Emily Coulter prepares to let fly with the free-throw that would result in her first point as a Wolf basketball player. (Robert Bishop photos)
Success!!
“These are the moments I live for as a coach!”
In the middle of a 55-30 loss to visiting Cedarcrest Friday night in which her team faced a bit of a stacked deck and unraveled a bit in the second half, Coupeville High School girls’ JV coach Amy King still was able to find some bright moments.
None more so than a sequence of events late in the second quarter in which freshman Emily Coulter fought off three girls to snare an offensive rebound and then went right back at the hoop and was rewarded with a pair of free-throws.
One of a handful of Wolves with little to no basketball experience prior to this season, Coulter has earned time on the floor with hustle and scrappiness. When she drained one of the two shots from the charity stripe, it was her first ever point scored as a Wolf hoops player, a nice memento for a player who never stops coming.
The never stop coming attitude is perhaps best typified by two Coupeville players — sophomores Kacie Kiel and Madeline Strasburg. Back on the floor after missing several games with a knee injury, Strasburg pumped in a team-high 10 points while Kiel popped for nine.
Facing a six-player Red Wolf JV squad that heavily utilized swing players (younger players who see both JV and varsity time), Coupeville stayed close when its lone swing player, Strasburg, was on the court.
Without her ripping balls away from Cedarcrest players and rampaging through the paint, the Wolves struggled to get a consistent offensive flow going.
The five-foot-seven Kiel did what she could, converting a breakaway bucket in the first quarter, draining a pair of jumpers and triggering several plays after first rising up and snatching balls away from Cedarcrest’s six-foot-one center. With Wynter Thorne hitting a pair of buckets to back up Kiel, Coupeville hit the locker room down by eight.
Strasburg immediately opened the second half with a steal and a bucket to cut the lead to six. Then, just as quickly, the game start to slip away as Cedarcrest went on a 13-1 run punctuated by two three-point bombs.
Refusing to give in, however, the Wolves responded with their own 11-2 surge, sparked by Kiel banging home an offensive rebound, then snatching a carom off the glass at the defensive end and pushing the ball hard up-court, where she set Strasburg up for a quick pull-up jumper.
After Monica Vidoni put a rebound back up and in, McKenzie Bailey banked a three-pointer off the backboard, Strasburg hit another jumper and the lead was once again down to single digits with six minutes to play.
Unfortunately, then someone covered up Coupeville’s basket, as all of their shots, regardless of the angle, bounced off of the rim, allowing Cedarcrest to cruise home with a game-ending 16-2 rally.
