Though it had been nine years since his First Preparatory Christian Academy boys basketball team had won a state championship, coach Shane Smith said he was happiest for his players.

The Highlanders claimed another state title, winning the GIAA Class A championship Friday at Columbus State University’s Lumpkin Center 59-48 over Citizens Christian Academy.

“I’m just happy for our kids,” Smith said. “They worked hard for us to get to this point. We’ve been trying to keep the program at the level it’s been when I took over. They had already won three state championships. It was my goal to keep it at that level. It took us nine years to win that other one.”

It was the fourth time FPCA (18-5) and CCA met this season. The Highlanders won the two regular-season games, but the Patriots won by one in overtime to take the region championship game.

“The kids took it hard,” Smith said. “They wanted to win a region championship and a state championship. They took it kinda personal. I told them, ‘you don’t want to feel this way.’”

With a fourth game against a region rival, there wasn’t much in the way of secrets between the two teams.

“I pretty much knew everything that they did,” Smith said. “I was pretty confident we could beat them if we controlled the boards. We kept the pressure on them. We wanted to make them uncomfortable.”

And even with the familiarity of what each team ran at either end of the court, Smith wanted to do something different to give the Patriots something to think about.

“You’ve got to create some wrinkles,” he said. “We did some things on offense that they hadn’t seen. We ran a few plays they hadn’t seen and we were successful with that.”

The Highlanders also had their leading scorer, Jaiden Thomas, available for the state championship game. Thomas hurt his ankle in the final regular-season tilt with CCA and missed the entire region tournament.

FPCA will be without Thomas next year – he’s graduating, as are two other seniors, Logan Brown and Jordan Ortiz – but Smith is optimistic about the Highlanders’ chances in 2026.

“And our future is bright. We feel next year we’re going to make another run,” Smith said. “It’s going to be hard to replace those three seniors. But we’ll be back.

“We’ve got a lot of talent in Liberty County. We feel we can develop that.”

FPCA lost in last year’s state title game to Monsignor Donovan Catholic, the program’s fourth runner-up finish. Now, they have a fifth state championship banner to raise.

And Smith can’t wait to watch it to unfurl on their home court at the St. James Center.

“That’s going to be one of the best moments, just to raise that banner at St. James,” he said.