It’s a term that knows no equal.

It’s something everyone at some point in their life strives for, and for right and sometimes wrong, it’s something we as a society are too often judgmental towards.

Perfection.

Saturday night in Port Clinton, a community long known to have a perpetual heart beating in rhythm with a basketball bouncing on it’s Supreme Court, perfection became had more purpose.

Basketball in many circles is considered an individual sport. We look at benchmarks of the sport as a player maybe scoring 40-plus points in a game, joining the 1,000-point club and setting school, league and sometimes state records.

But in the team concept, few accolades get treated higher than the above. League championships aren’t viewed as being all that special because, frankly, they happen every year. 

What the Redskins boys basketball team did Saturday, however, was join a peerless fraternity within those team accomplishments not enough seem to pay attention to.

20-0.

Just thinking, saying and looking at it, one can tell how distinguished and exclusive it is. Twenty up, twenty down. Thirteen different teams gave their best shot, and the Redskins beat them all.

An undefeated regular season in the 20-game format is not something these parts are used to. Sure Willard has done it five times over the past 30 years, including the most recent in 2005-06. But no Sandusky Bay Conference team had done it in that span, nor has any other area program.

The Oak Harbor Rockets did it during the 1982-83 season, but were not members of the SBC yet.

However, in this what-have-you-done-for-me-today world, many will judge the Redskins on where they finish in the state tournament. To some, if they were to lose their next game, the 20-0 will have meant nothing.

To hear that makes me distressed because no one can understand the difficulty of an unbeaten regular season and make a statement like that. With each passing game and ascension up the state poll, that zero in the loss column gets bigger and heavier.

And while coach Troy Diels said the pressure didn’t get worse because they’ve been taking teams best shots in recent years anyway, deep down even he knows their opponents and fans were getting more intense than usual at the sight of Port Clinton’s red uniforms.

Outside of Port Clinton, many were waiting for this year’s team to falter. They had done it in the past, right? Surely there would be a hiccup or two. But this is a team that did not succumb to anything that happened in the past, which requires a mental toughness that isn’t easy to find in teenage kids.

We all have our opinions, and mine is that 20-0 is one of the most demanding and underrated accomplishments in high school athletics.

To add to Saturday’s festivities, while the Redskins prepared to take on Edison, a wide-eyed sophomore was stepping on the platform at the state swimming championships in Canton.

MacKenzie Stewart was looking to reach swimming’s undeniable summit with a championship in the 200-yard individual medley. On the biggest stage, she needed to swim a perfect race.

In a little more than two minutes, Stewart had not only swam the perfect race, but left behind her in the pool decades worth of countless near-misses and disappointments for a school that hasn’t had much go it’s way when it comes to state championships — just three before Saturday.

When the basketball team got home after the win at Edison, a police and fire escort down Perry street with houses flashing their lights awaited them. Players rang the victory bell back at the high school.

For a community that, like others, recently got more devastating news on the job front, for a school still healing from an unspeakable tragedy during the holidays, what may seem like a feat that some take for granted and a gold medal in a sport considered secondary, it all added up to one thing in Port Clinton:

A perfect night.