A nice student section. Too bad it’s the VISITING student section. (Shelli Trumbull photo)
These are dark days in the world of Coupeville High School boys’ basketball.
But I’m not talking about the obvious reasons.
Yes, the Wolves have lost 24 straight games stretching over parts of three seasons, and it has been 670 days since Coupeville celebrated a varsity win in boys’ hoops action.
Feb. 10, 2011 (when CHS bounced Port Townsend 49-41) was a lifetime ago.
After falling to University Prep in a playoff game — ending Randy King’s 20-plus year run as head coach — Coupeville went 0-19 during a tough rebuilding season a year ago. Now they’re 0-4 heading into a home game Tuesday against Lakewood in a season marked thus far by an epic team-wide case of food poisoning and a broken foot that has sidelined top gunner Gavin O’Keefe.
But while the losing streak is a reality that the team and coach Anthony Smith face every day, that’s not why I say it is a dark time.
This is not a team that has given up. Not a team that is marking time until spring sports start.
I have watched them play in three of their four games this season, and I have seen a team that deeply cares. They hustle. They work their butts off. They want to win just as much, if not more, than the teams that they have played.
Where the darkness comes in is a town and a school’s inability, or unwillingness, to fully commit to supporting them on the way back up that hill.
Fan turnout at their home games has been sporadic, at best. There are parents there, yes, but few fellow students. On the road at La Conner, there was a chunk of Whidbey Islanders present, but they were predominately there for the Wolf girls’ team, which played first in a doubleheader.
And, unlike Wolf volleyball games, where Danny “Shaman” Savalza and his sizable band of followers rocked the gym in costumes and face paint, all the action in the student sections last Friday night came from the visiting team.
It was Cedarcrest, not Coupeville, that had people wearing costumes and fake mustaches and screaming their heads off.
It is embarrassing when Wolf players, in their home gym, are the ones being loudly (and, admittedly, creatively) heckled as they try to shoot free throws. When a Cedarcrest player went to the line, you could have heard a pin drop.
What happened to a home court advantage?
Coupeville students defended their turf rabidly at volleyball matches. They turned out in sizable numbers for football games. There was fairly decent crowds for most girls’ soccer games, at least until the weather got really nasty.
It’s not as if they don’t care.
I understand. Rooting for a struggling team is not easy. It’s not as fun being a Coupeville fan when they’re getting buried by a hail of three-point bombs and being dunked on as it was in 2010, as the Wolves wrapped up a 16-5 season behind Hunter Hammer, Ian Smith and Co.
But the thing is, they need you now more than they did then.
The Wolves need their fellow students, former players, random people in town, to back them at their lowest. To at least give them a fighting chance at having a “home court advantage.” To not be shouted down by two rows of JV players from another town.
The wins are going to come back. It will mean more if you’ve been there during the losses.
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