Special Start For Cda Senior
It’ll be a memory Katie Holte will cherish the rest of her life.
Nobody and nothing can take it away from her. The seldom-used Coeur d’Alene High guard got to start in her final prep game Saturday.
Her minutes played at state before Saturday were zip.
Vikings coach Bill Pratt told Holte of the plan about 30 minutes before the game. Pratt’s gesture meant that the initials DNP (did not play) would not show up on the final stats sheet.
Holte started with CdA’s other senior, Krissi Ruiz.
She played the opening 3:28. Then Pratt started her again in the second half. She finished with 4:54 playing time.
Holte didn’t attempt a shot, but she recovered a loose ball at the 5:23 mark of the first quarter.
“It was kind of scary,” Holte said of starting. “Not getting to play very much and then playing on that big court in front of everybody … it was exciting.”
It’s enough to give somebody bug eyes. Holte couldn’t help but feel like a fly on the hardwood and noticing the majority of the 7,000 empty seats in the spacious Idaho Center from a perspective other than the bench.
“My teammates were so excited for me; they were so happy,” Holte said. “It helped knowing that they were behind me.”
Pratt told Holte to go out and have fun and not worry about anything.
“He told me right after we got dressed and we were watching the end of the (first game),” Holte said. “It kind of affected my warmups. I was shaking.”
Got milk?
That’s one of the slogans for the United Dairymen of Idaho, the major underwriter of Idaho high school athletics.
After CdA seniors Holte and Ruiz accepted the third-place trophy Saturday, the Vikings sang a little jingle that junior varsity coach Russ Giles’ girlfriend made up following an early season win at Lewiston.
It went something like this, recited on request by Viks post Shaylia Davis:
“Give me a big M, big M, give me a little m, little m, give me no pop, no pop, don’t give me no tea, no tea, give me that milk.” It’s punctuated with the players’ fingers interlocked, thumbs hanging down to represent a cow’s udders and the thumbs moving as the players sing “moo, moo, moo, moo.”
They sung it to every letter in the word milk.
You would have had to have been there. “We sang it for the whole 3 hours back (to CdA),” Davis said of the Lewiston trip.
We suspect the refrain came up a couple of times on CdA’s 7-hour ride home Saturday.
Moscow, CdA equal
That’s what Madison coach Preston Berry thought after his team lost to Moscow on Friday (63-46) in the semifinals before falling to the Viks on Saturday (40-33).
“They’re very similar,” Berry said. “We knew Moscow’s strength was its inside players. So we backed off and let them shoot outside. And they killed us from outside.”
Berry felt fortunate that CdA didn’t attack his team from the perimeter. What impressed Berry most, though, was the man-to-man defense played by the co-Border League champions.
“We don’t see man-to-man like that where we’re from,” said Berry, whose team dominated eastern Idaho teams. Madison lost just once during the regular season.
“It’s a different style of game over here,” Berry added. “We don’t see the physical nature of the game at home. We’re the most athletic team from our side and we get into the state tournament and now we’re just one of them. We see some man-to-man, but nothing that’s physical.”
He meant that as a compliment, not a negative statement.
Quotebook
“Out of all the A-1 teams in Idaho we got third. We never thought we’d be here and be winning,” Davis said. “I wish we could start the season all over and play right now. I want to win next year. We’ll have a good chance. We have almost a whole returning team.”
“Everybody stepped up this game,” said point guard Patti Stranger. “Everybody had a part in it. It was just a great way to finish.”