January | 2013 | Coupeville Sports

Archive for January, 2013

Kenzie Perry has talent for days!!

Posted in GU17 Whidbey Islanders on January 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Orange peel soccer player (with ball), courtesy Kenzie Perry.

“Yeah, let’s see Hope Solo do that!!”

Our goalies are more talented than yours.

Your goalies stop shots from all angles. Our goalies stop shots from all angles.

Your goalies wonder why they’re playing soccer on ice in January. Our goalies wonder the same thing.

But the tie-breaker comes down to orange peel origami, and it is there, on the most brutal playing field of them all, that GU17 Whidbey Islanders net-minder Kenzie Perry kicks your fanny.

Whidbey 1, World at Large 0.

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Dang it! Now I have to be nice to ATM (for a night)!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, Extending an olive branch to ATM, Ranting and Raving on January 25, 2013| 1 Comment »

The bumper sticker displayed by Karissa Bragg’s father.

I am not a fan of Archbishop Thomas Murphy High School.

They are a college posing as a high school, recruiting the cream of the crop in every sport, than competing against rural high schools who take any local players who can tie both their shoes without falling down and field a team.

The Everett-based private school exudes arrogance, subtly masked by saintliness. It takes a lot to make King’s look like only the second-most entitled school in the Cascade Conference, and ATM (or is it ABM, or AMHS or the U of ATM?) does it well.

Plus, they will forever bear a mark for shame for forcing out former Oak Harbor High School football coach Dave Ward, who merely took ATM to back-to-back state title games while busting the chops of overly-entitled “lifers” stuck to the program like barnacles.

But tonight, when the Wildcat boys’ basketball squads travel to Coupeville (JV tips at 5:15, varsity at 7), I will have to take a momentary breather from my favorite pastime of ATM poking. Because, what they’re doing tonight shows a touch of genuine class.

Sitting on their bench, with the finest players scholarships can bring in (but I digress…) will be Karissa Bragg, a 2009 ATM grad and cousin of Wildcat Adam Rasmussen. She will be an honorary coach as the two schools play under the banner of Coaches vs. Cancer.

The website for ATM basketball had the following to say about Ms. Bragg:

2 years ago, Karissa had a growth in her throat that blocked 80% of her airway. Surgery left her with a large hole in her throat and a diagnosis of a rare form of bone cancer called Ewing Sarcoma.

Karissa spent the next year enduring 17 in-patient chemo treatments and 5 1/2 weeks of daily radiation which made her weak and she had difficulty swallowing. Although she is now cancer free, she still must go in every three months to be scanned for cancer.

Weeks after her last treatment, Karissa formed a Relay for Life team. She is determined to do what ever she can to find a cure for cancer.

That makes you sit back and take a deep breath and realize, I write an often-stupid blog (or, at least that’s what my fan mail from ATM and Sultan lovers would have me believe.)

This young woman stared down her own mortality and KO’d one of the scariest things anyone can ever deal with.

One of my aunts battled cancer for 40 years, and the disease is a bitch, plain and simple.

I can’t do anything but cheer for Karissa, regardless of what school colors she wears. She is a winner and, while we here in Coupeville may not appreciate her school all that much, we will cheer for HER tonight.

I have never met Ms. Bragg, but I know the world is a better place for her still being here. Tonight, I honor her fight, her spirit, her will to live.

Tomorrow? Tomorrow the stick likely comes back out and the ATM pokin’ begins all over again. I ain’t perfect and it’s just how we roll here in Poopville.

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I’m not sayin’ this is right, I’m just sayin’, it COULD work!!

Posted in Football, Ranting and Raving on January 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Wolf football guru Tony Maggio and family head to the airport to pick up Coupeville’s newest foreign exchange student.

“I play the America foosball, yes?!?”

I can’t lose the Page Hit King! I can’t!

If Caleb Valko really goes through with all this rash talk of graduation and goes off to college next year and leaves behind high school, those golden-hued days of bleeding for the black and red, but more importantly, driving my page views higher, there’s gonna be heck to pay around here!

Damn you college!! First you took Hunter Hammer away and now you’re trying to lure the red-headed one, as well.

But, I have a solution.

Mr. Valko grows a beard, comes back as a foreign exchange student, calls himself Belac Oklav (that sounds Lithuanian to me!), gets to play another year on the gridiron with Nick Streubel and Jake Tumblin, gets to spend much more quality time with Mrs. Ballard (a win for her, as well) and things are great.

I’ll get all the normal page views the Page Hit King brings in, plus gain a rabid new fan base in Lithuania!

I don’t see a downside to this at all.

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Back in Black (and other basketball tales)!!

Posted in Boys and Girls Club, Boys Basketball, Girls Basketball, Where are they now? on January 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The Black ‘n Blue Sisters, (Brittany, left, and Lexie Black) reunited in the CHS gym they once owned.

