Players from both teams rushed the 15-year-old boy, and wrapped him in hugs. Grown men in the stands and on the sidelines wept. Mothers cried.
Maybe, they all said later, it was the unplanned, unrehearsed nature of it all, the way sports can yield special moments that teach valuable lessons.
First you have to know of Seth. He is a freshman at Jefferson Academy in Broomfield. He joined the charter school’s third-tier basketball squad the first day the sign-up sheet went out.
Seth Senecaut also has Klippel-Feil syndrome, a spinal disorder that causes severely restricted mobility, cleft palate and abnormalities of the ribs, hands and fingers.
“Basketball is the only sport Seth loves to play, and actually is the only one doctors will give him permission to play,” his mother, Kristina, explained.
An operation and various other sickness kept him out of most games this season. Yet on Valentine’s Day doctors gave Seth the OK to suit up for the final two games, a doubleheader scheduled for that Saturday.
“I figured the coach might put him in a minute here and there,” Kristina Senecaut said. “You know, nothing too strenuous.”
The final game between Jefferson Academy and Denver Lutheran was tight through the first half, only a basket separating the two teams. Seth Senecaut sat for all of it.
By the closing minutes of the fourth quarter, Denver Lutheran was leading Jefferson Academy by at least 20 points. Neither coach today can recall the final score, which for the record was 41-18.
John Stuerke, the Denver Lutheran coach, remembers the last minute of the game like it happened five minutes ago.
He first saw Seth when the boy checked in with about a minute to play. He was driving the baseline when he fumbled and lost the ball out of bounds.
“I knew then,” Stuerke said, “that something with the kid wasn’t right. I immediately called a 30-second timeout.”
He called his team together. “OK, we’ve been shown some grace today,” he told them, “so let’s give some back.”
Seth got the ball and moved up the court, dribbling past Lutheran players on his way to the basket.
There were 10 seconds left as Seth brought the ball up the court.
A Lutheran player reached in for the ball. The whistle blew.
Seth was headed for the line. “Everybody is standing, the crowd is standing — I still can’t talk about it without choking up,” Seth’s coach, Ron Naylor, said.
“And now, I’m praying — ‘Please, God, let one of these go in.’ ”
Seth heaves the ball. A roar rips through the gym.
“He hit nothing but the bottom of the net!” Stuerke said, his words catching. “I don’t think I screamed that loud even for my own players.”
“Swish!” Naylor recalled.
“Now, I’m 51, and I jumped higher than I ever have. Everyone in the gym was just going nuts. I’m crying and thinking of how sport is such a great way to overcome a lot of things.”
Both teams mob Seth. He still has one shot left, which he misses, a fact about which no one now talks or cares.
“I was standing there crying, and I had to run out because I didn’t want to be a mom who cries at her teenage son’s games. I still get very choked up when I talk about it,” Kristina said.
Naylor has been coaching basketball and baseball for 21 years now. That one Saturday afternoon, he said, taught him so much.
“Just getting out of bed and having a daily routine is hard enough for anyone, and then you think of what it must be like for Seth. Just to be one of the guys is all he has ever wanted.”
The free throw was the only point Seth would score all year.
“The only thing I was thinking about was scoring,” he said of those last seconds. “It was so amazing, and I was just happy for myself and my teammates.”
That people have made such a big deal of the free throw “kind of puts me in the middle of being embarrassed and surprised. I understand it because I have been through a lot lately. It has been incredible.”
So is Seth Senecaut, who has endured 30 surgeries in his 15 years, going out for the team next year?
“Absolutely,” he said.
Bill Johnson’s column will normally run Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
