On the long and winding bus ride home after a loss to Oakland Catholic in Pittsburgh, Karns City girls basketball coach Larry Deal asked his solemn team a simple question.

"You know what you just did tonight, don't you?" Deal asked.

Senior Courtnay Rattigan shrugged. She didn't quite understand the question.

"We lost," she answered, matter of factly.

Deal shook his head.

"No," he said. "You showed how good you guys can be. I think we can do this."

"This" was a state championship. "This" was something the 1999-2000 Karns City girls basketball team strove for from the start of the season, but it didn't come into focus until a heartbreaking six-point loss to Quad-A Oakland Catholic, a team that went undefeated until its loss in the state championship game three months later.

"I turned to Karissa (Kusick) and said, 'We are going to be really good this season,'" Rattigan said.

The Gremlins were. It was the last time in that golden season that they felt the sting of defeat.

A decade later, and the state championship run still fresh is fresh in the players' minds.

Building a winner

It's been 10 years since the Karns City High girls basketball team won the PIAA Class AA championship.

The road to the state title looked smooth on the surface — The Gremlins won 30 straight games after that loss to Oakland Catholic in the second game of the season, including a 53-39 triumph in the title game against defending champion Bishop Hoban — but it was anything but a cinch.

"There was a lot of work," said Rattigan, who averaged 15 points and won the Butler Eagle Girls Player of the Year Award. "We had three-hour practices every day of the week. We had fun, but there were times when we got ticked off at each other and ticked off at Coach Deal. But I knew all that hard work would pay off."

To be the best, the Gremlins figured they had to work harder than the best.

"Those practices would get intense," Kusick said. "We were all very competitive."

It didn't hurt that Karns City had a wealth of talent.

At 6-feet-3, Rattigan was a matchup nightmare against every team she faced. At 5-10, Kusick also posed matchup problems at point guard.

Senior guard Alicia Anderson also was a tall guard at 5-10 and led the team in rebounding.

Throw in pesky guards Kerry Gutherie and Ronda Vlassich, and the Gremlins had five seniors who had played together for several seasons.

"We had been together all the way through," Kusick said. "Courtnay and I played varsity as freshmen. Having a tight-knit group helped us."

If the team had a weakness, it was depth.

Only sophomore Kellie Kepple played significant minutes off the bench.

"We had such a small team," Kusick said. "We had five seniors and eight sophomores. But we had a lot of fun."

Karns City rolled through the Keystone Shortway Athletic Conference that season.

Six players led the team in scoring in at least one game and the Gremlins beat their regular-season opponents by an average score of 63-27 following the loss to Oakland Catholic.

There was little doubt this was a defensive team. The Gremlins imposed their will on their opponents.

"We never felt threatened," Kusick said. "Even when things got rough, we always stepped it up. We never felt like we were going to lose."

Playoff drama

Once the playoffs came, though, so did the pressure.

It culminated in the PIAA Western Final, where Karns City took on Southern Huntingdon, an upset winner over Girard.

"We all thought we were going to play Girard," Kepple said. "Courtnay and Karissa played with some of the girls on the Girard team and they were talking about playing each other."

But Southern Huntingdon shocked Girard and nearly did the same to Karns City.

The Gremlins, though, were clutch at the free throw line, making 30-of-31 free throws in the six-point win.

That set up a date with Bishop Hoban in the state title game.

Karns City was buzzing. Its girls basketball team was one win away from a state championship and Gremlin fever was at epidemic heights.

"I remember leaving for Hershey on the bus and we passed an elementary school," Anderson said. "All the kids were standing outside, cheering us on as we passed. It was amazing."

Once in the arena, the mood changed. There was business to take care of and Bishop Hoban appeared to be too loose and too confident.

"They had an air about them," Anderson said. "They expected to be there. They expected to walk over us."

"We knew we had our work cut out for us," Rattigan added. "When they came out of the locker room, they were a little more confident than we thought they should have been, almost cocky.

"We were just getting started."

After a slow start, partly because of the adjustment to the depth perception of playing in a large arena, the Gremlins dominated Bishop Hoban and cruised to a relatively easy victory.

As the waning moments ticked down, what Karns City had accomplished sunk in for some, not for others."It was like an outer-body experience," Anderson said. "I heard the roar of the crowd — you never hear the roar of the crowd when you are playing — and I looked around and saw all the people in purple and gold. It was surreal."No Butler County boys or girls basketball team has reached the state championship game, let alone won a title, since the 1999-2000 Gremlins."You don't really realize it at the time what that means," Kusick said. "To us, we wanted to keep playing. We were like, 'This is it.' There was no better end of a career, though."Where are they nowOnce the excitement of the state title wore off and the five seniors graduated, they scattered to the four winds.Rattigan went on to an injury-riddled career at Indiana (Pa.) University. She served as an assistant coach for the IUP women's basketball team for two years, before leaving that post to move to Texas with her husband.She recently moved back to the area and has an 11-month-old son named Max.Anderson played two years of basketball and four years of soccer at Westminster College, earning all-American honors on the soccer field.She also moved to Texas, where she taught in the Fort Worth school district and coached basketball.Anderson now is a fifth-grade teacher in the Ellwood City School District.Kusick played basketball at Baldwin-Wallace (Ohio) College and attended graduate school at Ohio State University to become a pharmacist.She is married and is currently doing her residency at the Cleveland Clinic.Gutherie played basketball at Thiel College and has a 2-month-old girl named Jordan.Vlassich has a 1-month-old girl named Katelyn.Kepple played basketball briefly at Grove City College and currently is the assistant basketball coach at Slippery Rock High School.She married Clarion-Limestone and Grove City College star athlete Jordan Johnston and they have a boy named Cole.Kepple was the lone holdover from that state title team with significant experience.Not much was expected of the 2000-2001 Karns City girls basketball team, but the Gremlins went 19-8 and reached the District 9 Class title game and the state playoffs."No one thought we would be that good, but we knew," Kepple said. "As the years went on playing my junior and senior year, that was the legacy that team left: to strive to get as far as possible."

Ten years ago, the 1999-2000 Karns City girls basketball team went 31-1 and won the PIAA Class AA championship. Here's a game-by-game look at that season.<B>Opponent Score</B>Erie McDowell 46-40Oakland Catholic 63-69Keystone 75-35Moniteau 71-41Clarion 77-16Rendbank Valley 70-25Ford City 60-28Cambridge Springs 62-18Northwestern 62-21North Clarion 58-28DuBois .C.C. 49-35A-C Valley 74-32Clarion-Limestone 80-28Keystone 58-22Seton-LaSalle 48-37Moniteau 61-41Clarion 68-13Redbank Valley 46-20North Clarion 55-22A-C Valley 68-22Union 50-36Clarion-Limestone 61-33Brockway 86-33Redbank Valley 43-20Brookville 56-23Neshannock 71-26Everett 48-34Seton-LaSalle 45-34Southern Huntingdon 53-46Bishop Hoban 53-39