An unbeaten run ends with the trophy
Presbyterian Senior High School, Osu has won the 2018 Sprite Ball Championship. In the boys' final at the El Wak Stadium in Accra, the school known as Osu PRESEC beat Mfantsipim School 25-22, finishing the tournament without a defeat.
Few had picked them. Mfantsipim came in as four-time winners of the competition and the top seed of Group A, while Osu PRESEC had no Sprite Ball title to its name. Group A also held Keta Senior High School and Takoradi Technical Institute, so the Osu side had to come through a demanding pool before the knockout games. Calling the title a miracle was a stretch only in one sense: a little-known school beating the record holders once could be put down to luck, but beating them twice could not.
Beating Mfantsipim for the second time
The two schools had already met in the opening game of the tournament on 4 January. On that occasion Osu PRESEC won 45-14, a margin that made the result look like a mismatch and put the rest of the draw on notice.
The final was nothing like it. Mfantsipim dominated the early minutes and seemed to have learned from the first meeting, but they ended the first half on a poor run, and the score was tied at 12 at the break.
Mfantsipim guard Gabriel Hammond then buried two three-pointers in a row to give his side a 20-16 lead. Osu PRESEC answered at the free-throw line. Guard Prince Lumorvi kept driving to the basket, kept drawing fouls and kept converting, and point guard Joel Koboayere added his own points from the line as the Osu side closed the gap and went past.
Twenty-five points won a final. It was that kind of game.
Koboayere named MVP, Agyapong top coach
Joel Koboayere was named Most Valuable Player of the competition, a fitting award for the point guard of a team that did not lose a game all week. The school's coach, Eric Ankamah Agyapong, was named coach of the year.
In the match for third place, Pope John Senior High School and Minor Seminary beat Sacred Heart Technical Institute 21-12. Pope John had come to Accra as winners of the Eastern Region qualifiers.
The girls' final went to overtime
The girls' division produced the tighter finish. Level at 29 when regulation ran out, the final between Kumasi Girls and Accra Wesley Girls went to an extra period, and Kumasi edged it 30-29. Center Abigail Agyapomaa decided it with a free throw in the closing seconds of overtime.
Kumasi's point guard Rose Yeboah was named the girls' MVP, even though she had missed the free throw that could have finished a three-point play at the end of regulation. Zibo Brown of Kumasi Girls was named the girls' coach of the year. The supporters of St. Thomas Aquinas SHS took the award for fans of the year.
| Division | Final | MVP |
|---|---|---|
| Boys | Osu PRESEC 25-22 Mfantsipim | Joel Koboayere |
| Girls | Kumasi Girls 30-29 Accra Wesley Girls (OT) | Rose Yeboah |
Osu PRESEC, not PRESEC Legon
The name causes confusion. Presbyterian Senior High School, Osu is a public school in Accra that opened in 1956, first housed in a Basel Mission building at the foot of Kuku Hill in Osu. It is a different institution from Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School in Legon, the PRESEC that won the Sprite Ball in 2008.
For Osu PRESEC, the 2018 title was a first, and it came in a tournament of 26 schools and 312 players, playing for the trophies and GH¢10,000 in seed money toward a school court.
A third straight final defeat for Mfantsipim
The loss was Mfantsipim's third consecutive miss on the title. In January 2016 they had lost the final to St. Augustine's College, and in the next edition, played at the end of that year, Opoku Ware School beat them. Three finals, three runners-up medals.
They did not wait long to put it right. In the 2019 edition Mfantsipim beat West Africa Senior High School 35-16 to claim a fifth Sprite Ball title. Osu PRESEC's name remains on the honors list for 2018, between those two Mfantsipim eras, as the school that beat the record holders twice in one week. The full list is on the Sprite Ball page.