The yellow school bus, No. 40, departed from the rear of Reading’s Geigle Complex at 9:35 Wednesday night, destination Landisville. It carried members of the Hempfield boys’ basketball team, their season having ended a little while earlier in an alley fight of a PIAA 6A second-round game against Spring-Ford.

One question: Is a team still a team at that point? Or has it already transitioned to something else, something different?

Better question: Will it ever not be a team?

One look at Michael Hester, one of the Knights’ four senior starters, was evidence enough of the latter. He had spent the 43-39 loss defending the Rams’ top scorer, a polished 6-4 sophomore named Jacob Nguyen. Nguyen, who came in averaging over 15 points a game, is as good with the ball as he is without it, as good off the dribble as he is when sniping from deep. And he operates within a disciplined, well-organized system orchestrated by coach Joe Dempsey, who in his younger years played at Elizabethtown College.

Yet Hester blocked Nguyen’s layup attempt in the first quarter, then his 3-point try early in the second. By halftime Nguyen had exactly two points. By night’s end he had 11, his total inflated by four free throws in the last two minutes.

But Spring-Ford’s defense had been even stingier, and Hempfield contributed to its own demise by missing some chippies early and some foul shots late.

So now it was over, and Hester, wearing the same black sweatsuit donned by his teammates, was trying to come to grips with that as he leaned against a wall in a hallway outside the Geigle’s gym. He had been playing alongside his fellow seniors since elementary school. They formed the core of a team that went 25-4 this season and won the Lancaster-Lebanon League championship, after losing in the league final the two previous years.

“They’re my best friends,” he said.

His eyes were red. His voice caught.

“I’m not gonna come to practice and see them,” he continued. “I’m not gonna be able to play with them anymore.” 

He plans to attend Penn State in the fall. Maybe he’ll play intramural ball or something. Nothing more, though. Nothing like high school.

“You can’t compare it to the brotherhood and connections you make,” he said.

After the final buzzer sounded, Hester’s classmate, guard Miguel Pena, sat on the bench with his head bowed and his jersey pulled over his face. Others attempted to console him, but eventually they melted away. He remained.

Finally he rose and trudged out the door, around the corner and down the hallway to the locker room. Finally he could begin sorting things out.

He is the team’s leading scorer, and likely will play somewhere next year, perhaps a Pennsylvania Conference school. But this season left him, he said, with “the memories of a lifetime.”

“I wouldn’t want to yell, cry, (experience) joy or sorrow with anyone else,” he said, “but these guys.”

Two days earlier, Knights coach Danny Walck mentioned something a coaching buddy had said – “how exciting March is, but how cruel it can be.”

“I don’t know if the thrill of victory lasts as long as the agony of defeat,” Walck said. “You can’t get rid of it.”

Walck turns 66 next month. This season was his 13th at Hempfield, his 30th as a head coach and his 35th in the profession. He is as invested in the game as ever, indeed as invested as any coach can be – witness his long-time associations with the 5-Star and Duke summer camps – but he leavens that all-in approach with a humanity that makes him one of the league’s most respected guys.

“He’s just so involved in wanting to make you a better person,” said Lancaster Catholic coach Joe Klazas, who in ‘91-92 played on Walck’s first team at Catholic High. “He finds ways to have an understanding of you as a person, not just a player. He has a great way of talking to kids and letting them know he’s got their back.”

Former Elizabethtown coach Rocky Parise recalled that after his first season on the job he ran into Walck at the senior all-star game. Parise had had a tough year, winning just five games, and was in need of a pick-me-up. Walck gave him one.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” he told Parise.

“It gave me chills,” Parise said the other day.

Small wonder that Walck always seems to get buy-in from his players.

“He does such a nice job of maintaining order with any team he coaches,” Manheim Central coach Charlie Fisher said. “They always run their stuff and his guys play his system, and trust everything they do.”

Fisher’s team faced the Knights in this year’s league final, and except for a 90-second stretch, he thought the Barons played “perfect basketball.” But that proved to be enough of an opening for Hempfield.

“I said to my wife, ‘If I have to lose a league championship game, I’ll take it against Danny Walck,’ ” Fisher said. “The longer I get into the league, there are not as many guys who when I was younger I looked up to. He’s one of those guys.”

The day before the Spring-Ford game, Walck oversaw a practice that did not include Pena, who had left school that morning with an illness. In the gym and later in a classroom, Walck and his three assistants emphasized how disciplined the Rams are – how they run a lot of sets, set a lot of screens and slip a lot of screens.

“A key’s gonna be our awareness,” Walck told the players as he stood before them in the classroom. “Communication will be the glue.”

By that point assistant coach Matt Wagaman had already reviewed video of the Rams’ tendencies, and all the players, seated at student desks, had filled out worksheets listing Spring-Ford’s key players and outlining its favored sets.

“We have to be who we are,” Walck said. “Our defense will win the game – defense and rebounding.”

There was little left to say.

“Let’s go win,” Walck told his players as they adjourned.

But the game was an uphill struggle. The Knights were down 16-14 at the half, and then saw Pena go to the bench after drawing his fourth foul on a loose-ball scramble with 5:54 left in the third quarter.

The Rams, in no small part because of two layup-producing baseline inbounds plays, surged to a 31-23 lead late in that period. But Hempfield dug in on defense and forced a couple turnovers. Nick Deeg sank a free throw. Hester hit a 3. Kamyn Lawrence converted a stick-back.

And when Lawrence buried two free throws with 7:13 left in the game, the score was suddenly tied at 31-all. Pena returned just over a minute later, having sat out nearly a quarter, and with 5:38 remaining went to the line for a potential go-ahead 1-and-1.

He came up empty, but again Lawrence snagged the offensive board. He was fouled, but missed twice at the line. And when the Rams’ E.J. Campbell nailed a triple at the other end, the game began slipping away from Hempfield for good.

“We thought it would be a battle like this,” Walck said.

He praised his team’s resilience, while adding that he was quite certain there were some possessions they would wish they had back. And later – much later – somebody asked him what his players might recall when they gather a decade from now.

Walck mentioned their passion. He also mentioned their goofiness.

“They had a lot of fun,” he said. “When you have a season like this, you have a lot of memories.”

But that’s for later. For now, there’s just the finality of it all.

“It’s just a tough loss,” Pena said. “I love my guys.”

That was something to take with them as the bus trundled into the night, the true destination of its occupants unknown.