A final look at winter prep season

Before I can contemplate spring sports – and that’s the last thing I want to do at the moment as I look outside and see snow/sleet swirling in the air – we need to close the book on winter sports in our parts.

The morning following the 4A boys and girls basketball state championship games in Tacoma I was walking through the lobby of the motel I was at and bumped into Central Valley girls coach Freddie Rehkow.

He seemed chipper even after his team lost a heartbreaker the night before in the title game on a 3-point shot at the buzzer.

That came after he watched his son, Austin, a starter for the CV boys, lose to Davis 48-42 in the final.

“Years from now Austin can tell his kids and I can tell my grandkids about how our teams finished second at state the same year,” Freddie said.

It was a superb winter at CV.

Here are a few observations and thoughts as I put the winter sports season to bed:

• I can’t help but wonder if the Lewis and Clark girls would have been able to qualify for state and put up a defense of their state title had senior point guard Devyn Galland, the most valuable player at state the year before, had not suffered a season-ending knee injury.

• All-league teams too often can be political at any level. In the Greater Spokane League, for example, it was a crime that Montana State University-bound point guard Lindsay Stockton was left off the first team.

First-team picks need to be based on a player’s overall value and impact to its team, not on scoring averages.

• If I were to pick all-area boys and girls basketball teams, here’s what my teams would look like:

Boys – Marcus Colbert (Post Falls), Brett Bailey (University), Brett Boese (Shadle Park), Jake Wiley (Newport), Derek Isaak (Almira/Coulee- Hartline) and Corey Langerveld (Pullman).

Colbert, Boese, Wiley, Isaak and Langerveld all played on the same AAU team coached by Jim Psomas.

Girls – Brooke Gallaway (Central Valley), Caelyn Orlandi (Coeur d’Alene), Jamie Weisner (Clarkston), Kelsey Moos (Reardan) and Tisha Phillips (Lewiston).

• A pat on the back to a couple of boys basketball coaches. Rick Sloan (CV) and Garrick Phillips (University) did marvelous jobs this season.

What impressed me about Sloan is he got a bunch of multiple-sport athletes, most of whom aren’t what you’d call pure basketball players, to buy into team and play unselfishly.

What impressed me about Phillips is he took a team that had great expectations riding heavy on it after a promising year the season before and got things done. Yes, the Titans took third, but there wasn’t much separation between the top three teams.

• Dale Poffenroth isn’t done coaching, but the former CV girls coach and current Coeur d’Alene coach is calling it quits in the classroom.

• I’ve been covering prep sports around here for nearly 28 years and I’ve seen some phenomenal wrestlers, but Jordan Rogers of Mead may be the best.

That’s high praise considering I had the joy of covering Jake Rosholt and the Lawrence brothers (Jared and Brett) from Sandpoint not to mention following from a distance other top-notch athletes in the GSL and around the region.

Another thing about Rogers: He’s as classy as they come. He’s humble and it’s not a false humility. I hope he achieves his goal to be an NCAA champion at Oklahoma State and an Olympic champ.

• One last thing. I’ve heard from more than one basketball fan or coach the desire to package the regional round onto the front end of the state tournaments. In other words, return the state format to a 16-team, four-day affair with the first day being single elimination.

That will not fly with the WIAA, executive director Mike Colbrese said.

Colbrese said by using facilities in Tacoma, Spokane and Yakima an extra day increases costs. That was a significant reason for reducing the state sites to three days, he said.

He reports that attendance at the 2B and 1B tournaments in Spokane and the 2A and 1A tournaments in Yakima was up, but attendance at the 4A and 3A in Tacoma was down.

There’s a good explanation why attendance was down in the big-school tournaments. Just one Tacoma school (Bellarmine Prep boys) was in the mix for hardware at state.

Including fall sports, Colbrese said that revenue for 2011-12 is doing well even though winter revenue is down.

Colbrese visited all three state basketball tournaments, beginning in Spokane.

“I think the thrill is back with the B atmosphere,” Colbrese said. “Spokane seems much more excited than it was there for a while.”