McKayla Bailey and Co. beat a pair of 2B schools that have a shot at a state title. (John Fisken photo)
Could the Coupeville High School girls’ basketball team have battled for a state title this season if they were playing in the 2B classification instead of 1A?
It’s open to debate, as two of the final 16 teams vying for a state title — La Conner and Orcas Island — are teams the Wolves bounced on back-to-back days early in the season.
Coupeville, the smallest 1A school in the state (a fact that won’t change any time soon, as CHS missed out on moving down to 2B in the next two-year classification period by less than ONE student), spent much of its year facing bigger schools, playing in the 1A/2A Cascade Conference.
Even the next smallest 1A school in the league — King’s, a private school allowed to offer scholarships — had 143 more students than CHS.
Still, the Wolf girls held up well, going 10-13 and grabbing a playoff win against Meridian, which boasts a student body twice Coupeville’s size.
Early in their non-conference games, the Wolves faced off with a couple of 2B schools, schools they actually resemble in size, and Coupeville stomped them.
They blew La Conner out 39-25 in a Friday night game highlighted by a successful half-court bomb from Madeline Strasburg, then returned to the court early Saturday and held off Orcas 50-44 in a game that wasn’t as close as the score might sound.
But now, both of those squads are still alive, with dreams of winning regional games Mar. 1 and advancing to the state tourney.
Blaine, the team that knocked Coupeville from the 1A playoffs, and King’s, are also alive, while three teams the Wolf boys played — 1A King’s and University Prep and 2B La Conner — are also four wins from a state title.
The Wolf boys came within a bucket of upending La Conner and pushed U Prep to the end, but lost both of those games.
Not so with the CHS girls, which raises the question of what the Wolves might have done in the 2B playoffs, where Coupeville would have had the largest student body in the field.
Dreams and arguments? The way to spend the offseason…
Coupeville Sports 