Avalon Renninger and Coupeville basketball kick off the 2019 portion of their season Friday in Shoreline. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
The calendar flips, and who knows what awaits us?
Looking ahead at 2019, the one thing we know for sure is this – no one knows nothing.
There will undoubtedly be surprises galore, and, hopefully, they’ll fall more on the positive side than the negative side.
But here’s a few things to keep an eye on as we move ahead.
WINTER:
From here on out, it’s all league games for the Coupeville High School basketball teams.
The Wolf girls sit at 2-0 in North Sound Conference play, 4-5 overall, heading into “The Showdown in Shoreline” Friday, which pits CHS against King’s (2-0, 7-3) for sole-possession of first in the North Sound Conference.
Win or lose, Coupeville has seven more league clashes after that, and can punch a ticket to the postseason if it finishes in the top five in a six-team league.
The CHS boys (0-1, 1-7) are currently in 4th place, but, with nine games remaining, also control their own destiny.
Several Wolves are chasing individual accomplishments, beginning with Lindsey Roberts.
The senior captain sits at #24 on the career scoring chart, with 390 points, and is just 36 from cracking the all-time top 20.
While Roberts has the biggest story-line, there’s also senior Ema Smith, who needs a bucket to reach 150 career points and sophomore Chelsea Prescott, who is a three-ball shy of 100 career points.
Prescott would be the 98th CHS girl between 1975-2019 to break triple digits, joining Roberts, Ema Smith and junior Scout Smith (103 points) as active players in the exclusive club.
On the boys side of the ball, junior Mason Grove is the top active scorer, with 95 career points to his name. Net five more and he becomes the 162nd Wolf male in the modern era to hit 1-0-0.
Hot on his heels is freshman Hawthorne Wolfe, who leads Coupeville with 84 points in eight games.
He’s trying to become just the fifth Wolf boy in 102 seasons to toss in 100+ varsity points during his 9th grade season, and has his eyes on Mike Bagby’s frosh boys scoring record of 137.
While the CHS hoops squads return to action, they’ll soon be joined by the Coupeville Middle School girls.
The biggest moment of the winter, however, will play out off the court.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association meets Jan. 28 to vote on amendments which could toss everything topsy-turvy.
There’s a ton of moving parts, but here’s the simple breakdown.
If the biggest amendment on the agenda is approved (and it’s heavily favored), the WIAA will change how it classifies schools for athletics.
Instead of trying to keep things relatively balanced, by forcing a similar number of schools to fit into each level (4A, 3A, 2A, 1A, 2B, 1B), there would be set numbers.
Under that set-up, if you have 105-224 students, you’re 2B. Count 225-449 bodies and it’s 1A, and so on.
While final numbers for each school are still in flux, as the WIAA also works on a formula to aid schools which give an above-average amount of free or reduced-price lunches, the change could benefit Coupeville.
It’s very possible CHS, one of the smallest 1A schools for many years, would slip back to 2B under the new counts.
If so, the Wolves would ditch the new North Sound Conference after one year and head back to the Northwest League and old-school foes like La Conner, Concrete and Friday Harbor, beginning next fall.
Then again, if things go like they have in the past, Coupeville will miss the new count by half a body and be locked into being the smallest school in 1A for all eternity.
Only time will tell.
SPRING:
Coupeville exited the Olympic League with a splash, winning five league titles (baseball, softball, girls and boys track, girls tennis) last spring, before adding a district title and 5th place team finish at state for boys track.
With new foes and new players in key roles, all of those teams face new challenges, but a few Wolves are primed to make runs at records.
On the soccer pitch, junior cousins Derek and Aram Leyva can make an assault on the boys soccer career scoring record, held by Aram’s big brother, Abraham.
Abraham scored 45 goals over three seasons before graduating, while Derek set the Wolf boys single-season mark of 24 in his first go-around last year.
Aram, with 19 tallies (six as a freshman, 13 as a sophomore), isn’t far behind, and the duo could join Abraham, Mia Littlejohn (35) and Kalia Littlejohn (33) in the 30-goal club.
On the track oval, seniors Roberts (100 hurdles) and Danny Conlisk (400) are coming off 2nd place finishes in Cheney, and would love to break Coupeville’s state title drought.
The last Wolf to stand on top of the podium was Tyler King, who claimed a cross country championship in fall 2010. Several months before that, he won a pair of track titles, as well.
Roberts has claimed five competitive state track meet medals, earning at least one each year, and is tied with Yashmeen Knox for third all-time among Wolf girls.
Makana Stone (7) and Natasha Bamberger (6) are the last two for her to catch.
Joining an exclusive club, Conlisk used his performance in the 400 to become just the 23rd Wolf to collect a third competitive medal.
With every medal after this, the club just gets more and more exclusive.
NEXT FALL:
Will Coupeville jump to 2B (boys and girls soccer together in the fall, and a lot less private schools), or dig in and plow ahead in 1A?
Can middle school football, which shut down two games early this past fall, be saved?
And most importantly, will I still be able to walk after months more of working on my sister’s homestead, Never Free Farm?
Well, like someone once said – no one knows nothing.
But I do know this – next fall brings a new class of talented freshmen to the high school, while “The Chosen One,” basketball whiz kid Savina Wells, enters 7th grade and gets to finally lay waste to middle school foes.
So, that’s a big something, something right there.
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