ALBANY – Apache Paschall left his team’s celebration, wandered slowly over to the end of the bench and sat down. All alone, while the Lady Kingsmen hugged and clapped and cheered, the Nazareth coach bowed his head and cried.

When the players, who had just completed a 60-54 win over Murry Bergtraum in the New York State Federation Class AA championship game Sunday at the Times Union Center, saw Paschall, they were taken aback.

Most of them had never seen him tears in his eyes quite like that.

“He never tells us how he feels,” Naz junior point guard Darius Faulk said. “He always goes into some zone. He just looks. Stares. No emotions. He never shows emotions unless he’s mad.”

Paschall couldn’t contain himself Sunday afternoon. The thoughts of what had transpired over the last 365 days had flooded his mind. Almost one year ago to the day, St. Michael Academy announced it would close, leaving Paschall and his players without a school