City of Basketball Love

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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PHILADELPHIA — Darrell Sterling had his hand up and blew his whistle. As he ran in to call a hard foul in the second quarter of last year’s boys’ Philadelphia Catholic League championship at the fabled Palestra, the veteran official felt like someone kicked him in the back of his right leg. He turned around to see who did it.

No one was there.

That’s when the warm rush in the lower portion of his right leg hit. Sterling went down.

He immediately knew what happened. He had torn his right Achilles. He found out three days later, through an MRI, that he had suffered a complete tear — not a rupture.

This past Monday, Roman Catholic tipped off an epic Catholic League championship with a 57-52 overtime victory over Neumann-Goretti at the Palestra. Seconds after the final buzzer, Sterling sprinted off the court with the officials’ crew, topping an epic journey, coming full circle at the same place, in the same game that almost threatened to wipe out 17 years of officiating a year to the day it occurred.

Darrell Sterling, left, looks up at the scoreboard during Monday's Philadelphia Catholic League championship game between Roman Catholic and Neumann-Goretti at the Palestra, where he tore his Achilles a year prior (Photo: Dan Hilferty/CoBL)

On Monday night, February 28, 2022, as Sterling was down on the Palestra floor, reaching for his lower right leg, the first thing on his mind wasn’t how badly he was hurt. No, his first thought was of fellow officials Ben Moore and Derek Hrubosky, who called the game with him.

“The first thing on my mind was that I let my partners down, that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the game,” Sterling recalled. “What came afterwards didn’t dawn on me until after I spoke to doctors. There was a scare of not being on the top of your game. Running is the most important aspect of being an official, because I’m 49 trying to keep up with 16-, 17-, 18-year-old kids. That was the scary thing, at first, not being able to keep up with the kids.”

Sterling opted out of surgery. Doctors explained to him that surgery was a possibility, but he would be out longer if he chose to go that route. Sterling was told the injury occurred under his right calf muscle and the torn Achilles tendons could reattach through time and be strengthened through rehab. The caveat being that the tendons had to begin reattaching within a month. If they didn’t, he would have had no choice.

Within a month, the tendons began healing — and reattaching.

“Whatever needed to be done, I wanted to get it done as fast as possible, so I could get back to that road to recovery,” he said.

The following Monday after the 2022 Catholic League championship, March 7, Sterling was placed in a walking boot for four-and-a-half months.

The officiating community is a very tight-knit, insulated group. Sterling received an outpouring of support from refs that he didn’t even know from across the state. The night it happened, Sterling, being helped off the court by Moore and Hrubosky, received a strong ovation from the Palestra crowd.

He started officiating in 2006 when a friend asked him to help ref eight-year-olds at the Sharon Hill Middle School. Someone was watching Sterling interact with the kids and they liked what they saw. He approached Sterling about officiating in the Sonny Hill League, which had a training program for officials.

Sterling was bit by the officiating bug.

Darrell Sterling was in a walking boot for four months following his Achilles in jury in last season's PCL title game. (Photo: Dan Hilferty/CoBL)

When the injury occurred, he had one huge factor on his side, he always kept himself in optimum shape. His rehab began in mid-June 2022 and didn’t end until late-September. He still rehabs and stays in condition today. He officiates with compression sleeves on both ankles to keep his Achilles in place.

But there was a cloud of doubt if he would ever blow a whistle again.

“The doubt really lasted the whole four-and-a-half months I was in the boot, not knowing if the Achilles would even be strong enough to walk on at that time,” he said. “It was that threatening. It wasn’t so much a life injury as it was a year-long injury. I wasn’t expected to be back this year. The doctors really didn’t expect me to be back for a year. I didn’t. I thought about officiating this year.”

Through arduous rehab, it took Sterling nine months to return.

Instead of walking, he would jog. Instead of lifting for 10 minutes, he lifted for 20. His comfort zone and confidence that his Achilles would hold up gradually built. The first test came in December — three weeks into this season.

His initial game back, Sterling admits, was scary. It was between Archbishop Wood and Downingtown West on December 6. Before the game, Wood coach John Mosco walked over and gave Sterling a little nudge.

“I give a lot of credit to John, because he walked over to me and told me he remembered seeing me at the Palestra that night, seeing the injury,” Sterling said. “John told me how glad he was to see me back and he hoped that everything was okay. It was a nice vote of confidence. A lot of people didn’t think I would be out there. I still had to run out on that court when I had not fully tested the Achilles.”

It held up.

Last Friday morning around 10:15 a.m., while Sterling was eating his morning oatmeal at his kitchen counter, he got a call from fellow official Alex Landis congratulating him. Sterling was like, “For what?” Landis replied, “You got the big game, the Catholic League championship.”

The Catholic League assigner, Mike Chesney, gave Sterling the game with Landis and Stephen Ockenhouse.

They officiated a game for the ages — and did as great a job as the game played out.

“This a game guys don’t get to do once, and here I am, doing that game twice in two years; that was more the emotion,” said Sterling, who will take off the rest of this season to spend time with his family after three months officiating. “The first (Catholic League championship) game, last year, came as a little of a shock with the crowd and everything. But after doing the game, I knew what to expect. I was prepared for it. I sat in the locker room after that game, I sat down and needed to come down off that high. The game was exciting. The ending was exciting. You get pumped up for the game the same way as the players. Officials get pumped up. Our investment has to be the same as the players. You have 10,000 people watching you. You have other officials watching you. You have a broadcast of people watching you.

“That game will be with me for the rest of my life. I’ll never forget it. It’s one of those games when years later someone will tell you, ‘You were on that game, weren’t you.’ I’ve done a lot of championship games. If someone asks me my biggest moment, that was my biggest moment so far. The score never dawned on me at the end of that game. My concern was the time on the clock. I knew there was 6.1 seconds left. That’s what I was aware of (during regulation). I was on the broadcast side when (Xzayvier Brown) hit the tying shot.

“It was a great moment. It was a great game. I could say I was a part of it.”

It’s not surprising.

Officiating is a part of him.