Brad Sherman, still rumbling in his “later years.” (John Fisken photo)
Gems from the back of various score-books. On the left is the scrawled record of the 1999-2000 CHS boys JV team. At right, an intrasquad game from Feb., 2001.
Hidden gems everywhere.
Crawl through enough score-books, as I have been doing lately, and you’ll find all sorts of unexpected things.
As I work my way through 18 of the 20 books from Randy King’s tenure as head boys’ basketball coach at Coupeville High School (1991-2011), I found two more things which caught my fancy.
One was a hand-scrawled record of the JV season from 1999-2000, the other a record of a hotly-contested intrasquad game from early 2001.
In the grand scheme of things, neither one is earth-shattering, maybe.
But both are small slices of a bigger history, bits of thread that can now be woven back into the tapestry of Wolf Nation.
The JV record, recorded in at least five different pen colors (and pencil), tells the tale of a team that lost on opening day, then rolled like a freight train down a steep incline the rest of the way.
Those young Wolves won their final 12 games en route to an eye-popping 18-2 record (that year’s varsity squad went 12-10).
They beat always-strong La Conner twice (nice), thumped the richniks from Archbishop Thomas Muphy twice (even nicer) and ravaged Island arch-rival South Whidbey twice (nicest).
Only Sequim and Lynnwood could catch that pack of Wolves, who reportedly consisted of Geoff Hageman, Dustin Van Velkinburgh, Matt Helm, Joe Kelley, James Meek, Rob Fasolo, Sean Callahan, Chris Good, Casey Clark, Brad Sherman, Brian Roundy and Rob Blouin.
The other little gem is a five-on-five game between teammates that someone took the time to record for posterity.
Apparently they knew that 15 years later, I was going to deeply care.
In the showdown, which features a who’s-who of Wolf hoops stars, Sherman and Callahan went toe-to-toe.
Callahan won the individual battle 33-32, but Sherman’s squad, identified as The Wagon Burners, won the war, running away with an 83-77 victory.
From the score-book, the game looks like a scorcher.
Sherman’s boys surge out to a 24-18 lead after one, fall behind by three at the half, reclaim a basket lead through three and put the game away with another 24-18 surge in the final quarter.
Well, sort of…
When you look at the book 15 years later, Sherman’s team scored 22 in the fourth, not the 24 listed, so the final score should have been 81-77.
That’s actually one of two mistakes that day.
Whomever was recording things originally had Sherman scoring 26, then scratched it out and wrote in 30. Only thing is, he really had 32 when you count the baskets.
Anyway, no scandal here. Movin’ on.
Sherman’s cause was helped by Brian Fakkema, who hit five treys as part of his 20, while Joe Rojas banged for 14.
Roundy (8) and current CHS boys’ JV coach Van Velkingburgh (7) rounded out the Wagon Masters scoring.
On the other side, you can’t read the team name through the scrawled pencil (well, at least, I can’t), but I can see Erick Harada had 17 in support of Callahan.
Ty Blouin dropped in 12, Scott Harbour (whose last name is misspelled, and probably not for the last time) banked home 11 and the game’s mystery man had two.
It simply says LeCorre, and is the only one of the 10 names I didn’t recognize.
With a little research (a Facebook message to Van Velkinburgh) it turns out the interloper was a French foreign exchange student named Andrew who went on to play soccer in Oak Harbor.
So, now we know. One less mystery to keep me awake at night.
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