Making it fun first

Sometimes the best friendships are forged through athletic endeavors – years of playing on the same teams together.

That’s certainly true of the two seniors on the Coeur d’Alene High girls basketball team, Lindsey Stark and Jenna DeLong.

AAU basketball tournaments as far back as the fourth grade and softball tournaments while playing in the Crush program for seven years served as a foundation for their friendship. Although they’ve known each other since fourth grade, they didn’t start to become close friends until middle school.

Today, they’re inseparable. They go together like peanut butter and jelly, spring and butterflies and Gonzaga and March Madness.

When Stark and DeLong are together, two things are certain – there will be a lot of winning and a lot of laughing.

Coeur d’Alene assistant basketball coach Jamie Thacker once dubbed them “Dumb and Dumber” for their never-ending comedic antics.

“I’m not sure which one is ‘Dumber,’ ” quipped DeLong.

“I am because you’re Miss 4.2 (GPA),” Stark shot back.

Actually, DeLong sports a 3.8 grade-point average, which ranks her 17th among her peers. Stark has a respectable 3.2. Asked where she ranks, Stark didn’t hesitate.

“You can just leave that out,” she said.

Stark was asked how deep her friendship is with DeLong.

“I’d take a bullet for her,” Stark said.

True to form, DeLong broke up the serious moment.

“I’d take a BB for her,” DeLong said.

They’ve shared a few classes together in high school. They had weights with football coach Shawn Amos their first two years.

“We lost muscle in that time,” Stark said.

“Mr. Amos calls us ‘The Slackers,’ ” DeLong said.

“We’re both goofy and we like making other people laugh,” Stark said. “Of course, we laugh hardest together.”

They’ve shared the biggest tears together, too. Like when they were freshmen and DeLong made the varsity softball team and Stark was assigned to junior varsity.

“We cried and cried together because that was the first time in softball that we hadn’t played on the same team,” DeLong said.

They were both three-sport athletes until their sophomore year when they both quit playing volleyball to focus on softball and basketball.

Neither could remember who told the other about not wanting to play volleyball anymore.

“I just remember if she wasn’t going to play volleyball anymore I wasn’t going to either,” Stark said.

DeLong’s first athletic love is softball. She signed a letter of intent to attend Drake University where she plans to study journalism.

Stark’s favorite sport is basketball. She is considering playing either at North Idaho College or Walla Walla Community College.

Together they helped the softball team break through and capture a state championship last spring after a string of runner-up state finishes. They want to capture gold next week in Nampa after coming so close last year when they lost to Centennial in the state final.

“The state softball championship was a huge thing for her (DeLong),” Stark said. “It was cool for me, too, but it was important for her.”

Likewise, DeLong and Stark want to end their high school basketball careers with a state title.

“I couldn’t ask for anything more,” Stark said of the possibility of going out on top.

They’re tickled that they’re the only two seniors on the team – although they listed off 10 other names of girls who were on their eighth-grade team at Canfield Middle School when they lost just one game.

“I wouldn’t want to share the year with anybody but Lindsey,” DeLong said.

It’s truly their team, too – even if they’re not the top scorers. In fact, their scoring this season has gone down from a year ago. DeLong averages seven points and Stark averages six.

Stark’s scoring went down primarily because she switched from shooting guard to point guard this season. DeLong prefers defense.

“I don’t look to score,” DeLong said. “My priority is defense. I’d take 15 steals over 15 points any day. I take pride in my defense. I’d rather steal it and chuck it down court for somebody else to score.”

They’ve certainly found other ways to contribute. Stark averages a team-leading 4.3 assists per game and is second on the team in free-throw shooting accuracy (82.5 percent). DeLong averages a team-leading three steals per game and 4.4 rebounds.

CdA coach Dale Poffenroth said both seniors are doing more and that easily offsets a drop in scoring.

“The way we’re stressing defense we don’t have to score a lot of points,” Poffenroth said. “They’ve both gotten the points when we’ve needed them.”

There may not be another team that has as many superstitions as CdA, nor two players who are more superstitious than Stark and DeLong. Space won’t allow a detailed listing of the many pregame rituals the Vikings and especially the seniors go through.

One of the rituals involves the Vikings getting down on their backs in the locker room and, one by one, barking like dogs.

“Most of it is harmless, like the barking thing they do in the locker room,” Poffenroth said. “Those are things they’ll remember 20 years from now. They won’t remember many of the details of any of the games, but they’ll remember those other things.”

One thing that DeLong and Stark certainly will continue beyond high school is their friendship.

“We’ve never been apart, we rarely disagree and we rarely fight,” DeLong said.

It shows when they’re together – whether it’s on the court, the diamond or just goofing around in class.