Julia Myers gets some in-game strategy from Wolf coach David King. (Shelli Trumbull photo)
There is no quit in #22.
With only seconds to play in a game already decided, Coupeville High School junior Madeline Strasburg, she of the motor that never stops, continued to bounce madly around the court Friday night, creating havoc wherever she went.
Dropping a long jumper to cap a 17-point performance on opening night, she then sprinted cross court, made 98.3% of a steal and spun towards the hoop, then stopped and slapped the ball hard after being called for the final foul in a night of 10,000 fouls.
That kind of refuse-to-die play, from Strasburg and teammates such as Kacie Kiel, who swished a gorgeous three-point bomb in the waning moments, should carry over long after the scoreboard was turned off on a 49-39 loss to visiting Cedar Park Christian of Bothell.
A huge disparity at the charity stripe (CPC hit 18 of 32 free throws, including 15 in the fourth quarter while Coupeville was 4 of 18 on the night) and a lot of missed chip shots from the field ultimately doomed the Wolves.
Which is not to say they didn’t go down swinging hard.
With all five players hounding the ball, Coupeville forced CPC into several shot clock violations and had a couple of memorable take-aways.
Sophomore Makana Stone collected two of them, gliding through the ozone, than exploding at just the right moment, leaving dazzled Eagles players clutching at air.
On the first one, she went high for a thunderous block, then blew down the court and caught the ball in stride for a sweeping layup.
Later, she snagged a ball in mid-air and fed it to Amanda Fabrizi for a dandy breakaway, mere seconds after Fabrizi had been on the opposite end of a similar play, turning a steal into a bucket for Breeanna Messner.
After trailing for the entire game, Coupeville pulled to within five at the start of the fourth quarter. Then came a slow death, as CPC spent the next hour going to the free throw line on virtually every play.
In between the hail of free throws, Wolf junior Julia Myers, returning to the court after a long battle with injury cost her last season, threw down a teeth-rattling block that left a dazed Eagles shooter on the ground.
Stone and Fabrizi backed up Strasburg with six points apiece while Messner popped for four. Kiel tossed in her three, Myers hit a bucket and Wynter Thorne added a free throw.
The game provided the regular season varsity debut for Kiel, Thorne, Monica Vidoni and McKayla Bailey.
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