FREDERICTON — “Please clear the court. Clear the court,” said the stadium announcer over and over.

But down on the hardwood, no-one was listening — not the happy fans, not the media, and certainly not the eight young basketball players and their coaches from Bathurst High School, elated and buzzing with emotion after winning New Brunswick’s high school AA championships on Saturday.

The main event of the day, the AAA final, was coming soon, but no-one on the crowded court wanted to make way for them. Never have organizers at Fredericton’s Aitken Centre, the city’s biggest sports arena, ever struggled to clear players and paparazzi off the court after a high school basketball game.

But Saturday was no ordinary game.

A year ago the Bathurst High Phantoms basketball squad was virtually wiped out when seven of its players, and the wife of its coach, were killed in a wintry highway accident as the team was driving home after a tournament.

In the long aftermath of that awful tragedy, a new team was scraped together, made of mostly inexperienced 10th graders and a trio of new coaches.

Bradd Arseneau, a tall and powerful Grade 12 student — one of two Phantoms who survived the crash — was the only returning player from the previous season.

Few expected the Phantoms to succeed this year, particularly with the weight of grief that hung on their school.

Instead they surprised everyone, working their way into the Tier-2 provincial finals, and — despite the recent hospitalization of their new coach — to a resounding 82-50 win on Saturday over a brave group of boys from Campobello Island High, who faced the daunting task of playing a team almost willed toward victory by those who knew their tragic history.

“We did the impossible pretty much,” said 10th-Grade guard Alex Robichaud, who stood on the court after the game, marvelling at the lights of the TV cameras and the excited fans that circled around him on the court.

“I didn’t think we’d get this far. It means everything to have won.”

A grinning Mike Parkhill, one of the assistant coaches, declared himself “speechless” after the victory.

Said 10th-grade forward Brad States: “It’s a huge deal, obviously, coming back from that accident. But today we didn’t think about the past. We put everything from the past, in the past.”

Arseneau, the game MVP, was hoisted joyfully into the air by his teammates after winning the honour. His mother Peggy, who teaches French at Bathurst High, watched and cheered from courtside among a boisterous crowd of Bathurst students who hollered and cheered the team’s every point.

Peggy Arseneau said the school and the town continue to mourn, more than a year after the accident. Bathurst is a small city; everywhere people go they run into parents of the boys who died — many of whom attended Saturday’s game, watching quietly from the stands.

“Grief is an ongoing issue for all of us,” she said. “But we’ve kind of parked it in a place in our heart right now, because everybody’s rallying behind this team. The love and the pride in our team is just overwhelming.”

Arseneau and other Bathurst fans wore red t-shirts emblazoned with the sweater numbers of the seven players killed last year, along with the words: “Boys in Red . . . Never Forget.”

Many of those numbers were also worn on the court by the new Bathurst team.

“My son is wearing the number of a very special friend (number 7, Nathan Cleland),” said Arseneau. “Nathan was a best friend and like one of our children, and I think Nathan’s spirit was here today, with Bradd on the court.”

Among the fans sat Noah Quinn, a ninth-grader at Bathurst High whose 16-year-old brother Nikki also died in the crash.

“My brother and I were really close. I miss him,” said Noah. “But I’m so happy the team made it here today. They just got better and better as the year went on. I think there’s going to be a lot of kids trying out for the Phantoms next season.”