Big Red huddles together during pre-game introductions before Friday's state championship game. - Andrew Grimm

STEUBENVILLE — There is an old saying that nothing is built overnight.

The bond that spurred a tournament run for the Big Red basketball team that captivated the hearts and minds of their school, town and ultimately, the Ohio Valley, sure was not something that happened overnight.

In fact, the journey to the memorable, historic run that came seconds away from ending in a state championship started a decade earlier.

“From second grade (for the seniors), first grade for Santino (Haney and the juniors), through the EDGE program, all the way through junior high, they played travel ball together,” Big Red head coach Mike Haney said about the group. “We were talking about missing the meals together. When the team goes out for meals, that’s a big thing. We were going out for meals together since the second grade. It’s all of that (that made this special).”

The EDGE Sports basketball program, since its inception, has grown to include more than 275 Steubenville-area kids each season. In 2018, it was recognized with a partnership with the Cleveland Cavaliers Junior Cavs program.

Haney mentioned the program multiple times throughout the tournament run this spring as the foundation that helped form the bond between the group that took the floor in Dayton.

Photos shared by Steubenville High School’s Facebook page in the lead up to Friday night’s game showed members of the team together as kids, holding trophies earned in youth tournaments going back to the elementary school and EDGE days.

Santino Haney, Cole Bowers and Tre Wiggins, after the regional final, each brought up how long the group had played together.

The closeness and desire to play for one another was a common theme in post game interviews with coach Haney all season.

Multiple opposing coaches, going back to last season, remarked how Big Red played a team game and that it was evident how long the group had been together.

The bond, perhaps, was never more evident to everyone on the outside looking in than it was in the immediate aftermath of Friday’s game in the way the group comforted and consoled one another and came together with pride to collect the state runner up trophy.

Though some of them will be back next season, with five seniors departing, the group ended its years-long run together with some more trophies — two East/Southeast District trophies, a regional championship trophy and a state runner up trophy.

“It means the world to me,” Santino Haney, a junior, said of this group reaching the Final Four together. “These are my brothers. Every day, we’re talking constantly. Being together every day, practicing together, I’m going to miss all of it. We’ve been playing together since I was in first grade. Every weekend, every tournament. We only lost like four games together in a span of seven or eight years.

“Losing this last one really stings, but we have to look at it from a different perspective and just realize how good we really did together.”

When Big Red walked into UD Arena Thursday, it was not the first time there for some of them. A group of them had been there as spectators, dreaming of and determined to come back as competitors, something a Big Red team had not done in basketball in 74 years.

They did, and they gave the state tournament two of the most exciting games of the entire week in the process.

“It is one of those things that, if you believe, you think something positive, (it can happen),” coach Haney said. “We were bringing these guys up here since they were three or four year old. After so many years, they started saying, ‘We’re getting here.’ They did it. That was their goal and they set out to do it, worked every day to do it and they did it. It’s kind of surreal, it’s one of those things that doesn’t really hit you until after the fact.”

They captivated their school, their city and, by the time they took the court Friday, it seemed they had captivated the hearts and minds of the entire OVAC. The conference, which they also won the championship in this season, a first title since 2014, as well as several local schools posted social media messages in support of them. There were messages of support from businesses and even police departments in neighboring towns.

Despite Dayton being nearly three and a half hours away, the Steubenville end of the floor was packed with people from the Ohio Valley.

At the heart of it all, though, was a bond that started a long way back, within a group of Ohio Valley kids with a dream.

The next group of Ohio Valley kids with a dream looking to make history might very well have been in UD Arena on Friday night.

For Cole Bowers, Tre Wiggins, Jermaine Moore, JoJo Rea and Che’mier Adams, they successfully leave the program as part of a group whose photos will forever hang on the walls and trophy cases along side another still revered group from 1951-52, and whose memories of what they accomplished together will be remembered for just as long.

For the next group, whether they are returning underclassmen, were on the bench, or ball boys as some of the current players once were, or kids in the stands from Big Red or another local school forming their own dream inspired by what they saw this group do, they have been shown what is possible when a group of Ohio Valley kids come together around a dream.

“Our guys who didn’t play (Friday) did a great job all season running scout team, when we were coming out, we told them, ‘Hey, note this energy and see this, we can be back here,'” coach Haney said. “For the little kids that were here, just being in this atmosphere, like these guys were little in this atmosphere and it making them want to be here, hopefully it gives them that same feeling and that same desire and drive to get back here (as players).”