Logan Downes eyeballs history. (Andrew Williams photo)
We are all witnesses.
As 2024 begins to play out, Coupeville High School is deep into its 107th season of boys’ basketball and its 50th campaign for the girls.
My detective work has unearthed 658 Wolves — 414 boys and 244 girls — who have scored at least one point in a varsity hoops game.
Now, the real number is certainly higher, as the reality is there are many male players from early decades, such as the 1920’s and 1930’s, whose point totals are lost to history (and discarded score sheets).
On the girl’s side of things, other than having absolutely no stats from season #1 in 1974, we’re sitting much better.
But the reality is, with a much slower pace of play back in the (really) old school days, no one from Altus Custer or Banky Fisher’s eras would have amassed enough points to scale the school’s career scoring chart.
There is one intriguing outlier in the form of Tom Sahli, the only Coupeville grad to go on to face hoops immortal Elgin Baylor on the hardwood.
He rattled the rims for 719 points across his junior and senior seasons at CHS, but we’re missing his sophomore year (1951-1952), so may never know if he cracked the 1,000-point club.
But we do know that there are nine Wolves — five boys and four girls — who made it to four digits during their time repping the red and black (or red and white in an earlier time).
That list:
Brianne King — (1549) — (1999-2003)
Zenovia Barron — (1270) — (1994-1998)
Makana Stone — (1158) — (2012-2016)
Jeff Stone — (1137) — (1967-1970)
Mike Bagby — (1137) — (2002-2006)
Randy Keefe — (1088) — (1973-1976)
Megan Smith — (1042) — (2006-2010)
Mike Criscuola — (1031) — (1956-1960)
Jeff Rhubottom — (1012) — (1975-1978)
And we do know current CHS senior Logan Downes is just 11 points away from making it a 10-person club.
Angie and Ralph’s youngest son has torched the nets for 211 points across Coupeville’s first nine games this season, averaging 23.4 a night, so the chances the milestone moment arrives this Friday in Darrington are high.
If not, the Wolves welcome Auburn Adventist Academy to Cow Town this coming Monday, Jan. 8 in their next game.
Now, nothing is guaranteed, and not every player gets to the round numbers, no matter how talented.
Jason Bagby, a terror on the floor, finished with 499, a rimmed-out free throw shy of 500.
Amanda Fabrizi, one of the more deadly shooters in school history, finished with 299. A ref gives her credit for a three-ball on a shot where her toe touched the line and it’s 3-0-0.
Even those who reach the round numbers often get shorted.
Hawthorne Wolfe dropped in a three-ball at the state tourney on the final shot of his prep career, giving him exactly 800 points.
But a pandemic cost him a season’s worth of games across two seasons and kept him from making a run at the CHS boys’ career scoring record of 1,137 points.
So now here comes Logan Downes, who played alongside Wolfe for two seasons, making his own bid for hoops immortality.
Remember those earlier numbers.
There are 658 Wolves who we know have scored in a varsity game, and Downes would be just the 10th to top 1,000 points.
In doing so he would push the percentage of CHS players to achieve said feat to … 0.0151975683890578.
That’s historical and that’s absolutely worth celebrating.
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