A few years have passed since his high school glory days, but Jason McFadyen can still shoot the rock with the best of them. (John Fisken photo)
First things first, it’s McFadyen, not McFayden.
You would think if a guy played varsity basketball for three solid seasons, and that guy led the team in scoring back-to-back years to cap his career, they would know how to spell his name.
But, you would be wrong.
During his run on the court at Coupeville High School from 1987-1991, McFadyen, who also was the starting QB on the undefeated ’90 Wolf football squad, had his last name misspelled 43 out of 61 times.
By the HOME team’s scorekeeper.
A lesser player would have been stung by the indignity. Maybe even stopped in their tracks.
McFadyen, if he even knew about it at the time, paid no heed, and worked his way into becoming one of the best, and possibly, most underrated, players the Wolf hoops program has ever seen.
As I work my way through CHS basketball history, I have compiled scoring stats for 37 of the 100 Wolf boys teams.
While there’s still a lot to be unearthed, and many hours in the archives ahead, many of the teams still left will undoubtedly be lower-scoring ones based on the pace of the game during the early decades in which they played.
So, while McFadyen’s place among the best scorers of all time may shift a bit as I go forward, I doubt he’ll tumble very far.
As of the moment, out of all the Wolf gunners whose stats I have, he is the #12 scorer all-time, having rattled home 654 points from the seventh game of his sophomore season to the final game of his senior campaign.
To put that in perspective, the all-time CHS leader is Jeff Stone, who knocked down 1,137 points in three seasons (1967-1970) and the current #10 on my list, Virgil Roehl (1990-1994), tallied 674.
As I continue to dig, there are a couple of old-school legends whose stats I expect to be strong, but I can’t see any way McFadyen isn’t in the top 20 when I’m done.
His place among the greats is a testament to his hard work, his sweet shot and not giving up.
During his freshman season in ’87-’88, McFadyen was busy shooting out the lights for the JV team, while that year’s varsity squad was on its way to qualifying for the state tourney, the last Wolf boys hoops squad to make the trip.
Twice that season CHS coach Ron Bagby brought his frosh phenom up to the varsity bench (where his name was misspelled both times in the book), but neither time did the wily round-ball guru send McFadyen into the game.
Either playing the long game (or not realizing what he had), Bagby started off the next year by giving the now-sophomore gunner exactly three fourth-quarter appearances in the season’s first six games.
Having lost most of their state team to graduation, the Wolves were struggling in ’88-’89, with Tony Ford often left high and dry as the team’s lone scoring weapon.
Until game #7 — Dec. 17, 1988 — when Bagby finally unleashed the beast.
McFadyen entered the game, another double-digit CHS loss, in the fourth quarter. This time he made his mark.
Coupeville had hit exactly one three-point shot all season up to that moment, but McFadyen drained two treys in the final quarter, part of an eight-point explosion which left him as the leading scorer on the night.
And then nothing. Or almost nothing. Two points in a little bit of playing time over the next two games.
Welcome to Dec. 29, 1988, the first time Bagby allowed McFadyen to play all four quarters in a varsity game.
It was the tenth game of the season, Sultan was the foe, and McFadyen took control, raining down 17 points, with two three-balls and a flawless 5-5 performance at the free-throw line.
CHS lost 49-44 (it was a rough rebuilding season), but suddenly there was a new sheriff in town, and he had a license to shoot.
Ford continued to bang away, leading the team in scoring with 276 points on the season, while McFadyen hit double digits six more times in the second half of the season.
He topped out with back-to-back 18-point games against Orcas and Lopez and finished the year second on the team in scoring, compiling his 122 points in basically half a season.
With Ford set to graduate, the torch was passed. They still couldn’t spell McFadyen’s name, but there was little doubt he was the #1 scoring option moving forward.
During his junior and senior seasons, Coupeville, having built its roster back up, made strong runs at postseason glory.
In ’88-’89 only two Wolves had cracked 100 points, but in ’89-’90, that figure shot up to six, with McFadyen raining down a team-high 271.
He was joined by Ben Biskovich (213), Sean Dillon (200), Frank Marti (177), Wayne Hardie (143) and Jesse Smith (111).
Then, during McFadyen’s senior campaign, CHS came within six points of having five different players top the 200-point mark.
McFadyen banked home 261, while Dillon (258), Brad Haslam (230) and Marti (221) were close on his heels.
Give Biskovich (194) three more baskets and the ’90-’91 team would have been just the second team in the last four decades to achieve the five-guys-with-200-points feat.
Instead, that ’87-’88 state squad, with Timm Orsborn (345), Dan Nieder (313), Joe Tessaro (260), Brad Brown (253) and Chad Gale (225) stands alone.
Though, fun side fact, even with all that firepower, the ’87-’88 team is still NOT the highest-scoring in school history, a record handily owned by Jeff Stone, Corey Cross and the immortal ’69-’70 team.
But anyway, we were talking about McFadyen, a master of consistency.
He topped double figures in scoring 29 times over his final two seasons (14 as a junior, 15 as a senior) and this is sort of uncanny — scored a career-high 21 four times.
Never 22, never 20.
But 21, a winning mark in Vegas and on the hardwood, four separate times, against Mount Vernon Christian and Snohomish County Christian as a junior and against Orcas Island and Concrete in his final season.
Scan through the books and you notice he also scored consistently, mixing in three-balls and free throws with steady and dependable two-point shots.
Three-point shooting records are hard to track, and the shot itself only hit the high school stage in the late ’80s, but McFadyen would stand somewhere around #6 or #7 all-time for CHS.
He trails just Brad Sherman, Pete Petrov, Mike Bagby, Ty Blouin and Rich Morris and is right there in a tussle with Kramer O’Keefe and Alex Evans.
Every single one of those other players benefited from the game putting a bigger emphasis on the three-ball during their playing days — the ’90s and early 2000s — proving McFadyen was ahead of his time.
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