Lancaster County Christian School basketball coach Jim Shipper is leading a quest for respect and recognition.

The opponents are perception and reality. At least for now, reality is harsher and less forgiving.

"We're definitely trying," Shipper said last week referring to raising the profile and competition level of local Christian-school sports.

"Sometimes it's hard. A lot of [Class] AA or AAA schools don't want to play you. But we want to play as many public and larger private schools as we can."

Shipper's team won a league championship this year, and entered the District Three Class A playoffs with a 19-5 record and a No. 4 seed.

But all that comes, for most mainstream followers of high school sports, with a "Yes, but ... ."

That's because the league, the Commonwealth Christian Athletic Conference, is considered to occupy the bottom rungs of the competitive ladder of high school sports.

Lancaster County Christian, and the other local Christian schools that form the CCAC, mostly play in anonymity, in tiny gyms, with sparse media coverage.

This year, the Lions' non-conference schedule included local small-school powers Greenwood, New Hope Academy and Oley Valley.

The Lions beat Halifax, and, from the Lancaster-Lebanon League, Lebanon Catholic.

Shipper's son Ryan will play at Messiah College next year. Teammate Preston Chakara plans to play hoops at Palm Beach Atlantic, a Division II school in Florida.

Several Lancaster County Christian students play sports at McCaskey thanks to a cooperative agreement, including sophomore Ruth Ann Millen, who was the No. 1 player on the Red Tornado girls' tennis team.

The CCAC's profile raises by default come basketball playoff time, when the league's teams fill the Class A (small-school) bracket of the District Three tournament.

Of the 23 A schools (male enrollment in grades 9-11 of 125 or less) in the district, 13 are Christian (as opposed to parochial or charter) schools.

Half of this year's A boys' basketball field was from the CCAC.

But we're to the semifinals now, and none of them are still playing. None will advance to the state playoffs. No CCAC team has ever won a district championship in boys' or girls' basketball.

Lancaster County Christian hosted Camp Hill in a district quarterfinal Friday.

Camp Hill, the fifth seed, came in with a 10-13 record, but in the formidable Mid-Penn Conference.

In the quest, it was the kind of game that could have been a watershed.

Camp Hill led most of the way. It featured an athletic guard, Deshawn Williams, whom the Lions could not keep out of the lane off the dribble.

Williams scored 25, and Camp Hill led by as many as 15, late in the third quarter.

But, improbably, with Ryan Shipper on the bench in foul trouble, the Lions rallied.

Camp Hill started the final quarter with six straight empty possessions. Jesse King of Lancaster Christian scored six straight points, and Shipper got a follow inside to make it 41-27.

The Lions got the ball back, and King made a twisting one-hander inside plus, according to two of the three officials, a foul.

But the third official called traveling before the foul. Camp Hill recovered its bearings, made some foul shots down the stretch after mostly missing them all night, and survived, 49-39.

It looked, and felt, like high-school sports always do. Student fans wore silly costumes. People yelled at the officials.

There were no, for lack of a better term, religious overtones. Immediately after the game a small handful of players and coaches gathered on the floor and prayed quietly, but they were players and coaches from both sides.

Afterward, Jim Shipper talked (but didn't complain) about that traveling call, and about Camp Hill getting some key shots from unusual sources.

He talked about the pride players and coaches feel at the end of good season.

"I just told our seniors that it's 11 months and three weeks since we had a team meeting and talked about our goals for this year," he said.

"They followed through on all of it, through the summer and everything. I thanked them for that."

The quest continues.

Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. Email him at mgross@lnpnews.com.