Trout Lake Boys Net First Trip To State

After 60 years, the fine folks in Trout Lake can pull out the “Gone Fishing” sign.

Fishing, that is, for state trophies. The Mustangs, enrollment 35 in their top three grades, have qualified for their first boys State B tournament.

Trout Lake (21-3) hooked the big one by beating 1992 state champion Sunnyside Christian 50-46 for the lone District 5 berth.

Trout Lake and other teams in the Greater Columbia League typically fight an uphill battle against Sunnyside and other South Central League teams. Often the South Central teams have triple or quadruple the enrollment of GCL teams.

Just nine GCL teams have advanced to state. The last, Glenwood, placed eighth in 1992.

“My gosh, what a difference it is when you look at (South Central teams’) bench and see all those seniors,” said Mustangs six-year coach Bob Jolley. “It’s quite unusual for a school our size to put together a team like this.”

The South Central will disband next year as Mabton, Wahluke and Kittitas move to Class A. Sunnyside and West Side Christian will join the GCL.

The Mustangs came within one game of breaking their six-decade drought in 1994, with Jolley’s son Todd leading the way. One of the starters, Ryan Belieu, moved to Colton for one year and returned to Trout Lake last season.

Jolley found his “missing link” when 6-foot3 forward Nick Ladwig moved to Trout Lake from Vancouver last fall. He could then move Belieu, a strong rebounder, outside, to take advantage of his ball-handling.

“It’s been really strange here,” Jolley said. “In ‘94, when we had a good team, we didn’t get fan support.

“Last year we started getting a little following and this year we’ve had people coming to away games.”

Now the 800 residents of this agricultural community 110 miles south of Yakima can make their longest road trip.

ACH wins everything

Senior Cameron Carstensen, unable to play with Almira/Coulee-Hartline’s District 7 boys championship team, earned a different prize at last Saturday’s final.

Carstensen won a raffle for a 20-inch television. The guard, who helped ACH to seventh place at state last year, injured his foot last fall in a hunting accident and served as assistant coach/emotional leader for the Warriors.

Defending champs miss by tick

Parker Barth’s basket was ruled too late last Saturday when Waterville eliminated Pateros 56-55 at the District 6 winner-to-state, loser-out game.

Barth was the lone returning starter from the Billygoats team that won last year’s state tournament. Pateros won this year’s North Central League title, but couldn’t get by Manson and Waterville at district.

The other champs

When are the defending state champions not the defending state champions?

This time around it’s when the champs graduate so much of their team there are four freshmen on the roster when they make it back.

That is the case for St. John-Endicott’s girls, who went 29-0 and won state a year ago. The Eagles are back, but many of the players watched from the stands last year.

“There’s always a little pressure (as defending state champions). We’ve been playing under that all year,” SJE coach Lorin Carlon said. “We told the kids at the beginning of the season even if you graduate everybody off a state championship team everybody plays their best game against you the next year.

“But we’ve been in a lot of tough games. A couple of them came down to the last 10 seconds so we don’t seem to panic when we’re behind.”

Carlon wasn’t exactly counting on a fifthconsecutive trip to state.

“We just feel good to be here,” he said. “We weren’t here ‘til 3 minutes and 33 seconds to go in the game (Saturday), that’s the first time we were ahead. We weren’t sure we were going to get here.”

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