Not All High School Kids Are Heartless Punks

As an old person, I am required to fear and distrust teenagers, but there are allegedly a few out there who believe in sportsmanship and goodwill, even toward an opponent.

Johntell Franklin of Milwaukee Madison High School showed up late to his high school basketball game on Saturday night, but he did have a good excuse—his mother had died that day from cancer. The team thought about canceling the game, but Franklin told them to go ahead without him. Then he surprised everyone by showing up in the second quarter and asking to suit up. Unfortunately, his name was not in the scorebook so that meant a technical foul and two free throws for the other team ... and Madison ended up losing the game by two points!

Ha, not really. The team missed the free throws intentionally:

Womack gathered Madison's players around his bench, on the other end of the court, and was trying to reel in their emotions when he saw something odd out of the corner of his eye: Instead of swishing through the basket, the ball rolled slowly across the end line....

"Darius set up for a regular free throw, but he only shot it two or three feet in front of him," Rohlman said. "It bounced once or twice and just rolled past the basket."

"I did it for the guy who lost his mom," McNeal said. "It was the right thing to do."

Then the two teams went out afterward and ate pizza together. (That part is true, actually.) These kids today and their crazy sportsmanship!

Out of tragedy, sportsmanship has a shining moment [Journal Sentinel]

Send an email to Dashiell Bennett, the author of this post, at dashiell@deadspin.com.

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