Winkler Hopes Fickle Shot Shows More Gold Than Rust

Chris Winkler has days when his shot clanks, when he’s just another 31-year-old shooting guard.

But then there are games when Winkler - a starter as a sophomore on one of Washington State University’s finest basketball teams, the Cougars of 1982-83 - resurrects the touch that made him one of the Pacific-10 Conference’s respected shooters.

Winkler will dust off his shot for this weekend’s sixth annual Hoopfest on the streets of downtown.

“I played for the first time last year and was pleasantly surprised,” said Winker, who earned a chemical engineering degree at WSU and works for Westinghouse at Hanford.

“We were one of the last four teams left in the open division. I wasn’t sure how an old guy like me would handle the competition.”

Although competition is again steep in the Action Sportswear men’s open division, it’s nothing with which Winkler’s team - Rock ‘n Fire - can’t hang.

He’s teamed with 6-foot-5 Jim Benjamin, 6-6 Mark Olenius, the team captain, and 6-4 Tony Beo.

The oldest (he turns 32 on Aug. 8) and shortest (6-3) on his team, Winkler will be the one to watch if he gets the shot going.

“I don’t play a lot - it works out to about once a week in various leagues,” said Winkler, who lives in Kennewick. “Playing only once a week, you’re not consistent. One game I’ll make everything. The next I’ll miss a lot.

“But one thing’s the same. Every time I shoot I’m confident it’ll go in. It doesn’t, but the confidence is always there.”

As a sophomore he had 24 points in 20 minutes against Montana State and once drained a last-second shot to bring the Cougars from a point down to a win over Gonzaga in the Spokane Coliseum.

These days he’ll spend a lot of time on the Hoopfest kids courts, where he and his wife Cheryl have an 8-year-old daughter Jenna and 7-year-old son Kyle playing on the same team, the Tri-City Trio.

Looking back on his first two seasons at WSU under coach George Raveling, Winkler said, “The rap on George was that he was a recruiter but not much of an X’s and O’s guy. I don’t think that’s true. He knew how to coach.”

Winkler is used to a busy schedule. At WSU he juggled the demands of Division I basketball with a tough engineering curriculum.

“My family’s expectations were high,” he said. “It was a given that I’d play basketball and get a good education. The demands were really no different than a student who has to work to get through school.

“There were some late nights and very little sleep at WSU, that’s for sure, but late nights weren’t all because of books and basketball. I had a good time in college. There was a lot of play time there, too.”

He’s baaaaack …

Thursday’s Spokesman-Review report that last year’s men’s open division winner - NBC Thunder won’t return to defend the title was premature.

NBC Thunder comes back with a revamped lineup headed by Ken Sugarman, the lone returnee from last year’s championship foursome.

Sugarman has lined up former Western Baptist standout Steve Ball, 6-7 Tom Bruner, who played at The Master’s College in Santa Clarita, Calif., and 6-1 Patrick Gibbs, who Sugarman said played at Pacific Lutheran.

The common bond is that all work or have worked with Northwest Basketball Camps.

The 6-3 Sugarman, 27, played at Whitworth. He won’t have his shooting star of last year, Shann Ferch, or the big man of ‘94, 6-11 Dave Wilson. But Sugarman has a habit of succeeding in tournaments.

His Highland High School team near Yakima was second at the State A tourney in Tacoma his senior year, and he’s won two division championships in three tries at Hoopfest.

“My first year my wife Nancy and I were on a team that won the co-ed open division,” said Sugarman, who will take the women’s basketball coaching job at The Master’s in August.

Nancy Taucher Sugarman played at Eastern Washington.

“The team I’m with this year should be pretty tough in the open division,” Sugarman said. “We don’t have a 7-footer, but Ball and Bruner can bang inside. I’m confident we’ll compete.”

NBC Thunder had to go the long way last year. It lost a game early and had to beat a team called Playground Legends twice in the finals.

NBC Thunder took home shoes, a jacket, T-shirts and plane tickets to Seattle for Seattle’s 3-on-3 tournament, although “We didn’t get to Seattle for the tournament because we were all working camps,” Sugarman said.

You foul, you pay

There was a time - 1991 was especially bad - when Hoopfest was a hackfest.

No more. Organizers continue to come down on brutal play with rules modifications.

Stiff penalties for intentional and flagrant fouls will be enforced in all age brackets, said Hoopfest court monitor committee chairman K.W. Knorr.

Intentional fouls will result in a free throw and possession of the ball. Flagrant fouls brings ejection from the game.

Should the intentional foul come in the act of shooting, and the ball goes in, there will be no free throw. The team fouled will retain possession.

New this year is a method to determine a winner after 30 minutes in youth division through eighth grade. A team must either win by two, or be in the lead and score three points after the time limit is invoked.

“On the rare occasion when an older group goes long we may impose the same kind of remedy,” Knorr said, “probably after 45 minutes.”

Court dimensions for third- and fourthgraders include lowering hoops to 8 feet and shortening the free throw line to 10.

Players in the 6-foot-and-under divisions may be measured if they seem a lot closer to 6-3 than 5-9.

Jody Hamilton is in charge of game management. “We’ll have a mark on a standard set at 6-2, to compensate for shoes, ” she said. “We don’t want to get too technical, but when there’s a complaint that a player is too tall we’ll measure.”

If you’re in a 6-foot-and-under bracket and you don’t measure down to that level, you’re history.

Other rules remain in force. Violations are called by players on either side. Two points result from a successful shot beyond the 19-9 arc (the arc is 16 feet out for youngest brackets). The first team to 20 wins.

Pick up packets today

Hoopfest players can pick up packets from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today at the gondola meadow at Riverfront Park on Spokane Falls Boulevard.

Bring the Hoopfest confirmation letter or have the team name and number memorized. Packets contain, among other goodies, Hoopfest T-shirts and a schedule.

A food fair and live music from 5-8 p.m. tonight by Raggs and Bush Doktor at Riverfront Park are part of the event tipoff.

, DataTimes