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Posts Tagged ‘CHS Wolves’

Logan Downes lines up a free throw during his junior season. (Andrew Williams photo)

It’s the gold standard.

Across 107 seasons of Coupeville High School basketball, we’ve documented 762 different players — 416 boys and 246 girls — scoring in a varsity game.

Until today, only nine had topped the 1,000-point barrier.

Now, it’s double digits for the four-digit club.

Wolf senior Logan Downes became the sixth CHS boy, and tenth player overall in school history, to achieve hoops immortality, doing so Friday on a slash to the hoop as time ran down in the first quarter of a 72-30 rout at Darrington.

The silky sniper finished with 16 points in limited minutes and sits at 227 with half his senior season left to play.

The Wolves, now 8-2 on the current campaign, have 10 regular-season games still on the schedule (assuming a postponed South Whidbey clash is reinstated), then hopefully a long playoff run.

The look of a freshman who’s coming for all the records. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Downes scored 52 points as a freshman during a Covid-shortened season, then jumped to 172 the next year, helping CHS win a league title and advance to state.

As a junior, he torched the nets for 554 points, the second-best single-season performance in school history, trailing just Jeff Stone’s 644 in 1969-1970.

Downes is averaging 22.7 a night as a senior.

 

The CHS 1,000-point club:

Brianne King — 1,549
Novi Barron — 1,270
Makana Stone — 1,158
Jeff Stone — 1,137
Mike Bagby — 1,137
Randy Keefe — 1,088
Megan Smith — 1,042
Mike Criscoula — 1,031
Jeff Rhubottom — 1,012
Logan Downes — 1,005 and counting

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Kirsten Pelroy, a talented athlete and better human being.

Kirsten Pelroy is a special human being.

Utterly unique, her soaring spirit eclipsing even her often-amazing athletic talent, the 2016 Coupeville High School grad forever lives large in the memory of Wolf fans.

Kirsten’s name still graces the CHS track record board in the entrance to the school’s gym.

She was just a fab frosh in 2013 when she ran a leg on a 4 x 400 relay team which set a mark which has now stood for more than a decade.

One of the silkiest, deadliest runners to ever step to the line while reppin’ the red and black, Kirsten was a multi-event threat.

She ran on all three relay teams during her high school days, and actually also still holds part of a Coupeville Middle School record for the 4 x 200.

When not perfecting her baton handoff, then coming up big in crunch time moments during the postseason, Kirsten ran in the 100, 200, and 400, while also competing in both the 100 and 300 hurdles events.

Racking up 10 wins, multiple PR’s, and a lot of dropped jaws from rivals, she was a key part of a generation of superb female athletes who held their own against athletes from much-bigger schools as Coupeville proved it didn’t matter how many students a school had, as long as the ones they did possess were kick-ass warriors.

That carried over to the soccer field, where Kirsten used her quicksilver speed to zoom away, or sometimes right over, any fool who tried to make a play for the ball while it was on her toe.

Staring down the best booters the world could send her way, she was a rock-em, sock-em superstar who often sacrificed her own stats for the good of the team.

Kirsten played for the girls on her squad, and her happiest moment as a CHS soccer player seemingly came on Senior Night, when she asked for a group hug and got promptly mobbed by her pitch sisters.

“Can’t catch me, can’t stop me!!” (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Toss in a run as a Wolf cheerleader, and Mitch’s lil’ sis was the real deal as a well-balanced athletic success.

But like all of the truly memorable ones, Kirsten’s impact went far beyond sports.

She was, and is, a bright, shining light piercing a world of greys.

Back in her high school days I described Kirsten thusly:

“A whip-smart, truck-drivin’, multi-hair-colored-rockin’ whirlwind of fun ‘n sun, she has style for days and her epic smile reaches the field a good two feet before she does.”

A radiant star, hanging out with two of her biggest fans. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Nothing has changed since her exit into the adult world, as she remains one of the most-vibrant human beings you will ever meet.

Which is part of why today, after too long a wait, we warmly welcome Kirsten into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame as our newest inductee.

After this you’ll find her hanging out under the Legends tab at the top of the blog, joining big bro.

Entrance to our digital shrine may make it “official” that Kirsten is one of the true big-timers of Wolf Nation, but you don’t need me to tell you how special she is.

If you’ve ever met her, spoken to her, or watched her gracefully navigate the world, you already know.

Look up “transcendent” in the dictionary, and there Kirsten Pelroy will be, rockin’ the joint as always.

Dr. Jim Shank gets to shake the hand of a legend. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

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Gabe McMurray powers to the hoop for a bucket during an alumni game. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Gabe McMurray was a beast.

One of the big stars at Coupeville High School during my days as Sports Editor at the Whidbey News-Times in the early ’90s, he dominated in multiple sports and left an enduring impact on a writer only a few years older than he was.

The news that he passed away this week, well before his time, hits hard, and I extend my sympathies to his family and friends.

