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Posts Tagged ‘CHS Wolves’

It begins, again

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on August 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Coupeville fans await the start of a new school year. (David Svien photo)

The calendar turns to August, and the countdown begins.

As we sit here Sunday morning, there’s 17 days until the start of fall football practice (Aug. 21), with cross country, volleyball, tennis, cheer, and soccer all officially ramping up Aug. 26.

The Coupeville High School booters are first to take the field, with a jamboree in Oak Harbor Sept. 5, while the Wolf football squad gets the first official game a night later at home against Port Townsend.

After that, we’re fully into the 2019-2020 school year.

Coupeville Sports turns seven years old Aug. 15, so this will be the eighth school year in the history of a blog which has already run 7,111 articles (as of this one).

If you’re new to this, here’s what to expect, based on the last seven years.

If I stay focused, I’ll produce 75-100 articles a month going forward, covering all CHS and Coupeville Middle School teams, as well as local community sports.

This will be a mixture of game and feature stories, and I try and report on every game either the same day it happens, or by the next morning.

Our unwritten agreement is that when you get up in the AM, and have your coffee, or cold cereal, or your coffee in your cold cereal, if it’s that kind of morning, you’ll be able to read about everything which happened the night before.

Sports-wise, at least.

I operate on my own and am NOT EMPLOYED BY THE SCHOOL DISTRICT.

If you have an issue with anything I write, you’ll get much further by talking to me than by harassing administration and/or coaches.

Email me at davidsvien@hotmail.com, message me on Facebook or talk to me at a game.

The same works if you have a story idea.

Coupeville Sports, unlike the local newspapers, operates without a pay wall.

Always has. Always will.

If you want to read for free, so be it. But, if you like what I’m doing and want to be part of my support group, even better.

If you want to help keep my fingers pounding away into the wee hours of the morning, donations are greatly appreciated and can be done in person, by mail (165 Sherman, Coupeville, WA), or through PayPal.

Here’s a handy-dandy link:

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/DavidSvien

I’m not a non-profit, but I don’t make much profit. And I’m fine with that.

So, onward we go, into a new school year, the second, and, most likely, final one in the North Sound Conference.

Will CHS, one of the smallest 1A schools in the land, be granted its freedom by the new classification counts and return to 2B after many years?

Who will be the CHS Athlete of the Year winners? My money is on Maya and Sean Toomey-Stout pulling off a family daily double.

There’s a thousand other questions lingering — some big, some small — all waiting to have their answers documented on the bloggiest blog in all of Cow Town.

Here … we … go.

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There’s life outside the gym

Posted in coach chatter, tagged , , , , on August 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »

After a long run as Coupeville High School coaches, Amy and David King are still adjusting to “retirement.” (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

They finally got a real vacation.

When Coupeville High School girls basketball coaches David and Amy King resigned last winter, it brought at least a temporary end to their run as coach “lifers.”

The duo, who put in seven seasons with the CHS hoops program, had also worked with high school softball, baseball, and volleyball, as well as community programs and individual player coaching.

All told, the Kings had been coaching for close to two decades.

That meant celebrating their wedding anniversary at the gym – since it fell during basketball season – and juggling their coaching gigs with real-world jobs.

Now, they’re footless and fancy free (mostly), are coming off their first real vacation since 2001, and are adjusting to a new lifestyle.

As they marinate in a world of possibilities, they took a moment to reflect on life without a clipboard or basketball in hand.

Cause they may be free, but they can never really escape my emails.

So, straight from casa de King:

When we announced our coaching retirement at the end of this last season, it was amazing how many people asked us “how’s retirement?” within a few weeks of that retirement date.

We also had to tell them, we still have our day jobs…

In reality, when a season ends, we (we all know Amy does the majority of the work) take care of inventory, putting things away, turning in our paperwork and locking things up for the off-season.

For basketball, there is a good month between the season ending and the starting of planning for the Hoop-A-Holics fundraiser and team basketball camp.

This year, we still helped with the Hoop-A-Holics fundraiser – making sure the new coaches understood what needed to happen and in what time frame, and we still participated, as the weekend is a lot of fun.

We knew we had retired only because we didn’t have to harass our players and parents for participation and food.

It still didn’t sink in though. It still just felt normal, but with extra help.

