SWEET SON OF A GOAT-LICKIN’ WHORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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SWEET SON OF A GOAT-LICKIN’ WHORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

January 12, 2013 by David Svien

Well, the arrow is pointing at Jack Nicholson…

It is over. It is done. It is finished.

On a day when I made the wrong choice and stayed on the Island to watch “Gangster Squad” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball team went down the freeway and shocked the world.

A 51-41 non-conference win at Mount Vernon Christian Saturday evening, fueled by a season-high 24 points from Ben Etzell, snapped a 33-game losing streak for the Wolves that had stretched over parts of three seasons and 702 calendar days.

The first time Coupeville has won for coach Anthony Smith (“I am SOOOO happy for my guys, because they work so hard!!”) and the first time the varsity boys have tasted triumph since Feb. 10, 2011, the next-to-last game in Randy King’s 20-plus-year career, it came during the toughest stretch of the 2012-2013 season.

It was the third game in a six-game road trip for the Wolves and came less than 24 hours after they were battered by Cascade Conference leader Cedarcrest.

And yet the Wolves rallied, coming back from six down at the break, shattering a season-long trend of poor third quarters in high style. Racing past their hosts 17-7 in the first eight minutes after halftime, they surged and never wavered.

With Etzell hitting key free throws down the stretch, virtually everyone on the roster chipped in to the scoring effort. Aaron Trumbull banged home nine, Nick Streubel popped for six, Carson Risner rumbled for four, Caleb Valko and Aaron Curtin each netted three and Morgan Payne dropped in a bucket.

It was a team win for a team that plays as a team, through good times and bad.

This is a team that deserved to win.

A team that has refused to give in to the haters and the whiners, the bitchers and the complainers.

A team that had a win ripped away against Orcas Island by a ref crew so bad they allowed a rival player to throw a punch and remain in the game and then heaped it on from there.

A team that remained friends, fought together, stood tough, overcame losing its most explosive offensive player, Gavin O’Keefe, to a broken leg in the second game of the season and kept on coming, practice after practice and game after game.

This is a team that deserved to have a fun bus ride back across the bridge at least once before seniors Valko, Drew Chan and Josh Wilsey graduated.

I have seen this team play eight times this season — seven at home and once on the road (at La Conner) and they never laid down once.

They played through food poisoning, viral crud, god-awful refs, hurting knees, a lack of wide-spread support from their own student body and catcalls from former students who couldn’t carry their water bottle.

Tonight, that all ended and I am very, very happy for them.

A job well done to Valko, Chan, Wilsey, O’Keefe, Curtin, Streubel, Risner, Trumbull, Payne, Etzell, Anthony Bergeron, Smith and assistant coach Dustin Vanvelkinburgh.