A new generation picks up the mantra, Spartacus-style, “I am … Lexie Black!!”

Other lil’ guys want to grow up to be like The Big Hurt himself, Nick Streubel.

Beginning their path, they pick up dribbling skills from Dalton Martin.

Or, practice the Crane Style…

A style Wolf star Lauren Escalle may have to employ in the near future.

At least she has sympathetic teammates and … yeah … well, laughter is the best medicine.

Thunk, thunk, thunk, swish.

The sound of multiple basketballs slamming against hardwood, with the occasional one gently swishing through a receptive net, echoed throughout Coupeville Thursday night.

Freed from her day job, ace photographer Shelli Trumbull hit the streets and, despite fighting off the flu, went deep into the heart of the basketball jungle to record the action.

In the high school gym, former Wolf stars Lexie and Brittany Black, Ashley Ellsworth-Bagby and Erik King joined up with CHS assistant Ashley Kellison (who played her high school hoops for Woodland) for an impromptu scrimmage with the current Wolf girls’ squad.

The Lex-i-nator was back in the building and Ellsworth-Bagby was slicin’ people off at the knees again, for one afternoon at least, and it was all fun and games until Lauren Escalle hurt her foot. Then it was time to forget about practice and crowd around Escalle to take group pics with their fallen comrade.

Down the hallway, in the middle school gym, members of the Wolf boys’ basketball teams were working with young ballers from the Coupeville Boys and Girls Club.

Somewhere in the crowd of players being coached by Nick Streubel, Joel Walstad, Dalton Martin and other Wolves are the future of CHS basketball. The next Escalle. The next Aaron Curtin. The heir to the Black ‘n Blue sisters.

They are there, and they are coming. Wolf Nation’s resurgence on the basketball court is being built one player, one lesson, one night at a time.

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Rare sighting of Wolves in Coupeville!!

Posted in Boys Basketball on January 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

“I’m just saying … I would pay to watch me play!!”

There may be some confusion Friday night.

It’s been so long since the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball team has played a home game, the Wolves and their fans may not even remember where the gym is. So, if you get lost, go to PC, look across the street, and you’ll see a big, lighted brick building. That’s where you want to go.

Tomorrow night’s rumble with dastardly Archbishop Thomas Murphy (JV at 5:15, varsity at 7) will mark the first time in 21 days Coupeville has hosted a boys’ basketball game.

I’m serious.

Three weeks, six straight games of piling on the bus and traveling to bucolic burgs like Sultan and Langley. That’s a long stretch of season, and much has happened since the Wolves last darkened the door of their own gym.

The Wolves snapped their 33-game, 702-day losing streak, Ben Etzell scored 24 points in a game and then got “The Staph” in his elbow, Nick Streubel forgot his shoes and Josh Wilsey saved him by driving back to get them, Joel Walstad made his varsity debut and man-mountain Streubel chased a loose ball into the stands at South Whidbey and destroyed 42 music stands in one ballet-like move.

With two of its final three regular season games at home (King’s visits Friday, Feb. 1 during Senior Night), Coupeville will give fans a chance to acknowledge them for what they have accomplished this season. Plagued by broken feet, food poisoning, viral crud, “The Staph,” god-awful refs and assorted other aches and illnesses, the Wolves have fought to the end.

Three regular season story lines still to play out:

1) Can Nick Streubel hold off Aaron Trumbull for the team scoring crown? The junior big man leads the sophomore shooter 113-106, while Etzell, who is expected to miss at least two more games, sits third with 98 points.

2) The injuries and illnesses that have wracked the Wolves have left the door open for JV players to step up and play with the big boys. Morgan Payne has been a regular swing-man all year, even starting for the varsity at South Whidbey, while Anthony Bergeron has picked up progressively more minutes. Walstad made his varsity debut in the last game and popped for five.

Who’s next? Will we see Wiley Hesselgrave, Josiah Campbell or Dalton Martin make their varsity debuts before the season is done?

3) On Senior Night, the Wolves will honor emotional leaders Caleb Valko and Drew Chan. Who will be the first person in the gym to get misty-eyed that night?

Yeah, probably me.

As Valko, The Page Hit King, makes that final turn towards the end of his high school days and graduation and takes with him his ability to produce mucho page views for me, I am left with just one thought — get held back, boy!! If not for yourself, at least think about my stats!!

College is overrated! Nothing would be finer than to spend another year with Ballard! You can grow a mustache and play under an alias, be a foreign exchange student, Belac Oklav!!

See? I’m hysterical already and it’s not even Senior Night…

Plus one for the postseason:

4) Will Etzell be healthy enough to return for the district playoffs?

And a final one to grow on:

5) Why are high school bleachers all so darn uncomfortable?!?!

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