Pals Plot Course As Wishkah Socks It To Rivals

Even if the Wishkah Valley Loggerettes weren’t so good they’d be hard to ignore.

You don’t ignore the world’s ugliest basketball socks.

Wishkah wore them Thursday night with no apparent self-consciousness.

Maybe it’s because they also sport the longest win streak at the 19th Girls State B Basketball Tournament, going back to their championship of last year.

If the Loggerettes should tack on a second straight title - only Davenport has ever won two in a row on the girls’ side - it’ll be a team effort, and not just on the floor.

It’s rule by committee on the Wishkah bench.

Coach Rick McDougall and assistant Dave Busz go way back. They were first graders together, growing up in the Wishkah Valley, some 12 miles out of the Grays Harbor city of Aberdeen.

Any strategic credit is passed around by this pair of old buds.

“Talk to him,” McDougall said, nodding at Busz in an Arena hallway a few minutes after Wishkah held off the determined Pomeroy Pirates 51-44 to get into tonight’s semifinals opposite the Sunnyside Christian Knights.

“Coach Busz suggested and made some good offensive adjustments, including moving (scoring leader Melissa) Bowen up to the point and (Amber) Matthews (a 5-foot-5 sophomore) down to the wing.

“She (Matthews) had a couple of big buckets.” Matthews finished with nine points.

So while Busz was doping out strategy, what was McDougall doing? “I’m the figurehead,” McDougall cracked.

“He (Busz) was a step ahead of the game,” the head coach insisted. “He was the one who pulled it out for us.”

The two coaches went to high school together - in Wishkah. They worked together in boys basketball, Busz the Wishkah Valley head coach and McDougall his assistant.

The two have turned their communal plotting to tonight’s foe, Sunnyside Christian, and its active guards, Darla den Hoed and Marlene Van Wingerden.

Sunnyside has the added threat of an inside game with 6-0 junior Hollie Hughes, 6-1 senior Paul Elenbaas and 6-2 soph Brenda Elenbaas.

Wishkah Valley counters with 6-2 Abbie Pierce, 6-footers Crystal Teague and Mindy McElliott and the 5-10 Bowen and her 22-point scoring average.

They raised the level of their game with a tough schedule that included Class AA Aberdeen (a 52-40 loss, the Loggerettes’ only setback), AA Elma (a pair of close Wishkah wins) and two A schools - Forks and Rochester.

The experience of playing up a level or two helps come March.

McDougall was asked to contrast the feeling he had heading into the semifinals a year ago.

“At this point last year I was looking at Davenport and Jennifer Stinson,” he said. “We certainly weren’t overly confident. We were confident in our kids, but we knew we had a huge mountain to climb.”

This year?

“We’re confident. Anybody who’s left in the winners’ bracket is capable (of winning the tournament).”

The Loggerettes climbed the mountain McDougall referred to with 6-5 Sissel Pierce and her tournament-record 27 blocked shots. Sissel is back as an assistant coach, another who went through the system and decided to hang around and give something back.

Coaches do that in the Wishkah Valley.

, DataTimes