“After being on top of this league for four years, we get every team’s best effort,” said Arlington AAU coach Guy Kennedy. “Beating us is like their championship.”

With a 46-45 win over Jackson March 8, the eighth-grade Arlington AAU team completed an undefeated season, defending their No. 1 seed in the Wesco Tournament.

Though the Jackson team was stocked with names familiar to prep basketball fans — the Timberwolves are led by Jason Todd and Dan Kingma, whose older siblings star on the Jackson High team — Arlington has proven the team to beat in AAU year after year.

“We’ve beaten them the last three years, so I knew they really wanted to get us,” said coach John Boyden.

The Arlington boys focused on shutting down Todd and Kingma. Defensively, Brandon Kennedy shut down Kingma for three quarters and limited him to five points in the championship game, which was close all the way through. Arlington led by one after the first and second quarters, and by four after the third. Arlington’s leading scorer Terry Dawn hit a free throw with 1.5 secconds left to win it for the Eagles.

Dawn told his coaches, “I really didn’t want to play an overtime.”

The championship team is made up of Dan Boyden, A.J. Passalacqua, Dawn, Skylor Elgarico, Kennedy, Zach Kurtz, Jack Murrin, Adam Langshoen, Cory Haas and Jayden Jira.