Lewis and Clark girls basketball finds a new level

Kaylee Bishop relished the moment.

On Saturday, Bishop and her Lewis and Clark teammates exorcised the one demon that had plagued them for their first three years of girls basketball in the Greater Spokane League.

They beat Central Valley for the Class 4A district championship.

“It felt so good to cut down the net after that game,” Bishop said. “It just felt good.”

“There are no words to describe what I was feeling,” Arianna Reeves added.

Lewis and Clark has a group of six seniors who have contributed to a run of success in the Greater Spokane League over the course of their four-year careers, but at the same time CV had an incredible wealth of talent come through its program.

Three players off of last year’s national championship team at CV are now playing Division I college basketball. Twins Lacie and Lexie Hull are now at Stanford while Hailey Christopher is at Idaho.

“We’ve known them since we were in third grade,” Bishop said. “We’ve been playing against the twins for years. We knew their games inside and out. We knew their strengths and we knew their weaknesses. We just couldn’t beat them and that was frustrating.

“I guess it does make it hurt a little less to know that the team that kept beating you won a national championship.”

That all came to an end in the first meeting between the teams this season.

The Seattle Times had the Tigers ranked No. 2 in the state behind Woodinville going into that game; CV was ranked No. 4.

Dominique Arquette hit 11 of 13 free-throw attempts and finished with 19 points to lead LC to a 61-52 win that snapped a string of 34 straight GSL victories by the Bears.

“It was sweet to be able to beat them at home,” Arquette said. “The second game with them was a different story. I think we came in a little overconfident. We thought, “Oh, we’ve beaten them once, they’re going to just fold.’ It doesn’t work that way.”

Central Valley roared back at home to post a 72-61 win in the rematch.

LC has rolled off 10 straight wins – including that 53-46 win on Saturday – to claim a district title. Along the way the Tigers pasted Chiawana, the No. 12-ranked team on the state’s RPI rankings, 57-25.

“I sprained my ankle two weeks ago and I didn’t play against Chiawana,” Arquette said. “The CV game was my first game back and I really wanted to make sure I was 100 percent for that game.”

The Tigers now face No. 3-ranked Bellarmine Prep on Saturday at 4 p.m. in a regional round matchup at University HS. A win would earn LC a first-round state tournament bye. A loss means a first-round loser-out game against the winner between No. 14 Hazen and No. 11 Curtis.

LC coach Gabe Medrano said he was just so happy for his team while watching them cut down the nets as a district champion – especially so for his six seniors: Bishop, Buckley, Arquette, Reeves, Sativa Rogers and Katelyn Peters.

“This has been a pretty special group,” he said. “They’ve all been playing together for a long time, since at least the fourth, fifth, sixth grade. They’ve all worked very hard for this.”

The group helped ease the second-year coach into the job.

“It definitely makes it easier,” he said. “You have to remember, too, that I was the fourth head coach they’d had in their first three years here. I think just giving them some stability was reassuring for them. I think that helped them realize just what they could accomplish together.”

A year ago the Tigers reached the state Class 4A tournament. They lost in the first round to the eventual state runner-up.

“Our first game was with Woodinville and we were done,” Bishop said. “We played them well – I honestly think we match up with them really well. We took them to overtime, but we lost and had to come home.”

A potential rematch with the top-ranked team in the state is something the Tigers would love to see.

“I would love to have another shot at them,” Arquette said.

“If we face them, the way the tournament is seeded, it would be on Saturday in the championship game,” Medrano said. “I think that would be a great game.”

The coach has no doubt that his seniors are still hungry for more.

“Beating CV and winning a district title was just one of our goals,” Bishop said. “We’re not going to be satisfied until we win a state championship. That’s been our goal all season.”

Reeves knows what the team needs to do in order to achieve that goal.

“We have to come out and make sure we play with the same energy level we had against CV,” she said. “We’re not going to have a letdown.”