Sarah Stuurmans (left) is joined by Matt Shank and Class of ’25 alumni Robert Engle and Mary Sherman.
We’re going (way) old school and (relatively) new school today.
As we welcome our 76th class to the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame, it’s comprised of three athletes and one coach (who was an amazing athlete herself, just not here on Whidbey) from vastly different time frames.
So, let’s swing the door open to these hallowed digital hallways and usher in Robert “Fat” Engle, Sarah Stuurmans, Mary Sherman and Matt Shank.
After this, you’ll find them up at the top of the blog under the Legends tab, hanging out with their fellow inductees.
Our first two inductees, Engle and Sherman, graduated from Coupeville High School in 1925, a time when the school’s sports teams were still referred to as the Cardinals and not the Wolves.
Sherman, who was the class Valedictorian, was a trailblazer, the captain of a CHS girls’ basketball team that played decades before Title IX evened things out a bit.
Perusing the school’s 1925 annual, The Clarion, is a look into a different time.
The only girls sports team at CHS (boys had football, basketball, baseball and track), the female hoops stars practiced three times a week and shrank from 20 players to a final 11 who are listed as letter winners.
The highlight of the season was a win over Island rival Langley, and Sherman was hailed for her work as captain, proving “very capable” of her duties.
Her classmate, Engle, was a four-sport athlete who played for three teams that won county championships his senior season.
In football, he was an imposing lineman for a squad which roughed up Oak Harbor 23-6 and 25-7, while in basketball he was the team captain as the Cards swept two games apiece from their two Island foes.
CHS appears to have won a district title, downing Index, then went on to play three games at the Northwest Tournament before moving on to spring.
Once there Coupeville won a county championship in track (Engle was a beast in the shot put) and came within a win of capturing a baseball crown and making it 4-for-4 that year.
Many decades later, our third inductee, Shank, showed up in Cow Town after his dad, Jim, was hired as Coupeville’s Superintendent.
During his time as a Wolf, Matt played football, basketball and track and his induction into the Hall is a testament to his work ethic.
While he didn’t set any records at CHS, Shank will loom large for years as the kind of athlete coaches love to point to when they talk about the value of role players.
Whether anchoring the line for the gridiron squad, fighting for rebounds down in the paint or hurling the javelin, he was a team player, first, last and always, a guy who fought the same during razor-tight wins and blowout losses.
Shank was part of the Class of 2015, but, ultimately, he was a throwback to old school athletes.
He played in a time dominated by cell phones and social media, but carried himself like the guys who played in the “old days,” more concerned with his team’s progress than his own numbers or how many times he could be photographed.
Shank’s younger siblings, Brian and Ashlie, play very much like their brother, so I kind of think it’s a family trait. And an admirable one at that.
Our final inductee today, Stuurmans, goes in to the Hall as a coach, if only because this is not Tenino Sports.
Growing up as a Hollingsworth, she was a key player (earning All-Conference honors) on dominant Tenino High School squads which made runs at state in basketball and soccer.
In a moment of kismet, she and her hoops team finished 6th in 2A at state in 2001-2002, winning their first two games to advance to the semifinals.
At the same time, in the 1A tourney? Coupeville won its first two games, also fell in the semis and also finished 6th.
After marriage to former Wolf hoops star Scott Stuurmans, Sarah pulled stints as a basketball coach for Coupeville Middle School.
While there she helped kick-start the careers of players like Mia Littlejohn, Lauren Grove, Joey Lippo and Cameron Toomey-Stout, to name just a few.
Makana Stone, arguably the best female player in town history, hails Stuurmans as being the coach who first unlocked her love of basketball.
Plus, Sarah is one of the best interview subjects ever, which always tilts the chances of getting inducted into Hall of Fames run by ink-stained “journalists.”
While a teaching position in Oak Harbor (and wanting to spend time with her family) has denied us the chance to have Stuurmans on the bench the last year or two, there’s always the hope she may return one day.
If not, she remains one of the most faithful of Wolf fans and boosters, and could probably still take to the court (after the upcoming birth of children #3 and #4, who are arriving together) and teach the current players a few lessons.
