Winner, winner, who bought a chicken dinner at PC? It’s Wolf ballhawks Amaiya Curry (left) and Willow Leedy-Bonifas, that’s who. (Alysabeth Leedy photo)
One for them, one for us, one for nobody.
The Coupeville Middle School girls’ basketball squads split a pair of games Thursday with visiting Sultan, while not playing a third contest due to sickness.
It was the Turks who begged out of a Level 3 bout thanks to missing a bunch of ill players.
That kept budding Wolf hoops stars like Brooklyn Pope and Cameron Van Dyke sitting in the bleachers, and not waging war down in the paint.
How the rest of the day played out:
Level 2:
The Wolves dominated on both sides of the ball, bringing the offensive tsunami in the first half and the defensive heat after the break.
All in all, that added up to a resounding 26-8 win, lifting CMS to a rock-solid 4-2 record on the season.
With coach Bennett Richter working his magic on the sideline, Coupeville came out and quickly jumped on the Turks, running out to an 8-2 lead after one quarter of play.
Willow Leedy-Bonifas had the electric touch early, twice rolling hard to the hoop and slapping home layups, while Sophia Batterman and Elizabeth Marshall collected offensive rebounds, putting them back up and in.
Batterman continued to torment Sultan in the second quarter, banking in a pair of buckets, while lethal leftie Kennedy O’Neill roared to the front of the attack, snatching loose balls and rumbling end-to-end on consecutive plays.
Coupeville stretched the lead out to 20-6 by the half, punctuating things with a one-woman highlight reel crafted by Amelia Crowder.
Patrolling the paint like a young Lauren Jackson, she terrorized the Turks in the final moments of the half, rejecting three shots, before banking in a bucket off a sweet feed from Isabella de Souza Oliviera Mc Fetridge.
While offense was the name of the game in the first half, buckets became very hard to obtain in the final 14 minutes.
Sultan eked out a 2-0 “run” in the third, as both teams combined to find 10,003 different ways to get balls to spin back out of the net.
After that, the Wolves clamped down, holding Sultan scoreless in the fourth, while netting a couple of baskets of their own.
Leedy-Bonifas collected a putback, Sage Stavros banked in a silky shot from the top of the key, and O’Neill ended things with a jumper that made the net merrily bounce.
Six of nine Wolves scored, with Leedy-Bonifas (8), Batterman (6), and O’Neill (6) leading the way.
Stavros, Marshall, and Crowder each added a bucket, with Amaiya Curry, Allison Powers, and de Souza Oliveria Mc Fetridge working hard on defense.
Ari Cunningham sells out on defense.
Level 1:
Missing several key players, the Wolves got stung in the second quarter en route to a 31-14 loss.
The defeat drops Coupeville to 1-5 on the season, though that’s a deceptive record when you consider the talent wearing red and black.
The nine girls in uniform put up a considerable fight, scrapping with the physical Turks down to the final plays in a rough-and-tumble affair.
Chelsi Stevens ripped a rebound free and knocked down a late shot while being body-checked, and she wasn’t the only Wolf to feel the fury of wayward elbows, knees, and fingers.
Teammate Ari Cunningham hit the floor hard on one play, then got up and hit a free throw while eyeballing the Turk who tweaked her.
And then there was Ava Lucero, charging into the heat of battle like a Valkyrie, throwing bodies left and right, giving back as good as she got.
Caught in a tangle of players, she flipped a foe as she went to the hardwood, surely bringing a smile to dad Aaron’s face if he was in the stands.
“Sweet sassy molassy! I got me another wrestler!”
The game was close after one quarter, with Sultan edging out to an 8-4 lead thanks to a putback with a mere two seconds left on the clock.
Unfortunately for Coupeville, that was the start of a game-busting 14-0 tear for the Turks, who built an 18-4 lead heading into the half, then opened the third with a bucket in the paint.
Lillian Ketterling, a lightning-quick warrior in braids who spent the game running the offense under great duress, finally broke Coupeville’s cold streak.
She banked home a bucket, twirling the ball off the glass with a pleasing lil’ thunk, before coming right back to pull off a breakaway.
Utilizing her runner’s speed, Ketterling brought the zing back, sending a ripple of excitement through the stands filled with her classmates and family.
And she wasn’t done, fighting off taller girls to convert an offensive board into a bucket in the fourth quarter as Coupeville made its final stand.
The Wolves might have lost the game, but Ketterling, Lucero, and fellow scrappers such as Taylor Marrs, Laken Simpson, and Olivia Hall had some moments when they made sure the Turks felt a sting down deep in their souls.
Here to rumble, always, win or lose.
Ketterling finished with a team-best six points, while ever-plucky Adie Maynes survived and thrived during her visit to Thunderdome, rattling the rim for three.
Sydney Van Dyke and Stevens chipped in with a bucket each, with Cunningham‘s made free throw so technically perfect it could be displayed in a how-to-play-the-game video.
Next up:
Coupeville closes its season with back-to-back road trips next week, traveling to Sultan Mar. 4 and South Whidbey Mar. 5.
The hope is the rematch with the Turks will be a three-game affair.
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