Jeff Rhubottom (top, left) is joined by (clockwise from top right) Bill Jarrell, Randy Keefe and Terry (Perkins) Powell (wearing blue necklace).
Better late than never.
As I’ve constructed the one-man, semi-real shrine to excellence known as the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame, I’ve zigged and I’ve zagged, plucking excellence from all decades.
And yet, I would be the first to admit, my decision-making process has always been at least slightly suspect.
Some people got in really early, and sometimes, for a thousand different reasons, some of the most qualified have been left to bide their time outside the doors of our digital hall.
Almost always it wasn’t intentional. I promise.
Today, we’re making up for that, at least a little, with the induction of four of the most talented Wolves to ever put a basketball into the bucket.
They all played multiple sports, and were standouts regardless of the season, but, with my recent deep dive into the CHS basketball records — which exist in a million little pieces — this fab four looms even larger.
So, way, way, WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY overdue, let’s welcome Randy Keefe, Terry (Perkins) Powell, Bill Jarrell and Jeff Rhubottom to the Hall o’ Fame.
After this, you’ll find them up at the top of the blog, under the Legends tab, which is something they’ve always been, even if this writer has taken forever to get them enshrined.
Our first inductee, Powell, stands as one of the first true girls basketball stars in Central Whidbey history.
She led the Wolves in scoring for three consecutive seasons, tossing in 194 points in 1984-1985, 165 in the ’85-’86 campaign, then topping things off with a 314-point barrage in ’86-’87.
Working in tandem with fellow Hall o’ Famer Marlene Grasser (who netted 307 points that year), Powell was the leader of the first CHS girls hoops team to advance to the playoffs.
At the time of her graduation, Powell held the school single-season and career scoring marks for girls.
The increased pace of the game and addition of the three-point shot allowed a handful of other Wolves to eventually catch and pass her, but she remains #7 in career scoring with 673 points.
Her fellow inductees dominated in the ’70s, and the fact all three remain in the top 10 with both career and single-season scoring marks, is made more remarkable by two facts.
One, they all played before everyone and their brother got three points for hitting a shot behind the arc, and two, they suited up at a time when ninth graders either didn’t play high school basketball or were firmly affixed to the very end of the bench by their coaches.
That didn’t stop any of the three, though.
Keefe and Jarrell’s high school hoops careers ran from the ’73-’74 season (their sophomore campaign) through a journey to the state tourney in ’75-’76 as seniors.
One was maybe the most consistent scorer in school history, while the other caught his buddy at the end with a season for the ages.
CHS boys basketball has played 100 seasons (1917-2017), and Keefe owns two of the 10 best single season performances.
He rattled home 293 points as a sophomore, 398 as a junior (#7 all-time) and 397 as a senior (#8 all-time), leaving him with 1,088 points, third-best in program history.
Only two guys beat him, Jeff Stone (1137) and Mike Bagby (1104), and Stone had to throw down an Island-record 644 points as a senior to assure that, while Bagby, playing in the modern era, got a full four years as a varsity starter.
Jarrell didn’t come out of the gate quite as quickly as his running mate, settling for 83 points as a sophomore, fifth-best on that year’s team.
Then, something clicked and he went off for 357 points as a junior and 415 as a senior.
Snapping Keefe’s two-year run as team scoring champ, Jarrell’s senior heroics stand as the fifth-best single-season performance, and his 855 points lands him at #10 on the career list.
That ’75-’76 squad was one of the best the school ever had, and, along with the hot-shooting senior duo of Keefe and Jarrell, the Wolves got a huge contribution from a rampaging 6-foot-4 sophomore named Rhubottom.
He pounded away for 228 points as a sophomore, then took on even more of the scoring load over the next two seasons.
Rhubottom knocked down 325 as a junior (backing up Foster Faris, who went off for 348), then unleashed a beat-down as a senior.
By the time he was finished with the ’77-’78 season, Rhubottom had 459 points, which remains the second-best single season in school history, boys or girls, trailing just Stone’s once-in-a-century performance.
His 1012 career points will have him sitting #4 on that list when CHS raises a basketball record board.
Now, of course, we haven’t talked about the hundreds upon hundreds of rebounds hauled down, the assists doled out, the steals made off, or all the small plays this four-pack made.
But, even just talking about their scoring ability, it’s easy to see why Powell, Keefe, Jarrell and Rhubottom remain among the biggest stars to ever grace the CHS hardwood.
Hall o’ Famers, one and all, even if they had to wait way too long for it to be “official.”
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