CdA gets charmed championship

NAMPA, Idaho – Suffice to say, it was the charm.

It may have taken a third try, but the Coeur d’Alene High girls basketball team finally broke through Saturday evening. The second-ranked Vikings were too much for Vallivue, clipping the Falcons 61-47 in the State 5A championship game before an estimated crowd of 2,500 at the Idaho Center.

After back-to-back state runner-up finishes, the Vikings finished the deal Saturday.

“The key was we wanted to win this for Ali Johnson and ‘D’ (Deanna Dotts),” CdA junior guard Amy Warbrick said of the Vikings’ two seniors. “They both tore (anterior cruciate ligaments). Just winning it for them felt good for us.”

Like the Vikings did in most of their victories this season, they won first with defense. The offense followed.

Vallivue junior guard Devyn Christensen scored a game-high 18 points, but it was the most spread out and hard-earned points she had in the tournament. Sadie Simon, Johnson, Warbrick and Dayna Drager took turns harassing the Falcon.

Simon, a standout soccer player, took particular pride in her defense, although she said she didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.

Johnson also took a couple of turns chasing Christensen, a long-distance shooting ace who made 11 3-pointers in the tourney to break the State 5A record (10).

“We tried to key in on their guards and play help defense, and we played tough,” Johnson said.

Kama Griffitts thought the one constant at state was defense.

“We played our best defense all year this whole tournament,” Griffitts said. “We talked more than we usually do. It worked out well. Our team worked their butts off.”

CdA coach Dale Poffenroth said getting his team to buy into defense first was a process that didn’t happen overnight.

“Everybody wants to know how many points their kid scored,” Poffenroth said. “We want to talk about how many steals did you get, how many assists did you get, how many times did you make somebody make a mistake (and) how many points did the other team score.”

The Vikings (23-3) took the lead right away on a 3-pointer by Simon, and they never relinquished it.

Vallivue pulled within 11-9 early in the second quarter. But CdA quickly built the lead back to eight when Johnson made a 3-pointer with 56 seconds to go before halftime.

The Vikings had their lone defensive lapse in the waning seconds of the opening half when Vallivue cut the lead to four at 24-20 going into halftime.

Christensen hit a 3-pointer with 5:35 to go in the third quarter that allowed Vallivue (21-5) to get as close as it would at 28-25.

CdA pulled away in the final period. Four players finished in double figures. Warbrick led the Vikings with 16 points and Griffitts scored 14. Johnson and freshmen Carli Rosenthal each added 10 points.

The Vikings finished with 17 assists with six players getting at least two. Griffitts and Johnson each had four. Rosenthal led with eight rebounds and Warbrick had a team-leading four steals.

“We worked so hard this season to get back here – to be No. 1,” Johnson said. “This is really rewarding.”

Griffitts said Simon’s mother was wearing a T-shirt that had a simple message – second place isn’t an option.

“It was perfect,” Griffitts said. “Everyone thought, ‘Third time’s the charm,’ and the third time was the charm.”

The state title was the seventh in school history and first since 2000. It was the third one for a Poffenroth-coached team. His teams at Central Valley captured two.

“It’s just a great relief that we can get it (the monkey) off our backs and know that we can do it,” Warbrick said. “It just gives us the confidence that we can make it back here next year.”