Clint Ledbetter Lacrosse-Washtucna Year: Senior Sport: Forward Position: Basketball

This basketball season meant too much to Clint Ledbetter to risk playing football.

Ledbetter injured his knee at last year’s District 9-B basketball tournament. He played through the pain in an attempt to help LaCrosse-Washtucna to its first State B appearance as a consolidated team.

The Tigercats, with Ledbetter and three other junior starters, came one game shy of state. Ledbetter then missed the baseball season, a blow to a team that finished fourth at state the previous year.

When fall rolled around this year, Ledbetter and three other basketball starters bypassed on a football program that had qualified for two consecutive State B-8 playoffs.

“We wanted to focus on this basketball year,” Ledbetter said. “We’ve never been (combined schools) to state; it has been kind of a jinx.”

Ledbetter scored 23 points last Friday as the fifth-ranked Tigercats (16-2) beat Garfield-Palouse (16-2) to sweep the Whitman County League series. L-W has won nine straight; both of its losses are to Ritzville.

“These seniors have played together since about third grade,” said Ledbetter, a Colfax native who moved to LaCrosse at age 5.

Ledbetter’s cousin is Tricia Lamb, the Washington State University-bound guard for defending girls state champion St. John-Endicott.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo