Makana Stone, winner of Coupeville High School’s Female Athlete of the Year award. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
Josh Bayne (left) and Aaron Curtin share their school’s highest honor.
Clockwise, from top left, are Aaron Trumbull, Hailey Hammer and Marisa Etzell.
For the past three years, Makana Stone has been the single most exciting athlete at Coupeville High School.
There is no argument about this. No debate.
You know it to be true. I know it to be true. Anyone with two eyes and half a brain knows it to be true.
Wednesday night it finally became official, as the Wolf junior was selected as the school’s 2014-2015 Female Athlete of the Year.
Now she, and seniors Aaron Curtin and Josh Bayne, who shared Male Athlete of the Year honors, will see their smiling faces go up on the wall of honor that leads in to the CHS gym.
Coupeville coaches and administrators made the right call this year, and it takes a bit of the sting away from two years ago, when Stone was flat-out robbed as a freshman.
From the first moment she stepped foot onto the high school campus, she sparkled, first in soccer, then basketball, before producing the greatest regular season track and field accomplishment in school history.
Stone won her first 28 high school races, something no one — not Kyle or Tyler King, not Jon Chittim or Amy Mouw or Natasha Bamberger or any of the other Wolf greats — has ever done at CHS.
That her photo was not already on the gym wall, that she was passed over at the time because of a misguided belief by some that her age should deny her the honor — was, is, and will always be, a travesty.
But this season, no one could refuse a young woman whose athletic prowess is unmatched, but who also shines as the very epitome of what we all would like Wolf athletes to be.
Makana has remained the same selfless, gentle, quietly classy, easy-rolling friend to all that she was as a little girl, and no success has ever changed the sweetness of her spirit.
As a junior, she left soccer behind for the moment to focus on basketball, and proceeded to tear up the new 1A Olympic League like a beast.
A slam-dunk league MVP, she sparked Coupeville to a 9-0 league season in which the Wolves won every game by double digits and captured the program’s first championship banner since 2002.
There was the game where she scored 22 consecutive points.
The blocked shots that were like volleyball spikes into the third row of seats.
The rebounds. The passes. The way she led by example, but always showed respect and love to the six-pack of seniors on her squad.
The moments when she took control of the game, fully realizing she, and she alone, could dictate the flow in a way no one else on the court could.
One play, or series of plays, cemented her status as one of the all-time Wolf greats.
Rising high above the pack, Stone snagged a rebound with one arm, then landed and fired the ball, baseball-style, dropping it into the waiting hands of teammate Kacie Kiel, who was far out on the break.
A defender, frantically trying to get back, veered into Kiel’s path, causing her to stumble as she went in for the break-away layup and put the ball just a smidge too hard off the glass.
At which point, Stone, who had taken off like a rocket after making the pass from the OTHER END OF THE FLOOR, shot past everyone, grabbed the rebound and laid the ball up for a bucket that left the jaws of everyone in the crowd banging off the bleachers.
Most … electrifying … player … to maybe EVER wear a CHS uniform in any sport.
And she’s not done yet.
While they may not have been the sheer force of nature that Stone is, Curtin and Bayne had stellar years as well.
Curtin advanced to state for a second consecutive year in tennis, returned to basketball and helped lead the Wolves, then was named All-Conference as a baseball hurler for a season in which he tossed a no-hitter.
Bayne was All-Conference in baseball, as well, but laid down his best work in the fall.
He was the first-ever football MVP in the 1A Olympic League and was named All-State on both sides of the ball.
Bayne received two other honors Wednesday, sharing the United States Marine Athlete Award and the WIAA Cliff Gillies Student Award with three-sport (volleyball, basketball, softball) star Hailey Hammer.
Marisa Etzell (soccer, track) and Aaron Trumbull (basketball, baseball) were named winners of the Army Reserve National Honor Scholar/Athlete Award.
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