This isn’t a deep tournament run, but more of a recent reference as to how a small school could pull off a giant upset. My friend is a coach in the MOCAL, a conference consisting of very small Christian schools in the Central District. It wouldn’t surprise me if this is the worst conference in Ohio. He tells me some news on the conference from time to time and I like to follow along to stay updated, but someone can correct me if this is wrong. This one stuck out because it was so unexpected. I played for a small team way back in the day, so I looked into it a little more out of curiosity since I tend to root for the underdog.
In 2019, Shekinah Christian, the smallest OHSAA team in the state, won a sectional title on the road against Centerburg, a team that recently was Division 3 and one of the largest schools in Division 4. Centerburg had just completely destroyed their opening round matchup (up 25-2 in the first quarter based on what I could find in the old box score), whereas that same opponent took Shekinah to OT earlier in the year.
My friend said he listened to the game on the radio because Shekinah was the only team in the conference to win a tournament game. He said the announcers rattled off some stat about how Shekinah was a scrappy team, but they only had like 14 boys in grades 9-12 while Centerburg had around 170. Shekinah had just 10 players on their roster and 5 of them were freshmen (as well as having no posts).
Again, not necessarily a great tournament run, but it was a big game in a small community with probably the largest small school/big school percentage disparity that I could think of in recent years.