Normally, basketball camp would be the week following Hoop-A-Holics.

So the time and effort that would normally go into planning which camp we were going to and getting all the players set to go, arranging transportation and lodging, fundraisers, etc., went into working on a personal vacation towards the end of the summer instead.

We missed going to the camp, but not necessarily all the planning and organization that goes into that week.

Team camp has always been a favorite activity for us, spending time away from the school with the players, working on the team bonding and playing against teams that we would not normally see.

It is so much fun to spend camp time getting to see the girls goofy and together outside of the school season, along with seeing where we need work once the season starts.

Having the incoming players get their feet wet with the returning players and of course them learning about us and us about them.

After camp, there is normally an off time as the gyms are closed for refinishing the floors; but, there is the weight room time and planning for open gyms we would be involved with.

This is probably the one area that we saw a difference.

In years past we would go to work, get off and either head to the gym or home and then to the gym.

This year it was work and to home. No more afternoons/evenings being disrupted by stopping what we were doing to head to the gym.

During summer, we typically would start to review drills to teach skills and what kind of offenses will we think about running during the season, etc.

So, this summer, that extra time has been put into creating a new garden area that deer and rabbits can’t get into, David getting more time on his tractor and making paths in the woods and just a lot of normal day-job work.

We really have been so busy, that we have not had time to miss open gyms.

For me personally (David) I miss the time spent evaluating our teams’ strengths and weaknesses, along with evaluating the teams in our leagues.

The coaching part and seeing growth in the players are high on my favorite things about coaching.

Right up there with that for me is the strategy side of things and providing the tendencies of our team and our opponents. Hours would be spent on this stuff.

So, how is retirement?

😊

We really don’t know yet. It really won’t hit us until October when we aren’t gearing up for the season.

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CHS female athletes set the pace

Posted in standings, tagged , , , , , , on August 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Avalon Renninger is a vital part of Wolf girls tennis and basketball, the two most-successful CHS athletic programs during the Coupeville Sports days. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

The girls rule Coupeville High School.

And before you offer an argument, it’s right there in black and white.

This blog launched August 15, 2012, which means it’s been in place for seven complete school years at this point.

In that time, the 10 CHS athletic teams which keep win/loss records have combined to post 19 winning seasons, with 14 of those coming from female athletes.

That’s 73.6%, so the argument is more than done (at least at this moment in time).

Those 10 sports (we’re not counting track or cross country, which operate in their own world of score-keeping) include five girls teams and five boys squads.

On the girls side, all five sports have at least one winning season during the run of Coupeville Sports, while three of the five boys teams have yet to break .500 between 2012-2013 and 2018-2019.

The last seven years have seen Coupeville compete in three different leagues.

Two final years in the 1A/2A Cascade Conference were followed by four years in the Olympic League, then the 2018-2019 school year kicked off the 1A North Sound Conference.

The years spent with Klahowya, Port Townsend, and Chimacum in the Olympic League were the sweet spot, as CHS captured the most league wins of any of the four schools, while claiming 14 of its 19 winning seasons.

Back in the company of private schools like King’s and Cedar Park Christian this past year, the Wolves took a step back, percentage-wise, but still claimed three winning campaigns.

That was one more than CHS totaled across its final two years of being hammered by Archbishop Thomas Murphy and Co. in the old Cascade Conference.

Looking at the results, there are several things which emerge.

The two CHS programs with the highest winning percentages from 2012-2013 to 2018-2019 — girls tennis and girls basketball — only had one coach during that time period.

Ken Stange, who has also guided boys tennis to the fifth-best mark, was already in place long before I left the Coupeville Examiner to start this blog, while girls hoop guru David King was hired right as it began.

Girls tennis holds down the #1 slot, despite taking a step back the past two seasons, while volleyball and softball are rising up the rankings, with each having posted three-straight winning seasons.

Overall, counting league and non-league clashes, Coupeville has compiled a 482-667 record during my blogging days. That’s a .419 winning percentage.

Better than a lot of schools, but no one is going to call us a state powerhouse anytime soon.

As we head into a second season in the North Sound Conference, with the possible promise of a long-anticipated return to 2B a year from now, my hope is for the wins to keep trending upward.

If nothing else, that makes my job easier, and making my job easier is priority #1.

It’s not? Well, it should be.

 

Breakdown by sport:

 

Girls Tennis:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 9-3
2013-2014 6-7
2014-2015 11-3
2015-2016 10-3
2016-2017 6-3
2017-2018 7-8
2018-2019 2-7
(51-34) .600

 

Girls Basketball:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 6-16
2013-2014 10-13
2014-2015 15-7
2015-2016 16-6
2016-2017 15-6
2017-2018 8-14
2018-2019 9-10
(79-72) .523

 

Baseball:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 10-12
2013-2014 14-11
2014-2015 9-10
2015-2016 10-12
2016-2017 11-9
2017-2018 15-6
2018-2019 7-14
(76-74) .507

 

Softball:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 6-16
2013-2014 8-20
2014-2015 7-12
2015-2016 9-11
2016-2017 19-5
2017-2018 12-9
2018-2019 15-10
(76-83) .478

 

Boys Tennis:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 4-4
2013-2014 0-7
2014-2015 4-5
2015-2016 5-3
2016-2017 5-8
2017-2018 6-7
2018-2019 8-6
(32-40) .444

 

Volleyball:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 4-13
2013-2014 3-12
2014-2015 1-11
2015-2016 6-10
2016-2017 11-6
2017-2018 13-5
2018-2019 11-5
(49-62) .441

 

Girls Soccer:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 1-16-0
2013-2014 2-14-0
2014-2015 6-7-1
2015-2016 6-7-3
2016-2017 8-7-1
2017-2018 8-9-0
2018-2019 2-12-1
(33-72-6) .324

 

Boys Soccer:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 3-14-0
2013-2014 5-10-2
2014-2015 3-11-0
2015-2016 5-9-1
2016-2017 4-11-1
2017-2018 7-9-2
2018-2019 6-10-0
(33-74-6) .319

 

Football:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 2-9
2013-2014 4-5
2014-2015 5-5
2015-2016 1-9
2016-2017 3-7
2017-2018 3-7
2018-2019 3-6
(21-48) .304

 

Boys Basketball:

School Year: W/L:
2012-2013 1-21
2013-2014 3-17
2014-2015 7-13
2015-2016 9-11
2016-2017 3-17
2017-2018 7-13
2018-2019 2-16
(32-108) .229

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Time to break the dry spell

Posted in Football, tagged , , , , on July 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Coupeville High School football hasn’t posted a winning record since 2005, the longest dry spell for any Wolf athletic program. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

It’s an uphill battle.

As we hit three weeks and counting until the first official practice of a new fall high school sports season, the Wolf football squad — which opens things Aug. 21 — remains mired in a long dry spell.

It’s been 14 seasons since the Coupeville gridiron team posted a winning record, by far the longest skid for a CHS program.

That run, in which the Wolves have posted one .500 season and 12 losing marks, covers six coaches and four (or maybe five) leagues.

Coupeville is playing an independent, non-conference schedule this season as second-year coach Marcus Carr works on rebuilding the program.

New classification counts happen this year, and will go into effect with the 2020-2021 school year.

With new hard count rules, CHS is expected to finally be allowed to return to 2B at that point, after being one of the smallest 1A schools for many years.

During this year of limbo, the Wolf football program opted to break with the 1A North Sound Conference after one season. Coupeville went 3-6 overall, 0-5 in league play in 2018.

Since they’re not part of a league, the Wolves can only make the playoffs this fall if they go 9-0, something they last accomplished in 1990.

While perfection is the goal, posting a winning record would constitute a major step in the right direction.

You have to go back, through the North Sound Conference, through the 1A Olympic League, through the 1A/2A Cascade Conference, and land in Coupeville’s final year in the 1A Northwest League, to find the last Wolf gridiron team to break .500.

That covers four leagues, or, technically, five.

Coupeville was in the Olympic League from 2014-2018, but the final two seasons the conference linked up with the 1A Nisqually League for football only, creating an eight-team, two-league hybrid.

But four leagues, or five, the point is you have to go back fairly far to find a CHS football team with a positive win/loss record.

The last one was the 2005 edition, coached by longtime football guru Ron Bagby, who put in 26 seasons on the sidelines at Mickey Clark Field.

Those Wolves went 6-5, won four straight games at one point, had a winning record on the road, and finished third in a tough eight-team league.

