The man who makes the scoreboard do what it does, Joel Norris (top left), is joined by Wiley Hesselgrave, Steve Whitney’s title-winning shot and Samantha Roehl.
Shawn (Evrard) Christensen — center, bottom row, back in her cheer days, and, at right, modern-day.
Moments, big and small.
We’re covering all the bases today, as we celebrate the headline-makers and the behind-the-scenes moments which all come together to weave the tapestry that is Wolf Nation’s sports legacy.
As we open the doors to two athletic stars, a key contributor and two magnificent moments, we celebrate the 60th class to join the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame.
Forever encased inside these hallowed digital walls now are Shawn (Evrard) Christensen, Wiley Hesselgrave, Joel Norris, Samantha Roehl’s sacrifice and Steve Whitney’s title-clinching jumper.
After this, you’ll find them all nestled atop the blog, under the Legends tab, alongside their brethren.
Our first inductee, the Ice Cream Man, is one of the often unsung warriors who make CHS sports run smoothly.
When he’s not doling out scoops (and stories) at Kapaw’s, Norris is the master of the scoreboard for Wolf football and basketball games.
Watch almost anyone else try to keep the board going (“BUT I PUSHED THE BUTTON SEVEN TIMES AND IT STILL WON’T WORK!!!!!”) and you’ll appreciate his nimble finger work even more.
But what pushes Norris from super-competent to awe-inspiring is his ability to lay down low-key verbal smack all game (while keeping his mouth just far enough away from Willie Smith’s mic to not be heard by the football crowd) and his joy in needling Seahawk fans.
Toss in his old-school dance moves (at least back before The Wobble was outlawed as a post-game song) and he’s more entertaining than most the games he works.
Whether camped out in the cramped former football press box (RIP, ramshackle, dead bee-filled hunk o’ junk) or tripping people as they try to sneak by on the basketball sideline, Norris is a joy to behold.
Joy could be the middle name of our second inductee, the former Miss Evrard.
Shawn, who joins sister-in-law Jodi Christensen in the Hall, exudes great bursts of radiant joy, something both of her daughters have inherited from their mom (and husband Billy, who’s pretty cheery himself.)
As a Wolf cheer captain, she was one of the best and brightest to ever soar under the tutelage of CHS coach Sylvia Arnold, and she did so at a time when Coupeville was a competition cheer squad.
From her days at Videoville and Miriam’s Espresso, where she was one of my favorite co-workers of all time, to today, Shawn has never changed where it matters most — at her core.
She was kind and caring, charging full-force into life with a brightness of spirit, regardless of conditions around her, from day one, and she’s still that way.
Both of her and Billy’s daughters reflect the inherent goodness of their parents, and are truly a testament to awesome parenting by a remarkable couple.
Everyone in the Hall o’ Fame left behind (or are still leaving) a mark on their school and community, but Shawn truly towers as a one-of-a-kind legend.
While Hesselgrave just departed CHS, having graduated in June, there’s no reason to wait for time to pass before induction.
For the past four years, Wiley was the best male athlete at CHS, a standout football and basketball player who bopped along to his own rhythm.
While others scrambled around to catch the attention of photographers, Hesselgrave just put his head down and kicked ass.
He was a rampaging wild man on the gridiron, doing whatever was asked of him, and doing it with a passion and conviction which was genuinely old-school.
That carried over to hoops, where he led the Wolves in scoring his last two seasons, getting a surprising amount of his buckets by putting his head down and bull-rushing the defense, daring anyone to stand up to being socked in the mouth by his shoulder.
And then, when his prep career was done, he simply walked away, ready to move on and pursue a business degree.
Hesselgrave is one of the most self-contained athletes I have covered in the last 26 years, and one of the few modern-day guys who genuinely played like he was from a different era.
It was refreshing to see, and I mean this as the highest compliment — the guy would have been successful in any decade, because his heart and drive are remarkable.
We wrap up our induction with two great moments from the past, one big as it happened, one that grows with time.
The obvious highlight came Feb. 9, 1979, when Steve Whitney hit a soft 16-foot jumper, off a pass from Keith Jameson, to lift the CHS boys hoops squad to a 55-53 win over King’s Garden.
The victory over the private school power — these days known simply as King’s — and their all-world freshman Joe Buchanan, clinched the Cascade League title for Coupeville.
The program’s fifth league title in the decade, it was the end of an era, even though no one knew it at the moment. It would take nearly 20 years before the Wolf boys’ hoops squad won another title in 1998.
Whitney’s bucket kicked off a wild postseason that saw the Wolves advance all the way to the state tourney, where they beat Montesano 62-51 in the middle of three games.
That win matched the 1975-1976 Wolves and remains one of only two times that a Coupeville boys’ hoops squad has won a game at the big dance.
The lesser-known moment came in 2003, with the CHS girls’ hoops team fighting for postseason success.
A year after going 23-5 and finishing 6th at state, the Wolves would finish the 2002-2003 campaign at 20-8, bringing home an 8th place state banner.
To get there, though, Coupeville had to pull out three wins in four games at tri-districts, including a victory in a game where they almost lost their #2 scorer, Amy Mouw.
A sliced finger soaked her jersey in blood, and despite the best bathroom-scrubbing efforts of CHS assistant coach Amy King, Mouw’s uniform refused to get clean enough for the star to come back into the game.
Enter Roehl, a role player who turned down the chance to enter the game herself, instead sacrificing her own uniform to get her teammate back on the floor.
With Mouw (now clad in a dry, blood-free jersey) rejoining fellow gunner Brianne King, the Wolves surged to a huge win, while forever making an impact on the coaches who saw it all play out.
“Sammie was a good teammate,” Greg Oldham said.
Amy King has taken it further, using the moment as a teaching lesson throughout her career as a volleyball, softball and hoops coach.
“When I get a team that gets a little full of themselves, that starts to forget that everyone on the team truly matters, from the top of the rotation to the last body on the bench, I pull that story out,” she said. “It, to me, is what high school sports are supposed to be about.”
