Strength of Scotties

There are so many ways to define Jessie DePell’s basketball career at Freeman High School.

There are the awards. The 5-foot-11 senior guard was named last year’s state Class 1A Player of the Year on top of earning Most Valuable Player honors at last year’s State 1A tournament.

There’s the flat-out speed. To put it plainly, DePell is a broadband performer in a dial-up world.

“That’s the way I like to play – full speed,” she says.

“Jessie is so fast, but she makes it all look effortless,” Freeman coach Matt Gregg said.

There’s the wingspan. “My teammates like to make fun of my long arms,” DePell laughs. “They call me ‘Gangle Beast’ and ‘Monkey Arms.’ “

There’s the pony tail that flies and flicks as DePell stays in almost constant motion on the court. Whoever draws the assignment to guard the slashing guard will get well acquainted with the pony tail as it flashes past.

There are the points that can come in big numbers on any given night – like the 40 points she poured in against White Pass in last year’s state quarterfinals.

DePell averaged 14 points per game as a freshman, a dozen a game as a sophomore, 17 points per game a year ago and 18 a game this season. If someone ever compiles a record book for Freeman girls basketball, DePell will own most of it, Gregg said.

“You can look at the points,” the coach added. “Jessie had 32 against Medical Lake the other night. But the thing about Jessie is that she gets those points within our offense.

“And the most impressive thing about that night was her defense. Her defense raised our whole team defense to another level in that game just by her intensity.”

It’s not that DePell can’t flat-out take a game over. She can. Most of the time she feels there’s no need.

“We have so many other players on this team who can score,” she said. “Every once in a while coach Gregg will tell me to just take the ball to the hole just to keep the other team honest and give them something else to be concerned about, but most of the time I like playing our offense the way it’s designed.”

And in the Freeman offense, that sometimes means taking a series off in favor of playing hard-nosed defense.

“That’s something coach Gregg brought in,” DePell said. “I used to think that if I was scoring a lot of points, I was playing well. Coach Gregg taught us that defense is where you have to play hard every time down the floor. Offense is where you can rest up to play better defense.”

Perhaps no time of the game defines DePell better than the fourth quarter. Just when opponents start to see the bottom of their fuel tank, DePell takes her game to another level.

“I love being able to do that,” she said. “To me, it’s a mental thing. I love that part of the game.”

And there’s the loyalty. DePell has played her entire career at Freeman, a school located a fast break south of Greater Spokane League schools Central Valley and University.

“Since I started playing AAU basketball in the fourth grade, I’ve played with Angie Bjorklund and for her uncle, Steve Ranniger,” DePell said. “Every practice, it seemed like, someone was trying to talk me into transferring. There were a lot of tearful discussions with my parents about what to do.

“But for me it came down to this: I could transfer to a school where I would have, maybe 10 friends – all of them teammates on the basketball team, or I could stay here and go to school with all of my friends, the people I grew up with. I have no regrets about that decision. I still get to play with girls like Angie during the summer.”

Admittedly, DePell says, her career will be defined by Freeman’s long-standing rivalry with Colfax – especially after last year, when the Scotties dominated the series all through the season only to lose the state championship game to the Bulldogs.

The comparison makes sense to DePell. After all, how can you define the Boston Red Sox without the New York Yankees? Muhammad Ali without Joe Frazier?

“There are times when I think that, if these kids were playing gin rummy with someone from Colfax, they’d just automatically start chucking them the aces,” Gregg joked.

“The first time I played Colfax was on my birthday my freshman year and I didn’t know a thing about them,” DePell recalled. “Some of my teammates were all worked up about it, but I didn’t really get it. But after that game …

“Let me put it this way: they ruined my birthday.”

But perhaps the best way to define Jessie DePell will be to watch her teammates.

“Jessie has really helped (junior guard) Janessa Miller and pushes her every day in practice,” Gregg said. “And our freshman, Carley Heinen has really looked to Jessie to help with her game.”

“I love it when teammates come to me and ask me for help,” DePell said. “I love it when they take me aside and ask me to help them with a move. That inspires me to work that much harder to set a good example.”

DePell will take her speed game to Montana Tech next year, where she will play basketball for the Orediggers.

“The coach (Brian Holsinger) was an assistant coach at Master College in California when I was looking down there,” DePell said. “Then he got the head job at Montana Tech, so I’ll follow him there.

“The thing is, he’s a smaller version of coach Gregg and he likes to play the same kind of up-tempo game we play here. It’s a perfect fit.”