Coupeville Sports

   Caleb Valko defends the paint, as Carson Risner (55) tries to dump a pass over his head during a recent scrimmage. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

“We are a pissed off squad.”

When Coupeville High School senior Caleb Valko says that — twice — in his look inside the Wolf program, he means it in the best way possible.

He means Coupeville, coming off a winless 2011-2012 season, is hungry for redemption, its players have spent the off-season getting harder, better, faster, stronger and that the Wolves are primed to explode and wreck other people’s expectations.

But let me step aside and let the smack-talkin’ master speak for himself. The musings of Professor Valko on the upcoming hard court season:

Man, where to start … we have numbers this year. But not just that we have numbers, we have athletes.

There’s nobody that’s sitting out crying that they “severely sprained” their ankles; instead they are manning up, playing through it to get better, like Carson (Risner) and Morgan (Payne).

We have a talented young group this year, which is a much better scrimmage team than last year’s. It’s the teams second year playing under coach (Anthony) Smith and getting used to his offense.

I think things are going to be a lot better this year than they were last year. We’re looking to score on ya this year and it doesn’t matter who you are anymore.

I might be sitting out that first game, but I’ll be in the stands screaming my head off.

We are a pissed off squad. You can tell by watching out practices we get down each others throats and taunt each other, but as soon as we get off the court it’s back to being brothers. We have something this year that we didn’t have last year. A pissed off squad. We were 0-20 last year and we all remember how it felt.

We have also all gotten better — Nick (Struebel) and Carson are stronger and have more post moves, Gavin (O’Keefe) and Drew (Chan) have worked on their handles, Morgan has worked on his shots, all the freshmen made the open gyms and you can tell it’s made them better. And all the other players are already progressing.

I don’t bring many skills to the team, but I offer my leadership and hope that it helps us out!