This is an opinion column.

Let me tell you a story. Three, in fact. Because sports is about stories and stories are about people and nowhere are those stories more personal or inspirational than at the high school level.

These stories revealed themselves during the AHSAA State Basketball Finals last week. Over six exhausting but uplifting days and nights, 56 communities from all across Alabama turned out the lights and hit the road to Birmingham to watch 42 games produce 14 champions.

The 30th anniversary of the first high school basketball championships in the country to bring girls’ and boys’ semifinals and finals in every classification to the same site at the same time reinforced the wisdom of that original bold decision. We witnessed absolute cinema, operatic drama, comedy and tragedy worthy of Shakespeare, and that was just the 6A boys’ final Saturday between Buckhorn and Mountain Brook.

Let’s start there and retrace our steps in reverse order. Let’s relive three chapters from a storybook week that reminded us why we get so wrapped up in these games people play, especially when those people may be barely old enough to drive.

Buckhorn sophomore swingman/jumpman Caleb Holt can drive and dish, fly and float, putting other teenagers in a no-win spin cycle while grown men search their memories for comps. The consensus comparison inside Legacy Arena was Gerald Wallace, the Childersburg High flier who went one-and-done at Alabama, then spent 14 years in the NBA living up to the nickname “Crash.”