Saying thanks in the perfect way is no easy task, but it is exactly what Ryan Chastain wanted to do last week.
The third-year head coach of the Fannin County Lady Rebels basketball team searched for just the right words to express his and the team’s appreciation for the “amazing showing” of support they received in the chase for the Class AA Girls State Basketball Championship.
That chase came to an end one game short of the grand prize Thursday in Macon, but even that did not stop Fannin County fans from flooding Chastain with messages.
Speaking Friday, Chastain estimated he had received as many as 300 text messages applauding the Lady Rebels’ success, commonly with the words, “we’re proud of you” and “you all represented Fannin County with pride.”
These words continued an outpouring of support shown all season and swelling with every post-season win.
People were reaching out and asking questions such as, “Can we feed the team,” and “What can we do for them,” Chastain said.
And then there was the attendance. The largest crowd ever packed the Fannin County gym to see the Lady Rebels score a last-second victory over Butler County.
And that momentum carried all the way to the Macon Centerplex where a line of blue waited to buy tickets. The crowd inside drew one player’s comment, “How did they get here?”
This outpouring of support made Macon “feel almost like a home atmosphere,” Chastain said.
“It hurt to lose a championship game,” Chastain said.
But the outpouring of support told the story, the story for which no words can ever describe Chastain’s appreciation. That story is the family that makes Lady Rebel basketball, a family that begins with eight-year-olds playing rec league ball and grows all the way to the alumni who won Fannin’s first state championship and before. This family stretches past the players to their families and the Fannin County fans that stick with the team in thick and thin.
So if there is a perfect way to say thanks, Chastain wants to say it.
“We’re done for today, but we’re just getting started. Now we gotta reboot and do it again,” he said last week. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the perfect way.