Pebblebrook is Cobb County’s magnet school for the performing arts. Its sports history includes one state title, won by the girls’ cross country team in 1977.
It’s fair to say the school and South Cobb area has waited for this moment – the Class AAAAAA boys basketball state final against Wheeler – for some time. The game will be Saturday night at Georgia Tech.
‘’It’s going to be historic, not just for the school, but for the Mableton Austell community,’’ said Pebblebrook coach George Washington. “No school in this area has won a championship. The community has rallied behind the team. The Pebblebrook alumni base is huge. I’ve had phone calls from people from Colorado, New York, Alaska, California. My email is full.’’
Many of those calls and emails have come from Pebblebrook graduates who were part of the Cobb County Center for Excellence in the Performing Arts. Washington says that the program has inspired him, that he’s used many of their rules and traditions.
Washington has his players sign contracts that spell out the standards for behavior and academics. The coaches get reports from teachers on how the players are doing in class. All eight of Pebblebrook’s seniors are going to college on athletic or academic scholarships.
‘’Since the early 1980s, we’ve known for dancing and singing and acting, and those kids can truly sing and dance,’’ Washington said. “It’s good now to say, hey, we’re playing good basketball too.’’
It’s been quite a turnaround since Washington arrived in the 2011-12 season. He had been an assistant coach for McEachern’s girls teams under Phyllis Arthur. Washington had been head coach of some middle school and club teams but never varsity basketball.
His first team was coming off a 1-22 finish, but Pebblebrook’s eighth-grade team had won a county championship. Washington started four freshmen the next year and went 4-21.
It slowly got better. The next season, Pebblebrook was 13-14. In 2014, the Falcons were 24-6 and lost to Wheeler in the state semifinals.
This season, Pebblebrook is 27-5, with four losses to nationally prominent out-of-state opponents. That includes Montverde Academy, the consensus No. 1 team in the country. Montverde won 69-61.
“We took a lot of butt-whoopings, but now they’ve grown up,’’ Washington said. “We told them back then that if they stick to the process, it will happen very easily. Everything we’ve told them has come true. That’s been the amazing thing, not just to see them grow up on the basketball court, but they’re becoming men.’’
Pebblebrook’s rise to power has been accomplished primarily with players who started at the school as freshmen. The team’s best player, Clemson-signee Ty Hudson, came as a sophomore from Mount Vernon Presbyterian. The biggest stroke of luck came last season, when Derek Ogbeide showed up from Canada. A 6-foot-9 senior, Ogbeide has signed with Georgia.
Trhae Mitchell and Kevin Murph are four-year starters. Chris Nelson, another of the freshmen starters from the 4-21 season, remains a key player. Junior guard Jared Harper is the team’s leading scorer. The team is close-knit. Washington begins practices each year at midnight on the first day supervised workouts are allowed. They stay at the school through the weekend. This season, they were on the court well past 3 a.m. before calling it a night.
Harper is the only player among the top nine in minutes played who is not a senior. So there also is a sense of now-or-never on Saturday, when Pebblebrook plays for the title at Georgia Tech. Three chartered busloads of fans will be coming from Pebblebrook to watch it.
‘’We’ve been working since March 2nd of 2014,’’ Washington said. “When we lost to Wheeler [last year], Ty Hudson had all the guys with him working that Sunday. We’ve not stopped working since that day.’’
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