The team nobody had on the list
Before the 2015 Sprite Ball Championship, the idea that Bompeh Senior High would get the better of a school like Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School sounded far-fetched. The debutants from Takoradi did it anyway, and by the end of the finals at the El-Wak Stadium in Accra they had become one of the most talked-about teams of the season.
Pundits had written them off within minutes of the draw. Bompeh arrived with no record in the competition and no big-name players, the kind of entry that usually exists to make up the numbers in a group.
A group of champions and regulars
The draw looked unkind. Bompeh were placed alongside Ketasco, the Keta Senior High School side that had won the boys' title in 2014, and two regulars of the competition, Accra High and Akosombo International.
They opened against the holders and won by the narrowest of margins, half a basketball in the words of one courtside report. Wins over Akosombo International and Accra High followed, and Bompeh finished the group with maximum points.
Ketasco recovered from that defeat well enough to reach the final, where they finished as runners-up. That says something about the strength of the side Bompeh had beaten on the first day.
How far the debutants went
Bompeh's run took them from outsiders to the last four of the two-day competition, an improbable leap for a school that had only just earned its place among the qualifiers. The tag of underdog suited them. With no expectations to carry, they played their normal game, built on teamwork more than on any single scorer, and the crowd at El-Wak warmed to them quickly.
The run ended against Mfantsipim, in one of the strongest performances of Bompeh's two days. The Cape Coast school went on to win the title, its fourth Sprite Ball crown, and Opoku Ware School finished third. Bompeh left Accra without the trophy, but with one of the best debut performances the competition had seen, and a fan base that had grown by the match.
Western Region basketball and Bompeh's place in it
For basketball in the Western Region, the name that usually carried the flag was Ghana Secondary Technical School, the Takoradi school known as GSTS, which had finished third in the 2012-13 edition. In 2015 it was Bompeh who did the talking, leaving their better-known neighbors to catch up, at least for one season.
Bompeh Senior High Technical School is a public, mixed school in the Sekondi-Takoradi area, near Takoradi Airport. It began in 1985 as an experimental junior secondary school before being converted into a senior high technical school, and it marked its 25th anniversary in 2010. Its courses span science, technical subjects, general arts, home economics, visual arts and business. Basketball had not been the first thing people associated with it, and few in the El-Wak crowd could have placed the school on a map before the first game. By the end of the weekend, plenty of them could.
Why teams like Bompeh happen
Upsets of this kind are part of the competition. In any short tournament, motivation and form swing from game to game, and very few squads put every opponent away. Ketasco did it in 2014, and so did T.I. Ahmadiyya, the Kumasi school better known as Real Amass, in the girls' division the same year.
Bompeh's January showed the other side of that. A team without history can catch a favorite before it has settled, and once the wins come the belief grows with them. If you were at El-Wak that weekend, that was the story you took home, more than the final itself.
What came after the finals
As attention moved on to the UPAC Championship and the rest of the school calendar, Bompeh's run kept coming up in conversation among supporters in Takoradi and Accra. On the girls' side, Real Amass defended their title, again beating Aggrey Memorial in the final.
The boys' crown changed hands again a year later, when St. Augustine's College beat Mfantsipim in the 2016 final. The year-by-year list of winners and the schools that pushed them is kept on the Sprite Ball page.