The Northwest League champs, Friday Harbor, a team Coupeville would reunite with if it goes 2B, went 12-1 that year, losing in the state semifinals.

La Conner, the only other league team the Wolves lost to, were knocked out of the playoffs by Friday Harbor.

The 2005 Northwest League standings:

School League Overall
Friday Harbor 7-0 12-1
La Conner 6-1 8-3
Coupeville 5-2 6-5
CPC-Bothell 3-4 4-6
Orcas Island 3-4 7-5
Annie Wright 2-5 4-5
Concrete 2-5 3-7
Darrington 0-7 0-8

After opening the non-conference schedule with a pair of losses, Coupeville reeled off six wins in seven games, before closing with a pair of defeats.

The first stumble, against La Conner, came in a battle for second-place in the final conference standings, while the second loss came in the playoff opener.

Coupeville’s 2005 schedule:

Blaine — lost 46-20
@Granite Falls — lost 15-13
Tacoma Baptist — won 36-0
@Concrete — won 34-14
Friday Harbor — lost 61-22
@Orcas — won 33-18
Annie Wright — won 42-20
@Darrington — won 35-15
@CPC-Bothell — won 44-22
La Conner — lost 38-22
@Kalama — lost 26-0

After that, it was off to a 1A/2A league which featured private school powers Archbishop Thomas Murphy and King’s, and things haven’t been quite the same since.

How CHS football has done since 2005:

2006 — (4-6) — Ron Bagby
2007 — (5-6) — Ron Bagby
2008 — (0-10) — Ron Bagby
2009 — (4-6) — Ron Bagby
2010 — (2-8) — Jay Silver
2011 — (1-8) — Jay Silver
2012 — (2-9) — Tony Maggio
2013 — (4-5) — Tony Maggio
2014 — (5-5) — Tony Maggio
2015 — (1-9) — Brett Smedley
2016 — (3-7) — Jon Atkins
2017 — (3-7) — Jon Atkins
2018 — (3-6) — Marcus Carr

So, how does that compare with other athletic programs at CHS?

Well, the other nine Wolf teams which keep win/loss records (that excludes track and cross country) have all had a winning season in the 2010’s.

Volleyball and softball, which have both been to the state tourney recently, are the most-successful, with winning seasons three years running.

Cory Whitmore is the only active CHS coach to have posted a plus-.500 mark in every season at the helm, having guided the spikers to 11-6, 13-5, and 11-5 marks since taking the job prior to the 2016-2017 season.

Softball coach Kevin McGranahan is hot on his heels, with winning seasons in three of four years on the job.

Under his guidance, the Wolf diamond sluggers have gone 19-5, 12-9, and 15-10 the past three springs.

Each CHS program’s last winning season, with ** indicating it came in that team’s most-recent campaign:

Softball (15-10) — spring 2019 — Kevin McGranahan **
Volleyball (11-5) — fall 2018 — Cory Whitmore **
Boys Tennis (8-6) — fall 2018 — Ken Stange **
Baseball (15-6) — spring 2018 — Chris Smith
Girls Tennis (6-3) — spring 2017 — Ken Stange
Girls Basketball (15-6) — winter 2017 — David King
Girls Soccer (8-7-1) — fall 2016 — Troy Cowan
Boys Soccer (10-8) — spring 2012 — Paul Mendes
Boys Basketball (16-5) — winter 2010 — Randy King
Football (6-5) — fall 2005 — Ron Bagby

So, in the end, what does this all mean?

It’s not meant to embarrass the CHS football program, which has had quality players and coaches during these lean years.

But history is history, and it can’t be ignored.

The teams of the past, whether they were highly-successful or struggled, give the current squads something to shoot for, to compare themselves against.

I have faith we’ll see another Wolf football team post a winning record.

So dig deep, 2019 squad. It’s time to get off the schneid.

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Spark lit up the joint

Posted in Boys Basketball, Boys Soccer, Hall o' Fame, tagged , , , , on July 29, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Ethan Spark celebrates a well-timed three-ball. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

A superb passer and a dangerous scorer, Spark was electrifying on the soccer pitch.

“Just give me the dang ball!”

Splash. Splash. Splash.

