For Starters, Ritzville’s Looking Up
Shortly after Friday night’s semifinal rout of St. John-Endicott, Ritzville coach John Foulkes got on a roll taking about the team he’ll have coming back next year.
After pointing out that four of his five starters will return, along with injured point guard Amy Fitch, Foulkes seemed ready to put some pretty decent odds on the Broncos’ chances of returning to the trophy round of the girls State B basketball tournament.
But before he went public with any type of prediction, he paused and said, “Nah, I’d better not say that.”
So after Saturday night’s 33-26 win over Wilbur-Creston in the girls championship game at the Arena, Megan Wellsandt said it for him.
“It really hurt us when we lost Amy Fitch,” said the 5-foot-7 guard and only senior starter. “But she’ll be back and step up next year, so I definitely think they have a good chance of winning it again.”
Wilbur-Creston coach Steve Jantz had no reason to question such logic after the Broncos snuffed his Wildcats’ dreams of a championship.
Four of his team’s six losses this year were to Ritzville, and he knows how much quickness and athletic ability Fitch - a state champion high jumper as a freshman - will bring back to the Broncos.
“Megan Wellsandt has been a great player for them. She’ll be tough to replace,” Jantz said. “But Fitch is outstanding, too, and they’re going to be really, really good again next year.”
The only girls team to repeat as the State B champion was Davenport in 1992-93.
Low expectations
Republic coach Rory Rickard was far from the most confident coach in the boys tournament when he brought his team into the Arena earlier this week.
And with good reason.
The Tigers, after starting the season with 16 consecutive wins, lost two of their last four regular-season games - to Chewelah and Northwest Christian - and two of their last three postseason playoff games.
But they shook off their apparent funk by winning four straight in the Arena and capping an unlikely run with a 38-36 upset of once-beaten Reardan in the title game.
“Chewelah and Northwest Christian woke us up, I guess,” Rickard said just moments after locking down the school’s first State B title. “They did some things against us that showed us we had a couple of things to work on.
“They put some defensive pressure on Jason (Baldwin) and Mark (Rickard) and showed us how hard we have to play to be successful.”
But Rickard was far from certain those lessons would hold up against the Tigers’ first-round foe, Tacoma Baptist, which came in 22-2 and boasting one of the most athletic starting quintets in the tournament.
“Tacoma Baptist, to me, was the worst first-round draw you could have,” he said. “But then once we got by them, it gave us an ultimate boost of confidence - which is why I think we won it all.”
Where are the cupcakes?
It’s hard to imagine a tougher road to a second-place finish than the one followed by Wilbur-Creston’s girls.
In their four tournament games, the Wildcats (23-6) played three No. 1 district seeds and handed two of them - Tekoa-Oakesdale and Pateros - losses. In addition, they beat Clallam Bay, which finished fourth after coming into the tournament as the No. 2 seed out of District 3.
3-pointers
Ritzville’s win in the girls championship game pushed the Broncos into the elite company of Davenport, Reardan, TekoaOakesdale and Creston as the only schools to win more than one State B girls basketball title… . Steff Steinhorst, who retired from coaching after leading Orcas Island to its first boys State B tournament last year, has written and published a children’s book entitled “Hey Lowrey! and Other Short Stories.” , DataTimes