Home sweet home: Gar-Field hoopster wins dunk competition

For the first time since 2006, a player from Potomac didn’t win the Hoops Fest dunk competition.

The honor of Hoops Fest XV dunk champion went to the Jeremiah Johnson Saturday afternoon at Gar-Field High School in front of his home crowd.

Lynn Johnson, whose family was the recipient of the event’s proceeds, said she had a terrific time watching all the athletes show off their abilities.

“It’s wonderful. I’m really having a good time,” said Johnson, who teared-up while thanking the crowd prior to the first round of dunks. “I’m glad to have a house now in this area. Dale City Ele-mentary has been wonderful. Now I can make sure my kids can go to school here.”

Money raised from Hoops Fest XV, which was sponsored by the News & Messenger, is going to help the Johnson family out of their financial situation. Lynn and her husband Willie have 10 chil-dren and in October they started having trouble paying their mortgage. An estimated $2,000 was raised from this year’s event.

“Honestly, in today’s world, it is still nice to see people care,” Lynn Johnson said. “That’s the bottom line.”

For the winning slam, Jeremiah Johnson caught an alley-oop pass from former teammate An-thony Edwards who lobbed the ball from the sideline near half court, igniting those in attendance.

It impressed the judges enough, too, a panel comprised of former Gar-Field principal Roger Dallek, Potomac Nationals’ mascot Uncle Slam and University of Maryland star Eric Hayes, a Po-tomac grad.

It’s the first time a Gar-Field boys contestant won a Hoops Fest event and Johnson gripped the trophy in a way that would have made it impossible to pry out of his hands.

“For a second, I wasn’t sure I’d make it [to the finals],” Johnson said with a grin. “We just came up with that dunk today. The other day we were trying to figure out what kind of dunks to do and we couldn’t think of anything good.

“When we got here today,” he continued, “they were just coming to us. It was like magic.”

As exciting as Johnson’s performance was for the audience, Quantico senior Kris Spicer had nearly everyone on his side by the end of the boys’ 3-point contest.

Spicer, the first Warriors’ player to ever participate in any Hoops Fest competition, made a total of 43 points, including 17 in a title round tie-breaker against Osbourn Park’s Jack Adamson.

“That was tough on the legs,” he said of the extra round. “But it was a lot of fun. [Adamson] was a great competitor. I’m just happy to have the opportunity to come here and compete with some of the best players in the area.”

Standing 5-foot-6 — “and a half,” he added — Spicer was easily the shortest boys’ competitor, and some in the crowd weren’t sure he’d compare to the rest of the field, especially when he started cold in the first round.

“I didn’t feel very good. I haven’t played in a week,” said Spicer, who averaged 2.3 3-pointers a game, fourth-best in the area this year.

By the time he got to the middle rack, Spicer found his rhythm and finished with 15 points and virtually won the crowd over.

“That’s when I started catching on,” he said. “I got in the flow a little bit, started following my shot.”

Forest Park’s Chanel Shands defended her 3-point title, becoming the first player to do so since Whitney French — another Bruin — who did so in 2002.

“It wasn’t as bad as last year,” Shands said. “Last year I was nervous. This year, I wasn’t shak-ing as much. I probably shot less this year than last year.”

Shands scored 15 points in the first round and edged Battlefield’s Taylor Cordle 13-10 in the championship.

In the 2-ball, Woodbridge’s Deonté Hallums and Briana Nottingham used a layup strategy to score 42 points in the final, following up a 46-point performance in the opening round.

“We wanted to maximize our time so we could shoot layups more,” Nottingham said. “Everyone else was shooting, and we saw Battlefield [use this strategy] so we said we would, too.”

“We knew we could capitalize off that,” Hallums added. “We came up with that today. We were definitely comfortable.”