A 1995 graduate of CHS, Gabe scorched the basketball nets for 592 points, and surely grabbed as many rebounds, while playing alongside Brad Miller in one of the most formidable one-two combos I’ve witnessed during my on-again, off-again years in the Coupeville gym.

Standing at six-feet-two inches, he capped his prep hoops career by being named a First-Team All-League pick by Cascade League coaches.

That year, Gabe poured in a team-high 355 points for Randy King’s squad, still one of the best single-season performances by a Wolf basketball player, boy or girl.

That came on the heels of a 235-point performance during his junior campaign, while his first varsity bucket hit the bottom of the net when he was a sophomore.

Gabe, who was also a standout on the football field, was an inductee in the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame, and came back around in his later years to prove he still had it, throwing down buckets in alumni games while often facing off with younger rivals.

He was one of a kind, as an athlete and a person.

Gabe’s former classmates and fellow Wolf athletes gathered on social media to remember him as word filtered out.

In the words of Natalie (Slater) Fisher on Facebook:

“Today CHS lost a friend. You touched many with your kindness, sarcasm, and contagious smile. You will be missed.”

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Logan Downes eyeballs history. (Andrew Williams photo)

We are all witnesses.

As 2024 begins to play out, Coupeville High School is deep into its 107th season of boys’ basketball and its 50th campaign for the girls.

My detective work has unearthed 658 Wolves — 414 boys and 244 girls — who have scored at least one point in a varsity hoops game.

Now, the real number is certainly higher, as the reality is there are many male players from early decades, such as the 1920’s and 1930’s, whose point totals are lost to history (and discarded score sheets).

On the girl’s side of things, other than having absolutely no stats from season #1 in 1974, we’re sitting much better.

But the reality is, with a much slower pace of play back in the (really) old school days, no one from Altus Custer or Banky Fisher’s eras would have amassed enough points to scale the school’s career scoring chart.

There is one intriguing outlier in the form of Tom Sahli, the only Coupeville grad to go on to face hoops immortal Elgin Baylor on the hardwood.

He rattled the rims for 719 points across his junior and senior seasons at CHS, but we’re missing his sophomore year (1951-1952), so may never know if he cracked the 1,000-point club.

But we do know that there are nine Wolves — five boys and four girls — who made it to four digits during their time repping the red and black (or red and white in an earlier time).

That list:

Brianne King — (1549) — (1999-2003)
Zenovia Barron — (1270) — (1994-1998)
Makana Stone — (1158) — (2012-2016)
Jeff Stone — (1137) — (1967-1970)
Mike Bagby — (1137) — (2002-2006)
Randy Keefe — (1088) — (1973-1976)
Megan Smith — (1042) — (2006-2010)
Mike Criscuola — (1031) — (1956-1960)
Jeff Rhubottom — (1012) — (1975-1978)

And we do know current CHS senior Logan Downes is just 11 points away from making it a 10-person club.

Angie and Ralph’s youngest son has torched the nets for 211 points across Coupeville’s first nine games this season, averaging 23.4 a night, so the chances the milestone moment arrives this Friday in Darrington are high.

If not, the Wolves welcome Auburn Adventist Academy to Cow Town this coming Monday, Jan. 8 in their next game.

Now, nothing is guaranteed, and not every player gets to the round numbers, no matter how talented.

Jason Bagby, a terror on the floor, finished with 499, a rimmed-out free throw shy of 500.

Amanda Fabrizi, one of the more deadly shooters in school history, finished with 299. A ref gives her credit for a three-ball on a shot where her toe touched the line and it’s 3-0-0.

Even those who reach the round numbers often get shorted.

Hawthorne Wolfe dropped in a three-ball at the state tourney on the final shot of his prep career, giving him exactly 800 points.

But a pandemic cost him a season’s worth of games across two seasons and kept him from making a run at the CHS boys’ career scoring record of 1,137 points.

So now here comes Logan Downes, who played alongside Wolfe for two seasons, making his own bid for hoops immortality.

Remember those earlier numbers.

There are 658 Wolves who we know have scored in a varsity game, and Downes would be just the 10th to top 1,000 points.

In doing so he would push the percentage of CHS players to achieve said feat to … 0.0151975683890578.

That’s historical and that’s absolutely worth celebrating.

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Coupeville High School Principal Geoff Kappes anxiously awaits the next round of computerized basketball rankings. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

I trust the baby more than the bureaucrats.

As we head into the new year, the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball team sits at a spiffy 7-2, with its losses coming against always-tough non-conference foes Toledo and Kittitas.

But different computers view the Wolves in different ways.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, whose wheezing ‘n huffing computer recently had a team ranked #1 with a 1-0 record for a win it didn’t actually own, puts Brad Sherman’s squad at #11 among 2B schools.

Evans Rankings, however, is the gold standard for numbers crunchers in the state — especially now that the heir to the throne, wee whippersnapper Carter, has arrived to keep an eagle eye on things — and it places the Wolves at #9.

Both sites have undefeated Lake Roosevelt atop the standings at the moment.

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