Assistant coach Brittany Black passes on advice to Wolf guard Haley Marx during a loss at La Conner Thursday. (Shelli Trumbull photo)
La Conner High School boasts a rich athletic history.
Its gym is awash in banners honoring everything from the school’s multiple state volleyball titles to its stellar track and field program. Everywhere you look you see a record of years of success and accomplishment.
Thursday night, the Braves added another page to their already thick book of sports achievements, one that wasn’t particularly thrilling for the chunk of fans who traveled down from Whidbey Island.
By the time the night was done, both Coupeville High School varsity basketball teams had been bounced by large margins, with the girls falling 53-27 and the boys being dropped 74-25. The losses left the Wolf girls at 1-2 and the boys at 0-3 as both teams head into their Cascade Conference opener with Cedarcrest Friday.
The girls play their fourth straight game on the road, while the boys start a four-game home stand. JV action tips off at 5:15, followed by varsity at 7.
Thursday, the Coupeville girls staged several mini-rallies, but were never quite able to overcome a huge early deficit.
Down 19-2 before they could find any kind of shooting rhythm, the Wolves finally got a spark when Amanda Fabrizi nailed a three-pointer from the corner midway through the second quarter. Pounding the ball inside to Hailey Hammer, who scored a team-high 12, Coupeville cut the lead to 12 twice, but could never quite get the lead back down to single digits.
The final score looked worse than it really was, as La Conner reeled off a 14-2 run to close the game, including hitting a long trey right at the closing buzzer.
Lauren Escalle added five for the Wolves, including pulling off a nifty steal which she converted into a basket-and-free throw three-point play. Fabrizi and Makana Stone had three apiece and Bessie Walstad and Jai’Lysa Hoskins each dumped in a bucket.
Facing off with a quick, opportunistic La Conner squad that thrived on turnovers created by its full-court press, the Coupeville boys hung tough for the first five minutes. A jumper from Aaron Trumbull followed by a beautiful pass from Carson Risner to Drew Chan for a quick bucket cut the early lead to 7-6.
The Wolves were still within range after Nick Streubel put back a rebound to cut the lead to 29-16 midway through the second quarter. Then, things fell apart, as La Conner used a 24-2 surge to blow the game wide open.
Caleb Valko finally stopped the bleeding late in the third, putting a rebound back up and in, while Josh Wilsey hit a sweet running mini hook, but, by then, the highlights were few and far between for the Wolves.
Trumbull paced Coupeville with six, while Streubel, Valko (who limped off the floor after taking a hard tumble in the final minute) and Chan each chipped in with four. Morgan Payne, Wilsey and Risner knocked down a bucket apiece and Aaron Curtin rounded out the scoring with a free throw.
And Taylor Ebersole, the former Wolf who transferred to La Conner before his sophomore season? He played a few minutes long after the game was decided, failed to take a shot (though Valko nudged him a few times with his elbow while fighting for position under the basket) and was a non-entity.
Well, except for in the JV game, where he got his shot stuffed by former teammate Joel Walstad. Nice.
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