The odd postscript to Manheim Central’s loss to Exeter in Thursday’s District Three 5A boys’ basketball championship game was that the Barons’ locker room became an escape room. And head coach Charlie Fisher and his staff were having a hard time, ya know, escaping.

No sooner did Fisher address his players after the 67-53 defeat in the Giant Center than he headed for the door. Only it didn’t budge. Someone – presumably him – banged on the release handle once, twice, a third time. Still no luck. The team’s athletic trainer, having heard the commotion as she sat outside the room, yelled through the door that she would go and find help.

“Someone’s coming!” she assured those who were seemingly trapped inside.

There was, as it turned out, no need for assistance. Before too long the door popped open, and Fisher and Co. emerged. 

“There was a huge red button beside the door: ‘PUSH TO EXIT,’ ” the bemused head coach explained to reporters. “But we were afraid we were gonna push a fire alarm.”

The scene served as an appropriate metaphor for where Central’s program now stands. This year, as in several others over the last decade-plus under Fisher and his predecessor, Chris Sherwood, the Barons found themselves knocking at the door. Someday it may or may not open, but no matter; the bigger story is that the door is actually within reach. For decades on end they couldn’t locate it, indeed couldn’t even see it. Respectability was a far-off goal, seldom reached and never sustained.

Fisher recalled that after the Barons beat Cedar Crest to advance to the Lancaster-Lebanon League championship game against Hempfield, he received a text from Sean Burkhart, who played for Central in the late ‘90s and is now the Manheim Township girls’ coach.

“Never in my wildest dreams,” Burkhart wrote, “did I think I would see Manheim Central in the basketball championship game.”

After star forward Terry Parks led the Barons to a 21-3 finish in 1979-80, Central breached the .500 mark exactly three times in the next 30 seasons, going 13-9 under Kyle DeGregorio in 1995-96, 12-11 under Rob Fisher in 1999-00 and 15-10 under Sherwood in ‘07-08. There were some decent players every now and then, and some hints at competitiveness – but only hints, as one coach after another gave it a shot.

(A personal favorite was Chris Derrick, a wild-haired, wise-cracking suburban Philadelphian who went 32-77 over five seasons in the ‘80s. He always referred to his team as “the Mighty Barons” in our conversations, and once informed me that while he was quite sure he could do my job, he wasn’t sure I could do his. A colleague cracked that I should have responded by saying that I too could go 6-15 every year.)

We all know the deal: Football is king in Manheim, and wrestling is huge, too. Even baseball is a thing. Basketball? Meh.

Sherwood harbored no illusions when he first came to town in 2006, after serving as an assistant to Mike Gaffey in Palmyra and Annville-Cleona for nine years.

“I wanted to get in, get head-coaching experience and get out,” he said. “I knew what the track record was.”

And the thing is, he did get out after two seasons, going to Penn State-Harrisburg for two years. Then he returned in 2010, and thought things had started to change in Manheim.

“There was more interest, and higher numbers,” he said.

He would lead the Barons to six winning seasons in the next seven years, including a 24-5 finish in ‘13-14, when they fell to Susquehanna Township in their only other district-finals appearance, a 25-5 finish the following year and a 21-8 finish in ‘16-17.

Then he gave way to Charlie Fisher, who had been his assistant before spending two years in Ephrata as the head coach. And the Barons, who carry a 22-6 record into next week’s state playoffs, are amid their third straight winning season.

Certainly there has been a run of talented kids. Sherwood had guys like Taylor Funk and Matt Walsh, and believes it is particularly notable that they moved into the district from elsewhere. Fisher currently has an outstanding guard in senior Trey Grube.

And certainly success breeds success. When Sherwood first came to town, he said, 40 kids showed up for his summer camp. Fisher said he had 110 last summer.

“Once the interest is there, it’s not going to guarantee you a great year every year,” he said, “but you’re always going to have something to work with.”

He has more than that this year. Grube, who is bound for Lancaster Bible College (and who, not surprisingly, draws crosses on the tape he wears around each wrist), is as unflappable as he is explosive. Exeter rotated three defenders against him Thursday. They denied him. They bodied him. They knocked him around. He still scored 19, and never seemed discouraged.

Junior forward Aaron Enterline, an all-state football player in the fall, had a chase-down block and a chase-down steal in the early going against the Eagles, and a breakaway dunk later, en route to a 14-point, five-rebound performance. And the rest of the guys played hard and played together.

They were nonetheless outmanned by Exeter. Anthony Caccese, a bearded, head-banded 6-7 wide body bound for Delaware on a football scholarship, was a particular headache. He notched 16 points in the first half, 22 overall. Fisher, as is his wont, tried a bevy of defenses in an attempt to slow the Eagles down, but they dissected all of them, testimony to the preparation of coach Matt Ashcroft and his staff.

Still, it was clear from the Barons’ blank stares during the medal ceremony that they expected to win; there was no evidence of a happy-to-be-here vibe. Fisher would later remind them that their silver medals, which many of the players removed from around their necks soon after the ceremony, were not insignificant, that they “celebrate the body of work.”

“A gold medal,” he added, “means you won the last game.”

It appears they will continue to knock at that door in the years ahead, and one day it may yet open. Either way, they continue to find themselves in a new place, a place the program had never been before. Either way, they have extricated themselves from the escape room Central had occupied for years on end. Who could have ever envisioned that?