During one week last summer, the lives of 11 young basketball players changed forever. They went from being underdogs to winning it all and bringing home the national trophy.

They are the players on the Maine Elite Basketball Club team, owned and coached by Chris Binette of Waterboro, who has been coaching basketball for 20 years.

Last summer, they qualified for the Amateur Athletic Union Super Showcase game in Florida. According to coach Binette, the boys went with the intention of being competitive, but not one player expected to win.

“We thought we'd win a game or two, have fun and learn how to improve,” Binette said. “But then we won seven games ... and we were in the final four ... and the boys realized they could do this.”

One of the players on the team is Wiscasset High School Junior Brandon Sprague. He plays as a power forward or as center on the team, and trains at Pro Fit in Scarborough along with the rest of the team

“It's a really good workout and I really enjoy playing with my team,” Sprague said.

Team members come from from all over southern Maine. Sprague is the most northern located player, and one team member, their point guard, hails from New Hampshire (AAU state teams can include players who comes from states that border each other).

The championship game was between the Boston Warriors and the Maine Elite Basketball Club. MEBC won, beating the Boston Warriors 64 to 49. The team received a huge crystal basketball trophy, currently held by coach Binette.

“It was a hard game but we played awesome defense,” Sprague said. “We beat out the best teams in Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana — even the Nike-sponsored team — to get to the championship.”

Binette also cites defense as the reason they won.

“Coaches would come up to me after games and say 'We knew you'd win because your team defense is so suffocating.' Good defense wins championships, but it's very hard to teach and even harder to execute,” Binette said. “This team did it.”

Since the team had never expected to make it to the championship, let alone win, there was a last-minute scramble for Binette to arrange their flight.

“We had 35 minutes after the game ended to pack up and drive 1.5 hours to the airport to make it,” Binette said. “We were running through the airport carrying our trophy.”

“We were celebrating and having fun once we got on the plane, when the pilot made an announcement that they were carrying the national super showcase champions,” Sprague said. “It was awesome.”

Since then the team has been invited to various other national tournaments, including the LeBron James tournament. According to Binette, they are the only team in New England to be invited.

The team stayed in a rented house during the week, and Binette bought groceries every day to feed the boys.

“It cost us $10,000 to go to the tournament,” Binette said. “$4,000 of that was in food.”

According to Binette, the boys went through four gallons of milk, four pounds of bacon, 36 eggs, and $140 in lunch meat every day.

“We went through at least $1,000 in Gatorade, and I still can't believe how much cereal these kids could eat,” Binette said.

“I told them, before the game, that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, just being in the championship game,” Binette said. “It had never been done before, a team in Maine making it this far. But they didn't just play, they won.”

“I'm very proud of the team, both how they handled themselves and how they played,” Binette said.

Other team members include Amir Moss, Brandon Dillucio, Musseit M'Bareck, Austin Phillips, Dan Amabile, Joe Esposito, Demetrious Hoskins, Haris Layn, Alek Medenica and Gatouch Pan.