I was interviewed for a story about 10 prep teams that would have defeated an NCAA tournament team. The writer, Stephen Spiewak from Jersey City, interviewed me, Tom Markowski and a handful of other national writers a while back for the story that was recently published at MaxPreps.com. I told Spiewak the 1990 Detroit Southwestern team, with Voshon Leonard, Howard Eisley and Jalen Rose, would have been a beast of an 'out'. In fact, I think those Prospectors could have won a play-in game.

Then I made the mistake of mentioning that the Prospectors would have been super-human had Chris Webber, long-rumored to follow best friend Jalen Rose to Detroit Southwestern, not been enrolled at Country Day. So, in a great story about Detroit Southwestern, there's a picture of Chris Webber and a cutline of what might have been if Webber had not been a Yellowjacket but rather, part of a quartet of Division-I players at one school, coached by the all-time winningest coach in Horizon League history, Perry Watson.

My bad.

Detroit Country Day won the 2009 Class B girls' state championship Saturday. That's the 10th title triumph for head coach Frank Orlando, himself an all-state basketball player nearly 50 years ago at Detroit's now-closed St. Thomas High. Orlando has also won a state title in baseball. But is Orlando mentioned in the same circles of Kathy McGee, Lofton Greene, Diane Laffey or Bernie Holowicki?

No. Why? Because he's from Country Day. In the minds of many, it doesn't count the same. He isn't guiding the hand he's dealt, they say. He recruits, they complain. He hand picks his talent, they say, sniding. He has an unlimited budget, he should win every year, they mumble under their breath. Yet they never complain about the private school that finishes in fifth-place. It's only the champion they are quick to discredit.

They never said these things about River Rouge. All River Rouge did was win 12 Class B titles in 19 seasons as a public school with the best prep basketball coach the state has ever seen.

The Detroit Free Press ran a nice story about the 'Jackets today, but the mention of Orlando's feat was minimal. I'm OK with that because the focus was placed upon Country Day's student-athletes. There's a coach who knows about Orlando's snub. In fact, he plays his home games in the same gym that Orlando calls home. Kurt Keener has been the boys' coach at Country Day since the Tigers started 35-5. Nobody had boo to say about the Yellowjackets until a 14-year-old phenom walked through the doors with his mother. Suddenly Chris Webber changed the perception of Country Day from a rich-kid playground into every other school's worst enemy. 10 girls' titles and seven boys' titles later, Country Day is the opposite of the family business in The Godfather. You get ex-communicated if you do side with Country Day.

There's a great article in today's Detroit News about Country Day senior Faziah Steen. Upon graduation, she's going to play at Dartmouth next year. A girl who tore her right and left ACL in three years, who watched her teammates celebrate last year and was so embittered about missing it that she willed herself to come back her senior year for this opportunity. She's going to Dartmouth -- how outstanding is that?

Country Day has a number of self-imposed obstacles. It's about $25,000 a year to attend the school. How many families do you know of that have 25K sitting around for high school per year, per kid? You have to be able to pass the entrance exam and you're required to play at least one sport and participate in extracurricular activity if you don't play a second sport. If you can't afford the tuition, you have to apply for need-based aid, a decision that Country Day has no influence in. That shrinks the pool of perspective students drastically. Country Day doesn't get $80-90 million dollars to cover the operating budget, which is approximately the amount Novi's public schools require to keep the doors open, the lights on and the floors swept, among other things.

Oakland County is lucky to have a wealth of private schools and Country Day has an outstanding legacy of student-athlete achievement. What's wrong with having a very successful school among your state's quiver of arrows? Their string of titles in boys' and girls' basketball isn't any less impressive than River Rouge's incredible 19-year run just because they're a well-to-do private school. Their athletes work just as hard, put in just as much effort and dream of the same dreams any other team from any other school does.

Why should they be punished when their dream comes true?

T.C. Cameron delivered Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries to Arcadia Publishing a mere 7,000 words over limit...oops. The title, after edit, will be available in August, 2009.

(Photo courtesy The Oakland Press/Bryan Mitchell)

If you had asked most prep football fans after Week Three of the 2008 MHSAA football season where the strength of the state lied in terms of regional supremacy, more would have voted for the lower west side of the state than voted for Barack Obama two weeks ago.

Thanks to Oakland County's strong showing and a handful of schools in and around metro Detroit, any mandate from the voters 10 weeks ago carries about as much clout as a restaurant bill signed on behalf of the City of Detroit by county inmate Kwame Kilpatrick.

