At Oregon City, Basketball Rules
Some of the best girls’ high school basketball in America is played at the end of the Oregon Trail, in a mill town on the banks of the Willamette River.
The Oregon City girls unleash their zone press and you can see the panic in the opponents’ eyes.
The ball handler is smothered by defenders at midcourt, the ball pops loose and Oregon City has a layup. The next time down, the opponent does a little better and gets the ball into the post for a short jump shot.
But Tammy Arnold, Oregon City’s 6-foot-2 senior, slaps the shot away. Sophomore point guard Ashley Smith, the coach’s daughter, dribbles through defenders and finds Arnold on the wing, where the big center lofts a soft, left-handed 3-pointer that swishes through the net.
It’s Lady Pioneer basketball, where games are so boringly one-sided that most students have stopped going.
The success has brought inevitable charges that coach Brad Smith robs players from other districts and mercilessly runs up the score.
After all, the Lady Pioneers are winning by an average of about 50 points per game.
Smith shrugs off the criticism.
“Everybody thinks we recruit. Everybody thinks we run scores up by pressing people to death,” he said. “Because of that, people think we don’t care about the kids.”
Smith is an Oregon City graduate and history teacher who took over as girls’ coach in 1978, in the sport’s third year at the school. In the two seasons before Smith took the job, the Lady Pioneers were 1-35.
Smith’s first team went 12-10, the closest he’s ever come to a losing season. His overall record is 360-57.
He oversees a system that includes elite teams of younger players that feed into the high school program. He also attracts players from other areas whose families move to Oregon City because of the sports program.
Brianne Meharry, a smooth-shooting 6-foot sophomore, admits that basketball was one of the reasons her family moved from nearby Gladstone two years ago.
“I’m more likely to get a scholarship here,” she said.
Two years ago, a girl transferred to Oregon City for the basketball season, then transferred out as soon as it ended.
But Smith said he doesn’t try to lure players to Oregon City.
“Kids recruit a program, because they look and they say, ‘That’s the level I want to play and maybe where I’m at, I’m not getting that,”’ he said.
Smith believes seven or eight of his varsity players will play at the NCAA Division I level. Arnold already has signed a letter of intent to play for Connecticut, the nation’s No. 2-ranked team. Five of his players stand 6-foot or better, including a freshman starter.