[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 33 (Thursday, March 7, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1263-S1264]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 LONE PEAK HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL TEAM

 Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate and 
express my great pride and admiration for the young men of the Lone 
Peak High School basketball team.
  On Saturday, March 2, 2013, Lone Peak won the Utah State High School 
basketball championship for the fifth time in 7 years. Now that alone 
is a great accomplishment. However, in addition to winning another 
State championship, the Lone Peak Knights are ranked as the best high 
school team in the country by the Web site Max Preps.
  This team has flown somewhat under the radar to achieve their top 
ranking. Indeed, not many people expected a team from Utah to dominate 
like they have.
  But the Knights have not shied away from competition. No, they have 
traveled around the country for the past couple of years playing some 
of the best high school basketball teams in the Nation.
  For example, this season they traveled to Chicago to play in the 
Chicago Elite Classic and defeated powerhouse Proviso East by a score 
of 84 to 46. Proviso East is currently 25 to 3 and undefeated in their 
Chicago conference.
  Lone Peak then played in the City of Palms Tournament in Ft. Meyers, 
FL, winning their first three games before suffering their only defeat 
of the season at the hands of Montverde Academy, which is another 
nationally ranked high school team.
  It needs to be said that there is a difference between Lone Peak and 
teams like Montverde. Lone Peak draws its students and players from 
within its school boundaries in Highland and Alpine, UT. Montverde is a 
college prep school that recruits players from all over the country to 
come and play basketball.
  Lone Peak again travelled out of the State of Utah this season and 
defeated Wesleyan Christian Academy--another private school that 
recruits basketball players--in the feature game at the Under Armor 
Brandon Jennings Invitational in Brookfield, MA.
  The Knights' final foray outside the State of Utah was in mid-January 
when they defeated Archbishop Mitty from San Jose, CA, at the Spaulding 
Hoopball Classic in Springfield, MA. That game was televised by ESPN 
and Lone Peak won by a decisive score of 81 to 46.
  This top-ranked team has been led by the trio of Nick Emery, Eric 
Mika, and T.J. Haws. But they are more than just three players. They 
are a full team that has worked together for many years under head 
coach Quincy Lewis. Now in his 10th year as the head coach at Lone 
Peak, Coach Lewis has a proven track record of leading his players, not 
only to victories on the basketball court but also to becoming fine 
young men in the community.
  Last week, before the Knights won the State championship, he was 
named the Naismith national coach of the year. I want to congratulate 
him on this honor.
  Another thing that is different about this team is that many of these 
young men will give up 2 years of their lives and serve missions for 
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Nick Emery has already 
received his mission call and will leave for Germany shortly after high 
school graduation. Talon Shumway has been recruited to play college 
football as a receiver but will serve a mission first.
  It takes a lot of faith and dedication to put such a promising career 
on hold for 2 years. Having served such a mission myself I know that 
there is no time for basketball or football when you are in the mission 
field.
  The Lone Peak Knights have finished the season as the top high school 
basketball team in the United States, something that has never been 
done by a school from the State of Utah. It might not be done again. 
But I have to say that there are young people all over my home State 
that have been inspired by this team and will want to follow in their 
footsteps.
  Once again, Mr. President, I want to congratulate the Lone Peak 
Knights on a wonderful season. It has been quite something to follow 
this story all season long, and I know that my admiration is shared by 
many throughout my State and, indeed, throughout the country.
  As I mentioned, the three leaders on this team get most of the 
headlines, but their success has really been a team effort and they all 
deserve recognition. In addition to Emery, Haws, and Mica, the Lone 
Peak roster includes the following players: McKay Webster, Connor 
Toolson, Zach Frampton, Brooks Goeckeritz, Chandler Goeckeritz, Talon 
Shumway, Braden Miles, Dylan Hedin, Braxton Bruni, Jantzen Allphin, 
Marcus Acton, and Spencer Curtis.
  Mr. President, the New York Times published an article by Dan Frosch 
last week that highlighted the achievements of these young men. I ask 
unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 26, 2013]

                     Out West, Reaching the Summit

                            (By Dan Frosch)

