Lyla Stuurmans would appreciate it if you would get out of her face. (Jackie Saia photo)
The building blocks are in place.
The Coupeville High School varsity girls’ basketball team narrowly missed the playoffs this time around, stung by a couple of losses in which the offense dried up at inopportune times.
But there were a whole ton of moments when everything clicked into place for the Wolves, promising a bright future.
And that future could come to bloom next season, with nine of 12 players, including all five starters, slated to return for CHS coach Megan Richter.
The top seven scorers on a team which finished 2-6 in Northwest 2B/1B League play, 7-13 overall (but could have easily been 13-7 with a tweak here and there) are all underclassmen.
Starters Mia Farris, Jada Heaton, Madison McMillan, Lyla Stuurmans, and Katie Marti are juniors, while Teagan Calkins is a sophomore and Haylee Armstrong a freshman.
Give them some time to fine-tune their offensive skill set, let them grow and mature in the heat of softball, track, and volleyball seasons, and plop them back on the hardwood next year, and things could get dynamic.
All five of Coupeville’s starters this season can return next year. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
La Conner, who they closed with, shares a lot of similarities with the Wolves — young players bursting with potential, finding their way to achieving the kind of success their predecessors enjoyed.
For this season, at least, the Braves proved to be just a hair further along the path.
Using its team-wide speed to its advantage, La Conner jumped out to a 14-6 lead after one quarter of play Tuesday night.
McMillan kept the Braves honest by knocking down a couple of early buckets, while Farris chased down a rival and rejected her shot to the delight of her teammates.
Coupeville came out strongly in the second quarter, chopping its deficit back to 16-11, but then was stung by one of those infamous offensive dry spells.
La Conner closed the frame on a 7-2 run, with just a roller from Stuurmans slowing the bleeding, then rippled the nets for the first six points of the third quarter.
That staked the Braves to their biggest lead of the night, at 29-13, and put a bit of panic in the heart of Wolf fans around the world.
To which Stuurmans said, “Calm down, Skippy, I got this.”
The ever springy one, bounding around on both ends of the floor, tossed in five points to key a 7-0 Wolf run, cutting things back to 29-20 heading into the fourth.
Now in her fourth season of CHS basketball, having first repped the red and black as a precocious 8th grader, Stuurmans capped the mini run with a pull-up jumper so pretty it made the basketball gods smile.
Unfortunately for the Wolves, that was as close as they would get to catching La Conner, with both teams going into an offensive slow-down in the final quarter.
McMillan banked in a bucket off of a long lob by Marti, but it was Maeve McCormick who delivered the dagger.
The Brave gunner scrambled to the sideline to save a ball seemingly intent on escaping into the inky darkness of the great outdoors, looped back to the top of the arc, and calmly flicked home a three-ball to deliver the punctuation point.
For Coupeville, McMillan and Stuurmans collected eight and seven points, respectively, while Marti (4), Heaton (2), and Calkins (2) also scored.
Final season scoring stats:
Katie Marti – 152
Mia Farris – 104
Madison McMillan – 104
Lyla Stuurmans – 62
Teagan Calkins – 59
Jada Heaton – 50
Haylee Armstrong – 21
Skylar Parker – 19
Kayla Arnold – 5
Reese Wilkinson – 4
Bryley Gilbert – 2
Brynn Parker – 2
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