STONEHENGE FANTASY FOOTBALL LEAGUE

MIDLOTHIAN, Va. — Commissioner Mehrer issued a statement Sunday denying he intends to declare for the WNBA draft.

The statement was four paragraphs long. Nobody had asked him anything. The matter had never been raised — not once, not by anyone, not in the history of this league.

“I want to put this to bed,” it opened. “I’m focused on my family. I’m focused on this league. And I’m focused on being the best Assistant to the Defensive Coordinator that Region 5 of the Virginia High School Sports League has ever had.”

“Anything beyond that is noise.”

There is no noise. There has never been noise. The only person who has ever discussed this is Mehrer.

Where it started.

Last fall, at the club, Mack challenged him to a shooting contest.

He didn’t take it. He had a reason — a good one, a real one, something about the time — and Mack shrugged and let it go and has not thought about it since.

Mehrer has thought about nothing else.

Because the thing about a contest you don’t enter is that you win it, privately, forever. There’s no film. There’s no scoreboard. There’s only a man alone with the version of himself who would have gone eleven straight from the right wing, and that man gets better every single month.

By November he was mentioning it unprompted. By January he had a workout. By March he was using the phrase “career stats,” which is when the league became genuinely concerned, because nobody says that about a hobby.

The stated goal is the Clover Hill Hall of Fame. Not a professional career. Not minutes. He has run the numbers on what a season’s production would do for his case, more than once, and he has shown them to people.

The obvious problem.

The WNBA is one of the hardest leagues on earth to reach. Those are among the best basketball players alive, and Mehrer knows this, and knowing it has not helped.

He has not said he’s going. He has only, repeatedly, said he isn’t.

The league’s response.

Patrick called the trajectory “structurally optimistic.”

Mack, reached for comment, said he’d play him anytime and offered to spot him five. Mehrer has not responded in six weeks. Everyone has noticed.

JBum said “let him cook.”

Craig said it was a really good decision.

JBrad was asked for comment but had not yet received permission from his neighbor.

Stehle, who has recently emerged as the group’s foremost Moose Lodge enthusiast, read the entire statement and asked whether there would be prime rib at the draft. He asked again forty minutes later. He has since asked what time the prime rib would be served, whether there would be horseradish, and whether anyone had considered that the Lodge does it for eleven dollars.

Nobody has addressed the WNBA question since.

Where things stand. No declaration. No inquiry. No eligibility of any kind. The statement remains pinned, by him, at the top of the chat. Prime rib undetermined.