible to see the community come out and support us. There must have been 50 cars behind us when we got to Michigan City. We were greeted with open arms and the boys really appreciated it.”
Being a private, Catholic institution, Marquette’s accomplishments are sometimes overlooked on a local level, especially if something big is also happening at Michigan City or La Porte high schools. But on Saturday, everyone in La Porte County was a Blazer fan.
“Anytime a team can go out there and accomplish something like this, it is a huge community celebration,” Garletts said. “It was nice to see droves of people wearing navy and gray and waving to us from the street.”
The 2013-14 Marquette High School Blazers will be etched not only in the history of their school, but in Michigan City lore. The last time a high school boys basketball team from Michigan City won a state title was in 1966, when the Elston High School Red Devils took home the title in what was then a single-class system. And while that Elston team will always be revered in Michigan City, it is very possible that 48 years from now, we will still be discussing the Blazers’ incredible title run in 2014.
“It feels good to be a part of history,” Garletts said.
The bulk of the credit for the 2013-14 Marquette Catholic Blazers’ season lies with the players, Garletts said.
“The boys should be the ones that are remembered,” he added. “They put in all the work and were the ones who put the ball through the hoop.
It’s the players, the staff, the team managers, everyone. I’m just the one with the title.”