"The lockout year happens, and now we start the season late, late training sessions, late games, an overload of games in a shorter amount of time." Manager Timothy Allen said, as he recounted the season, which took place 9 years ago.
"I think we're going to be really good, and at the end, you are going to see us at or near the top." said a much younger Charlie Dawes, gearing up for his second full AAU season.
"And we started the season, 6-8." Manager Allen added in.
"Those first 14 games, we played a lot of playoff type teams, and we weren't ready for those teams, they were picking us apart, and really teeing off on us.
The 2014 Springfield Falcons were built around the two twins brothers of Charlie and Chandler Dawes, at the time, Charlie was the defending league MVP and was the better of the two.
Here at the Ameture Athletic Union, we sent many of reporters to go out and ask the former and current Falcons players, there opinions on situations, with happy and sad memories.
This is just episode 1 of the webseries, which you can continue to read here at the Ameture Athletic Union website. Episode 1 will cover the 2014 AAU National Championship, which Springfield would end up winning, after a rocky start.
"I remember Brooks and Charlie addressed it at one point, we're better than this, we gotta turn this around, whatever the speech was, I know they addressed it at some point." Chandler Dawes said, speaking on the 6-8 start to the regular season.
"Those are the lessons you learn in the AAU. You learn how to win and you learn how to lose. And a lot of times the reason you get to be a champion, is because you have taken some lumps. I've got to be stronger, and better, and more consistent. And at the end of the season I cannot fade. Brooks was always thinking forward, right, he was always thinking 5-10 game ahead, he was thinking like a coach, that was good for me, because I lived in the moment a lot." Charlie Dawes added in.
"That's who Brooks is, he's the ultimate competitor. He had the will of 10 players and set a tone for everyone else and everyone respected him for it, he got more out of himself than anybody else in the whole program." Longtime Head Coach William Jenkins said, speaking of Brooks Bahr.
Brooks Bahr agreed to sitdown and speak with us, Brooks spent 3 seasons with the Springfield Falcons from 2013-2015 and was considered to be one of the best passers of his generation at point guard, Brooks eventually would move on to an AAU team in East St.Louis where he played until 2022, eventually retiring from AAU basketball and moving onto Baseball for college.
"We had a meeting at Coach Jenkins house. We finally were starting to get things straight, we got to play Houston and played extremely well." Brooks Bahr said.
"We were 6 and 8, and Coach Jenkins said were making a change in the starting lineup. And I felt that I was the best guy for the shooting guard spot, and that with my experience, guys were going to listen to me." Former shooting guard Julius Thedford said.
"Somehow, we play Houston and beat a team with some studs on it." Manager Allen said.
"And it just so happens that, that game was when we finally put it together." Former player Carter Bryant said.
"We hadn't won a game in that fashion yet, where we realized that we dominated from start to finish, and the game was almost effortless for us. We got to keep that feeling and continue to play that same way." Bryant added.
"I just remember like that jump in time where it was just like 'alright, we were kind of stumbling through it and then we just kinda took it'" Chandler said.
"Fortunately, we started to play better." Brooks Bahr said, with a big smile on his face.
"Shooters made more shots, turnovers began to drop way down, our defense started to pick itself up. We started winning the rebound game. We won close games. So I think a lot of things happen during that period for us to really get it going and when we did, we were a monster, nobody wanted to see us." Bahr added.
Springfield would end up winning 31 of their next 36 games, which would take them to the end of the regular season, ready for the National Tournament, which they got an automatic bid into. They finished the season 37-13, which was the best record in the AAU.
"It was the right combination of guys, and it was just an unbeatable group." Bryant said.
"When Coach Jenkins and I sat down in the offseason and we really looked at the roster that he was making, we decided that we needed a certain edge and we needed shooting, and when you looked at Julius Thedford in terms of toughness, man..." Brooks Bahr said.
"Speaking of his toughness, he was a great example, he didn't want to lose a drill in practice, every game, he hated losing a basketball game, his physicality really set a tone." Coach Jenkins said.
"He's walking in the door with tons of experience." Bahr said.
"I always used to say that we had too many boy scouts on our team, we had to get some tougher players on the floor with us, and Julius played like that." Coach Jenkins said.
