Paradise HS basketball teams play for 1st time since Camp Fire against supportive rival

The Paradise High School varsity basketball teams played their season opener Monday in the first game since a wildfire decimated most of the California town.

The Camp Fire killed at least 88 people; destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes; and burned through Paradise in less than a day. Authorities said Sunday the fire is fully contained after nearly two weeks. It’s the nation’s deadliest fire in a century and the worst California has seen.

‘The one thing that stayed’

Many of the students and coaching staffs at Paradise lost their homes to the fire. The Paradise High School teams are practicing at Chico High School, an area rival, and suppliers have helped get uniforms and shoes to the team.

It was a welcome distraction and return to normalcy for them.

“Even though everything around them is falling apart I want them to know basketball is the one thing that stayed. It didn’t go away in the fire,” girls head coach Sheila Craft said in an interview with CBS Sacramento.

All of their games through Jan. 22 have been rescheduled on MaxPreps as away contests. The high school, which enrolls approximately 1,000 students, suffered damage but is still standing.

The girls team lost the opener, 56-22, and the boys team won, 80-62, over the rival school. In various interviews with local stations, the Paradise Bobcats players said they would still be competitive but this year the rivalry game held more friendship.

“I don’t think basketball’s ever going to mean the same thing to me as it did before,” Bobcats point guard Carolanne Christie told Action News Now. “I don’t think I’ll ever play to win as much as I did before but I think I’m going to play to enjoy the game and having the chance to play basketball.”

All proceeds from the game are going to the Paradise High Athletic Program, according to Action News Now. Funds could be donated at the door and are still be accepted online at the North Valley Community Foundation.

Chico players gave the girls clothes, shoes, makeup and gift cards, according to the Paradise Post, and the team raised more than $3,000.

Schools put aside rivalry for friendship

Paradise High School and Chico High School are 20 minutes away from each other, separated by Route 380. The two are heated rivals — the football teams played in the “Great American Rivalry Series” last year — and the girls basketball teams are each led by alumni.

Chico High School girls head coach Gina Snider contacted Craft to set up joint practices and use of the school’s gymnasium.

“Through that interaction a friendship with Sheila grew immediately,” Snider said in an interview with the Paradise Post. “We could see that the girls needed that social interaction and find humanity through basketball.”

Basketball isn’t the only way Chico is helping its rival in a catastrophic moment for the Paradise community. The Bobcats soccer team practiced at Chico this week as well. And earlier this month the cross-country team showed up to watch Paradise’s Gabe Price re-run the state qualifier after his family lost its home and business.

Price did qualify and trained with the Chico runners at Humboldt State University five hours away while staying with the grandparents of Chico senior Charlie Giannini.

“We’ve been racing against Gabe for all of our years and to see him not go to state, that would just be another tragedy on top of what’s going on,” Giannini said, per WBUR.

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