Mike Vlahovich

Great Northern League basketball teams don’t get into the meat of their seasons until after the start of the new year. This month of non-league competition prepares them for the grinder that has become synonymous with their conference. The recently completed football season was an example. Six teams scrambled for playoff spots up to the final week of the season.

The basketball didn’t fall early for Mead’s Jazmine Redmon in a season-opening basketball game, and host Central Valley enjoyed leads of as many as 13 points. But that didn’t flood Redmon’s motor, or those of her teammates, in their 62-58 comeback triumph to open the Greater Spokane League season Tuesday night.

There was never any doubt Chaz Johnson would play basketball, even though there was wrestling in his heritage. His uncles, Mark and Mike Kondo, were wrestling state champions at Rogers in the late 1960s. But his dad, Bruce, also a Pirate and the longtime Community Colleges of Spokane women’s coach, was all about basketball.

Forget about all the statistics, but one. During his varsity football career, Skyline quarterback Jake Heaps remains unbeaten. Heaps, a 6-foot-2, 195-pounder, orchestrated a late – and quick – third-quarter scoring drive that nullified Ferris’ go-ahead, 8-minute, 35-second grinder before it, dealing the host Saxons another agonizingly close State 4A semifinal loss, 24-21 Saturday at Joe Albi Stadium.

Only the linemen will be strangers when Ferris and Skyline play in Saturday’s State 4A semifinal football game at Albi Stadium. For the past two summers the teams have met in the finals of the Big Kahuna Passing 7-on-7 tournament in Burnaby, B.C., with the Saxons winning both times.

The Greater Spokane League, like in an old Wrigley’s chewing gum commercial, doubled its pleasure, doubled its fun last weekend when Shadle Park captured the Class 3A volleyball title on Friday and Lewis and Clark backed it with the 4A championship on Saturday. The Tigers’ win over Kamiakin gave the GSL its sixth straight first-place State 4A finish and marked the fifth straight year that the title game was an all-eastern region finale.

Ferris football made like Houdini Friday night with a great escape, winning 14-7 at Central Valley, propelling the Saxons into the State 4A semifinals for the second straight year. The Saxons scored on two long fourth-quarter drives to defeat the host Bears, but the final score doesn’t begin to describe CV’s dominance and Ferris’ good fortune as the victors came alive.

On a late November Monday afternoon weight training workout that supplanted football practice, Ferris players – linemen Elliott Bosch and J.D. Robinson among them – were put through their paces by strength coach Drew Buchkoski. During one drill, players would kneel on the floor, tucked nearly prone, behind a weight bar bearing 25-pound weights and 25 pounds of attached chains dangling on each end, a total of 150 pounds in all. On command they exploded to their feet and in one motion powered the bar to their chest, sunk to a deep squat, then rose and pushed the weight in a military press above their heads.

Spectacular, steady and smooth are traits that define each of three seniors who led Lewis and Clark this year to league, district and regional volleyball championships and into the Tigers’ fourth straight State 4A tournament. Outside hitter Oceana Bush has been spectacular for four years, playing with an explosiveness that belies her 5-foot-5 stature. Middle blocker Chloe Rowand is LC’s steadying influence, coach Julie Yearout said. Smooth setter Hilary Koenigs, according to Yearout, plays the position so effortlessly that people sometimes fail to notice her.

The Ferris Saxons got one big play and just enough offense elsewhere, then let the defense do the rest to beat visiting Jackson 24-7 in a State 4A football opener Saturday afternoon at Joe Albi Stadium. The win advances Ferris to next weekend’s quarterfinals for a rematch with Central Valley. The teams shared the Greater Spokane League championship.

Familiarity breeds defense. The second meeting between Mt. Spokane and East Valley on Friday night at Albi Stadium was not about high-powered passing offenses or punishing runs – although they did their part. It was decided by the defensive players who dealt out the punishment trying to stop them.