       Highland, UT.--Here, among a string of quiet Mormon towns, 
     where the spires of Latter-day Saints churches glint against 
     the Wasatch Mountains, is the home of what many consider the 
     nation's best high school boys' basketball team.
       For the past two years, the Knights of Lone Peak High 
     School, a team of lanky, long-armed teenagers who look only 
     slightly more imposing than a chess club, have not just been 
     beating opponents, they have been crushing them.
       At 23-1, the Knights have been ranked as the best high 
     school team in the country for more than a month by the Web 
     site Max Preps and are working their way through the Utah 
     state playoffs, which end Saturday. While Lone Peak has lost 
     to in-state opponents just three times in the past three 
     years, its success nationally is especially surprising. The 
     Knights have won by an average of nearly 28 points this 
     season, including tournament victories over top teams from 
     Pennsylvania, Illinois and California.
       ``There was one team we played that was literally laughing 
     when we were warming up,'' the senior center Eric Mika said 
     with a chuckle. ``And we beat them by 50.''
       Unlike many top high school teams that lure talented 
     players from outside their immediate area, Lone Peak, which 
     has a student body of about 2,300, pulls players from the 
     pruned streets of Alpine and Highland--small communities 
     tucked in the foothills about 30 miles from Salt Lake City, 
     so named by Mormon settlers because the landscape reminded 
     them of the Swiss Alps and Scottish Highlands.
       The Knights--led by Mika and guards Nick Emery and T.J. 
     Haws--have ascended to the top of the national rankings as 
     relative unknowns, a feat made more remarkable by the simple 
     fact that they hail from a region not recognized for 
     basketball prowess.
       ``We know we're different whenever we walk into a gym,'' 
     said Coach Quincy Lewis, who has a 206-35 record over the 
     past decade. ``But our guys walk in there with a chip on 
     their shoulder. We know we have something to prove because, 
     honestly, the other teams don't have a great deal of respect 
     for us.''
       Then Lone Peak starts playing. Its style is a fearless, 
     careening brand of basketball, built on 3-pointers, lobs and 
     dunks, seemingly more suited for a playground than the movie 
     ``Hoosiers.''
       ``They play like inner-city teams; how blacks consider 
     black teams play,'' said Tyrone Slaughter, who coaches 
     Whitney Young High School in Chicago, which is ranked seventh 
     in the country. ``I don't know any other way to put it.
       ``So many times we see the predominantly white teams play a 
     conservative style, a precise style of basketball,'' he said. 
     ``When you see this team play, it is completely different.''
       Last season, Lone Peak beat Whitney Young in a double-
     overtime game at the Beach Ball Classic tournament in Myrtle 
     Beach, S.C., a performance that helped burnish its 
     reputation.
       Emery set the tournament's four-game scoring record with 
     119 points. Word of the Knights' lopsided victories spread 
     around Chicago. Now, Slaughter said, if a team is blown out, 
     it is said to have been Lone Peaked.
       The most apparent reason for the team's success is the 
     triumvirate of Mika, Emery and Haws, players, Lewis says, who 
     ``don't come around very often for anybody, I don't care what 
     program you're a part of.''
       The 6-foot-2 senior Emery, who averages 19 points, and the 
     6-4 junior Haws, who scores 17 a game, are continuing a 
     family tradition at Lone Peak.
       Emery's older brother, Jackson, who graduated from the 
     school in 2005, was named Utah's Mr. Basketball and was a co-
     captain at Brigham Young with Jimmer Fredette.

[[Page S1264]]

       Haws's older brother, Tyler, was also a Lone Peak standout 
     and was 10th in the country in scoring with a 20.9 points-a-
     game average at B.Y.U. entering Tuesday's games. The 6-foot-
     10 Mika, who averages 16 points, is in his first season at 
     Lone Peak after transferring from a private school, but he 
     has known Haws and Emery since they were fourth graders 
     playing on youth teams together.
       ``I feel this is really a once-in-a-life team,'' said Haws, 
     who can make 3-pointers from beyond the N.B.A. range or slash 
     through the lane with moves that have earned him YouTube 
     fame.
       Lewis has coached many of his players since grade school at 
     clinics and camps. Every summer, he takes the team to play 
     against Amateur Athletic Union squads around the country.
       Most A.A.U. teams, the equivalent of select youth soccer 
     clubs, choose marquee players from around their region. And 
     it is rare for a high school team to compete against what are 
     essentially all-star rosters.
       ``We have had very few teams that have competed at that 
     level in term of how they play together, shot selection and 
     chemistry,'' said Greg Procino, the director of events and 
     awards at the Basketball Hall of Fame, which also hosted a 
     tournament that Lone Peak excelled at in 2011 and another in 
     which the team performed well in January.
       There is, of course, something else that sets the Knights 
     apart.
       A flip through the team program finds plenty of references 
     to Mormonism, whether it is players noting that the last book 
     they read was the Book of Mormon or affirming their life 
     goals as serving a mission and marrying.
       Lone Peak players freely discuss how religion unites them. 
     When the team is on the road and needs to practice, it will 
     call up the local Mormon bishop and ask to use the small gym 
     typically attached to each Mormon church.
       ``A couple of summers ago, we were in Boston,'' Mika said. 
     ``Someone was like: `Oh, you guys are all Mormon. How many 
     moms do you have? You guys all brothers?' We just laugh.''
       Mika, Emery and Haws have committed to play at B.Y.U., 30 
     minutes away. All have also decided to go on missions. For 
     Emery, an explosive guard and the most highly recruited of 
     the three, that means leaving for Germany in May and probably 
     not playing organized basketball for two years.
       ``A lot of factors went into it,'' he said of his decision. 
     ``I've grown up in the Gospel. And I've wanted to serve a 
     mission since I was a young kid. I'll have four years when I 
     come home.''
       Lewis recalled that Bill Self pulled Emery aside after he 
     had starred at a University of Kansas basketball camp, 
     saying, ``You're good enough to play here.''
       But it is difficult to ask coaches whose careers rest on 
     immediate success to commit to a top high school prospect who 
     plans to take two years away from basketball.
       ``The way people look at this state, they say, `If we go in 
     there and recruit kids, we know they're probably L.D.S.,' '' 
     or Latter-day Saints, `` `kids, and they're going on a 
     mission and that's not how our program is set up,' '' Lewis 
     said.
       For now, however, Lone Peak is seeking a fifth state 
     championship in seven years--the title game is Saturday--and 
     a chance to brag that it ended the season as the country's 
     top-ranked team.
       At a recent road game against Bingham High School, the gym 
     roared with hundreds of fans from across the region who had 
     come to see Lone Peak for themselves.
       ``Which are the three guys we were watching again?'' a 
     woman asked her husband.
       An older man wondered aloud if all three were heading to 
     B.Y.U.
       By midway through the fourth quarter, the game long in 
     hand, Lewis pulled most of his starters, with Mika, Haws and 
     Emery accounting for 69 of the team's 98 points in a 41-point 
     victory.
       The three friends sat on the bench, laughing, leaping up 
     when their backups scored and politely chatting with curious 
     fans wandering down for a closer look.
       It may have been an away game, but this was home.

                          ____________________