"I got there in 14, and I think it was his 2nd year, the beginning of his second year coaching, and he was very conservative. Play great defense and do that over and over again, and it made sense because we had Chandler and Charlie. So two of the great defenders in the league and we were going to be passive on offense and give those guys the space they needed inside, and we won a National Title, that first year, so it all worked." Former guard Juni Mobley said.
*National Tournament First Round - Minnesota vs Springfield *
"We played Minnesota in the first round, we won the first game, and then we lost the second game." Illinois local reporter, Seamus McCarthy said.
"I think it was a little bit of nervousness in like a what are we going here? Are we really going to do this thing in back to back seasons?" coach Jenkins said.
I felt bad about our teams approach to game 2, and if we wanna get to where we all have been talking about, we can't approach no game against no team like the way we played game 2. Brooks Bahr said back in 2014, following the game 2 loss.
"We went up to Minnesota and after that we just started rolling, and it was kinda like wow, we just started dominating." reporter Seamus McCarthy said.
National Tournament Quarterfinals - Compton vs Springfield
"All I can remember is Julius running around the locker room after we swept Compton just saying, we just shut that team down, its one of the vague things I can remember." Chandler Dawes said.
"That sweep of Compton, you were like, we finally got the team this year." Tim Frost said.
National Tournament Semi Finals - Portland vs Springfield
"After game 1, Portland had outplayed us, but we somehow found a way to win the game. After game 2 against Portland, I think that's when we all knew, after they were beating us again, and we came back and found a way to win." Carter Bryant said.
"I remember coming out of the huddle, because he was hot, and saying, I have one more in me, and then we took our first lead of the game with 12 seconds left." Chandler said.
"At that point, and I feel like the rest of our team knew that we were destined to do something great." Bryant said.
"We weren't overconfident, but the conversation was, that was the night to beat us. If you not gonna beat us that night, you are going to have a hard time. And the more and more we got into game 3, and felt the energy of lets finish these young guys off. And game 4 was just a formality, it was just that our confidence was just through the roof, it was just a surge, there was a wave behind us, and once we started clicking it was over." Brooks Bahr said.
AAU National Championship - New York vs Springfield
"I was just a windup doll at that point," Chandler Dawes said, just laughing. "They just wound me up and just set me out to do whatever needed to be done. I didn't know what to expect." Dawes added.
"The loss stung, losing game 3 against New York was frustrating, talking to Chandler, years later he was still mad that we lost that game. We won the title and he was still mad that we lost that game." Carter Bryant said.
"It wasn't a mad because of losing, we were mad because of how we lost, because we felt like we should have swept them." Juni Mobley said.
"I think that game also woke us up for the rest of the series." Bryant added.
"Brooks took our team and the celebration of our team, after we went up 3-1 and got it back to 'we haven't done nothing yet'" Coach Jenkins said.
"In the first half of game 5, I was terrible. I was throwing the ball all over the place and I didn't know where it was going. I mean coach Jenkins was looking at me with a level of frustration that I had never really seen from him. Chandler started giving me those funny looks, and Julius was just yelling at me to pick it up. We didn't want to play a game 6, we wanted this to be over. We just had to keep it close and keep it close, and if we could keep it close, we could get it to Chandler and force them to make a decision. And luckily, with 40 seconds left, I passed the ball into Chandler and slid over to the left corner, they trapped Chandler and he kicked it up to Carter shot faked and found me in the corner at about 16 feet and I made the jumpshot to give us the lead." Brooks Bahr said.
"You know you'd almost rather shoot the shot from the deep corner, the in between land the 10 footer type thing take a lot of touch, and the rest is history." Coach Jekins said, replying to Brooks Bahr's clutch jumpshot.
"It is something that I will never ever forget, the moment of my AAU playing career." Brooks Bahr said.
"You get to that final game and the buzzer goes off, and you finally realize what you have accomplished and what we had done." Charlie Dawes said. It was almost one of those lifetime fullfillment things, you never know if your gonna get there and then all of a sudden you get there, and it was just the best." Charlie added.
The 2014 Springfield Falcons were a team full of grit and passion, but trying times would slowly engulf Coach Jenkins and his squad, by the time Springfield won its next National Title, only 3 members of the 2014 squad would make it to the 2018 team.