SEARCY, Ark. (LP) – It was a multifaceted celebration inside Lion Arena on Thursday night.

While the Lady Lions procured a 54-23 victory over the Lonoke Lady Jackrabbits, that wasn’t what the Searcy faithful were talking about as they exited the building and braved the chilly Arkansas weather.

While Searcy’s second victory in this week’s Searcy Bank Classic deserves to be celebrated, it was Chip Johnson who provided the biggest headline of the night.

Johnson entered Thursday’s game five points shy of 1,000 for her Searcy career. A 23-point performance in Searcy’s win over Cabot on Tuesday left her on the verge of history entering Thursday’s contest.

With the Searcy student section armed and ready with rolls upon rolls of celebratory toilet paper, a layup in transition by Johnson granted her the 999th and 1,000th points of her Searcy career, ensuring she’ll forever be enshrined in the history of Searcy basketball.

After the toilet paper was removed from the court, Johnson and the Lady Lions had their way with Lonoke, going into the locker room with a 40-11 advantage.

When head coach Kim Sitzmann was asked what advice she would give her team in the locker room, the seventh-year head coach had a simple answer: “Put 80 on them.”

The Lady Lions only scored 14 points in the second half, but a stifling defensive effort made a quiet offensive half moot.

Not even flickering lights and occasional periods of darkness could dampen the mood inside a jubilant Lion Arena, as those who attended the game could go home saying they saw a piece of Searcy history happen right before their very eyes.

“I’m thankful to hit 1,000 (points),” Johnson told Lion TV. “It took a lot of work, but now we have more work to do.”

The Lady Lions only have a single day of rest before tangling with Brookland on Saturday afternoon in a highly anticipated matchup.

For a brief moment in Thursday’s contest, however, nobody gave a thought to Brookland, or even to Lonoke.

The fans inside Lion Arena were rightfully focused on Johnson, whose history-making night will go down as a night the Searcy basketball program will never forget.

It’s safe to say the milestone and subsequent celebration were well worth the toilet paper barrage and technical foul that followed.