The Superlosers

Playing with the stubborn consistency that has made them the small talk of Tennessee, the Friendsville Academy Foxes have wrapped up another remarkable season of high school basketball. Last week the Foxes lost to Vonore, 57 to 52, thus finishing with a won-lost record of 0-26. Their losing streak--unbroken since 1967 --now stands at 119.

It has not been easy. Last year a Fox player seemed about to score a winning basket on a breakaway when he got tangled up with a referee and was called for double dribbling. This year victory seemed possible in a game scheduled against one particularly inept rival, but the referees failed to appear and the game was canceled. Once, the Foxes lost by two points after one of their players plunked the ball in the wrong basket.

Not that the Friendsville Foxes have always managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Back around World War II, when the Quaker academy was the only high school in Friendsville, its basketball team was a force to be reckoned with in Blount County. Then a public school was opened next door, and enrollment plummeted. In a town with a population of 650, the academy now has only 63 students, most of them boarders but none of them, obviously, notable for their skill at basketball.

Before games this past season, the nine-man squad held small, self-conscious debates over who would show his face on the court first. As for pep talks, they have been abandoned by Joseph Fink, an entomologist who became coach two years ago after the original choice failed to show up. "I used to try to give them a pep talk, but it made them nervous," says Fink. "One boy started shaking and dropped a cup of water all over the place."

Coach Fink is frankly puzzled by Friendsville's losing streak. He has read all the books on coaching, he explains, and has consulted with all of the coaches from neighboring schools --to no avail. As he watched his team prepare for last week's game, Fink may well have provided the answer. "They don't know what it is like to win," he said sadly. "Consequently, they don't know how to win."

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