It’s the sound of a high-arcing three-point bomb dropping back to Earth and gently snapping the bottom of the net while knifing the collective heart of five rivals.

It’s the sound a soccer ball makes after it travels half the length of the field, exploding off the toes of a marksman, then whistling past defenders and the goalie to bury itself, improbably but wonderfully, in the back of the net.

It’s the sound Ethan Spark made when he worked.

The 2018 Coupeville High School grad was a cold-blooded killer and thriller during his time in a Wolf uniform, and it’s for that we induct him today into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame.

After this, when you look at the top of the blog, up under the Legends tab, you’ll find Spark hanging out with big sis Jenn, as both of Kali Barrio’s children take up residence in our little digital hall o’ wonders.

During his time on the pitch and hard-court, Ethan was Coupeville’s answer to Scottie Pippen, and I mean that with a deep amount of respect.

Michael Jordan was Michael Jordan, but never forget Pippen was an NBA Hall of Fame player, a six-time champ, and one of the best to ever pick up a basketball.

Spark played alongside Hunter Smith on the basketball court, and the Leyva cousins (Abraham, Aram, and Derek) plus Will Nelson, on the soccer pitch, some of the most electrifying athletes CHS has witnessed.

But they, like Jordan, became better because they had Pippen running alongside them.

On the basketball court, Spark was a fearless shooter, one who lived to gut other team’s with three-balls a-droppin’.

He fully believed he could hit any shot, from any angle on the floor, at any point of the game, and he backed that up more often than not.

And every time Spark elevated, slight smirk on his face, and drilled the bottom out of the net, he opened things up for Smith, and made it tougher for other teams to focus on the high-scoring rampager.

Across two varsity hoops seasons, Spark dropped in 352 points, which puts him #68 on the CHS boys career scoring list, a chart which covers 102 seasons of Wolf basketball.

He could have finished higher if he had been more selfish, but Spark was also a strong, and willing, passer who often delighted in sucking the defense to him, then dishing it to a suddenly wide-open Smith, Joey Lippo, or Gabe Wynn.

Ethan was also fond of teaming up with Hunter Downes as the duo burrowed deep into their rival’s heads.

Not afraid to exchange elbows with larger players, both played with nice lil’ chips on their shoulders, provoking their opponents into lapses in judgement, then strolling away, smirks intact, as the refs punished the other guy.

That carried onto the soccer pitch, where Spark played rough ‘n ready, while also showcasing one of the best scoring touches in the game.

Like his older sister and her bionic leg, Ethan was the guy the Wolves went to when they needed someone to crush a ball from deep in his own territory.

He could air the ball out, but also showed a sometimes uncanny touch, using his long shots as weapons, and not just as a way to clear the ball from his own side of the field.

With 17 career goals, Spark stands #5 on the CHS boys soccer career scoring chart, though he’s being a bit short-changed.

Injuries took away much of his senior season, preventing him from keeping pace with Nelson, who tallied 20 scores across four seasons.

But, when he was healthy, Spark was Pippen, fully capable of roasting teams by himself, but also a highly-efficient set-up man, his passes slicing through defenses to set up the Leyva trio for a hail of goals.

And yet, with all the three-balls and the game-busting penalty kicks, the moment I will most remember from his career didn’t involve a single point.

It came during his freshman season, when he was a fast-rising JV hoops star intent on blowing up everyone in his sight.

Sometimes literally.

Chasing a loose ball as it careened towards the sideline, Spark reached the point where 99% of players would stop, then jammed the gas pedal through the floor.

Flinging his arm out at the last millisecond to redirect the ball back onto the court, he exploded through a wall of chairs.

CHS players and coaches flew through the air like bowling pins, as Spark spun towards the locker room door and completely, absolutely destroyed a large water jug that was minding its own business.

Complete devastation ruled the land. Referees stood with their mouths agape.

Bodies and chairs were everywhere, and in the middle of where the tornado touched down stood Spark, drenched head to toe in water.

From somewhere to his left, Wolf coach Dustin Van Velkinburgh plucked himself from the floor, shaking his head.

“You crazy man! You crazy… and I like it!!”

Slight nod, slight smirk, and Spark loped away to the other end of the court, having taken the first step on a rampage which would carry him to the Hall of Fame.

Scottie Pippen would have been proud.

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