Aaron Straub has seen a lot of young men come through the Elk County Catholic basketball program since he took over as head coach way back in 1982.

There haven’t been many senior classes that have been more successful — or meant more to the program — than the six-man class of 2017.

Seniors Jared Braun, Nate DaCanal, Brad Dippold, Gabe Kraus, Frank Singer and Dan Stauffer played their final game in an ECC uniform together on Saturday, as the Crusaders fell to defending state champion Kennedy Catholic, 61-40, in the PIAA Class A quarterfinals at Clarion University.

Their head coach was clearly emotional coming out of the locker room after addressing his team for the final time this year.

“What do you say to 11 guys who’ve been together since kindergarten?” Straub said, referring to ECC’s famed Little Dribblers program that has produced many a Crusader-to-be over the years.

Elk was the better team for one quarter, as they led a powerful Golden Eagles squad 14-10 after eight minutes. But KC’s overwhelming length and athleticism proved to be too much for even this stellar group of seniors to overcome.

“I’m proud of the way we do things,” Straub said. “I’m proud of our program. I’m proud of the coaches that we have a chance to work with. And most importantly, I’m just proud of our seniors. We have young men who are classy and who are winners, and they work extremely hard.”

That hard work has translated to a 56-2 record over the last two seasons, with both losses coming in the state tournament (the Crusaders fell to Farrell 61-38 in the second round of last year’s tourney).

There’s plenty that goes into notching back-to-back 28-1 seasons. For the Crusaders, it started and ended with their unmatched chemistry on the court. No matter the opponent or the situation, ECC went about their business the same way, relying on the years of experience they had built playing together.

DaCanal in particular will go down as one of the most decorated players in school history. The 6-foot-2 forward — who will continue his career next year at Division III Juniata College — will graduate as a two-time district champion and Allegheny Mountain League all-star, as well as the fourth-leading scorer in school history with 1,207 points.

But those types of accomplishments haven’t been what’s driven this team according to Straub.

“Wins and losses are nice, and it’s easy to get all enamored with undefeated seasons and championships and league championships and county championships,” he said. “But at the end of the day, those trophies go in the trophy case. What is it about? It’s about building community. It’s about learning some lessons and that’s one of the things that we try to do in our program. It’s about much more than basketball and those seniors are very representative of that.”

You can tell a lot about the relationship between a coach and his team when the coach talks about how much the players impacted him, and Straub was especially effusive about what this team has meant to him and his staff.

“There’s two kinds of teams out there,” he said. “Usually how it happens is that coaches have to motivate the players. That’s the way it normally is. The last two years, those seniors motivated the coaches. They motivated the coaches by coming to work hard every day at practice. And they motivated the coaches by how well they represented the program. It was fun to come to practice, it was fun to work hard with that group, and that group’s going be missed.”