Three of the four schools from the Division I semifinals were metro Detroit schools, including Lake Orion, who was breathing fire instead of cold breath in a start-to-finish domination of the Dearborn Fordson Tractors at Troy Athens tonight. Livonia Stevenson has made back-to-back trips to the semifinals, a strong testament to the quality of play in the Kensington Lakes league.

Detroit Country Day, Bloomfield Hills Lahser, Southfield High, Warren DeLaSalle and Inkster's Vikings all made it to the semifinal showdowns today, with DCD, Inkster and DeLaSalle advancing to next week's chapionships at Ford Field. The possibility of having four Oakland County schools playing for championships didn't come to fruition but it's still an impressive feat that the possibility even existed. The Yellowjackets are returning for a back-to-back finals appearance and there's a chance that two Oakland County teams and four metropolitan schools could earn titles next weekend.

Obviously Lake Orion's rematch with Rockford will be the most highly-discussed game in some time because a start and finish bookend games between two East-West superpowers is also about as likely as the Lions beating Tennessee on Turkey Day. The two schools opened the season at Eastern Michigan University's Rynearson Stadium and the Rams emerged as 17-7 victors.

Now we as a community and region must support our own cause. Two mega days of prep football at Ford Field. It's time to bolster our own economy and and show the flag of the east side of the state. Our youth from four local schools located in three different counties will be ready, willing and able on the field -- will we return the favor in the stands?

Last week I umpired a Catholic League doubleheader between visiting Orchard Lake St. Mary's and Birmingham Brother Rice, played behind the Birmingham YMCA Center. Rice took a pair of victories from the Eaglets, who are rich with young talent but not yet blessed with the depth and experience that befitted Coach Bob Riker's Warriors last week. Orchard Lake St. Mary's will be ready when it counts, because they usually always are and are led by good coaches.

In researching my book, Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th of this year, I interviewed hundreds involved on a daily basis within Oakland County's high school sports infrastructure. Naturally, a few good-hearted souls took up the cause to lament the Catholic League's advantage of plucking students from public school boundaries for the betterment of wins and losses in after-school athletics.

I listened and did my job as the dutiful reporter, but a couple of points stuck out to me. First, does anyone else notice that it's never the 0-9 football team that is complained about, just the playoff qualifier from a private school like Rice or Detroit Country Day? Naturally, this is a bit hypocritical, and no public school ever complains about their fate when their team's results are average or worse. Many public districts are openly courting students in today's open-district, open-enrollment, school-of-choice fight for survival. Michigan's economic woes have created a virtual free-for-all within competing districts and private institutions.

But the other point makes me proud to be from Oakland County. Just how lucky are we to be in this county to have so many outstanding public and private schools in one square swath of land called Oakland County? Think about it -- most counties would love to have just one private school the caliber of Novi's Catholic Central, Royal Oak's Shrine High, Madison Heights Bishop Foley or Waterford's Our Lady Of The Lakes, in addition to the aforementioned private schools above. Certainly space prevents me listing all of the worthy candidates on either side.

Then you have tony districts like Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, West Bloomfield, Farmington Hills and Troy. Clarkston, Lake Orion and Oxford are all immaculately maintained with highest standards for achievement and opportunity. The same can be said in Walled Lake, Novi, Northville, Rochester, South Lyon and many other Oakland County public school districts. How many Oakland County schools have played for and won the MHSAA"s football tournament? Last season Farmington and Lake Orion staged perhaps one of the greatest baseball finals in the state's biggest division and it was just the latest example of an Oakland County school shining brightly on the state's big stage.

I could write an entire column on the academic achievements of Oakland County schools in our state and national scope. And yes, Wayne and Macomb counties would argue they have some strong entries into this debate as well.

We get caught up in winning and losing in our hyperactive, American culture -- it's in our blood, I suppose. And yes, I'm doing a bit of cheerleading, but maybe that's what we need in Michigan right now. There hasn't been a lot of good news in the past few years as it relates to the issues that matter most in our region. So it's nice to drive home from a hotly-contested game and realize that competition we stage and officiate produces the opportunity to excel against the best the county has to offer.

As a parent, that's what any parent wants for their children, to be able to offer then the opportunity to get to the highest level of competition and achievement. Oakland County certainly affords a parent or student those opportunities. This alone should make everyone worry less about balls & strikes and safes & outs.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.