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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Steve Christilaw: College recruiting much like panning for gold

One of my favorite high school teachers had a most interesting hobby.

He loved to pack up his gear and head into the mountains to find a quiet stretch of stream and wade right in.

That part, of course, is fairly common. There are few things in life as delicious as a fresh-caught trout.

He was looking for something different. He went to the stream looking for gold, and his gear was metal pan.

The pastimes are similar. Both fishing and panning for gold require a great deal of patience. You have to be able to read the way the water runs and where the currents eddy.

And when you do it correctly, if you bide your time and work your process, if you are correct in your reads and your assumptions, you get a nice, colorful reward.

It wasn’t about finding the mother lode somewhere in the mountains for him. If you watched him work sand around the bottom of his pan, separating, examining, rejecting, repeating, you saw a man in a zen-like place of peace and tranquility. I like to think it was his way of meditating.

He was in his element.

I’m sure college recruiters have a similar process as they sift through the hundreds and hundreds of basketball players that cross their radar in any given season. They sift through good and very good talent looking for that most elusive of nuggets: the gold.

Ever wonder why we like to talk about how prospects eventually “panned out”?

With the State 1B and 2B state basketball tournaments, or as I refer to them, 2B or Not 2B, back in town this week, it’s worth mentioning that there is a big, golden nugget taking the floor for the last time.

Kittitas-Thorp senior Brock Ravet will lead the two-time state 2B champions on a quest for a three-peat.

But it’s more than just a small-town basketball story going on here that you should catch in between repeats of Hoosiers on cable. This time, it’s a full-blown preview of coming attractions.

You see, Brock Ravet is heading to town after graduation and you will be seeing him in a Gonzaga uniform beginning this fall.

We don’t see that many college players come out of our state’s smallest schools. Ravet is the exception that proves the rule that there is, indeed, gold in these hills.

It should be noted that he is not the first boys basketball player from Kittitas to go on to play college basketball.

If a player is going to have a role model, Byron Beck, Kittitas Class of 1963, is a good one to follow. Nicknamed “The Moose in the Middle,” Beck led the Coyotes to the State B four straight years and was an All-State selection three times. He was named to the Seattle Times All-Century Team.

Beck scored 1,821 points wearing a Kittitas uniform and he terrorized anyone looking for a rebound and was renown for being the consummate team player. Even today, looking back on his career at Kittitas, his two seasons at Columbia Basin College, two more at the University of Denver, and his 10-year career in the ABA with the Denver Nuggets, Beck credits his teammates.

Ravet has much the same character while standing just 6-foot-1, some 8 inches shorter than Beck. Still, he averages almost 10 rebounds per game as his team’s point guard, so he shares those same instincts.

This young man is a team player who averages better than 30 points per game and 10 assists per contest.

The Zags recognized a gold nugget as soon as they saw it.

When Kittitas attended the Gonzaga University summer camp in 2017, assistant coach Tommy Lloyd, after some prompting from business professor Bud Barnes, saw the Coyotes play and loved Ravet’s game so much he immediately grabbed head coach Mark Few. By the time camp was over, Ravet had a scholarship offer from his dream school.

Much has been made about Ravet’s shooting touch, especially as he broke the boys state scoring record, 2,851 career points set by Lance Den Boer of Sunnyside Christian.

Den Boer is now the athletic director at Kiona-Benton High School, and he’s seen Ravet along the way.

“Brock has had a wonderful high school basketball career and is a winner,” he told the Ellensburg Daily Record. “It’s easy to tell he spends a lot of time improving his game, and it’s paying off by going to Gonzaga.”

One local reader, however, was holding off on the accolades for that turned out to be one more game.

Jim Stinson, himself a 6-foot-6 wing at Carroll College and a long-time area high school coach, wasn’t about to cede top scoring honors to the young Coyote.

You see, the all-time leading scorer in the state of Washington isn’t named Lance Den Boer. In fact, it’s not a boy at all.

Stinson’s daughter, Jennifer, held that record until just this year.

When Jennifer Stinson finished her career as a Davenport Gorilla, she’d amassed 2,881 points. And then she walked away from basketball to play volleyball at Washington State, where she is now the head volleyball coach.

“I’m surprised the record lasted this long,” the elder Stinson said. “It’s been a good, long run.”

That’s the fun thing about Class B basketball, be it 2B or not 2B.

Brock Ravet has scored more than 3,000 career points, and he will likely add to that total over three games this weekend in the Spokane Arena.

Yes, he has more points than any player in the history of the state.

But he had to beat Stinson to get there.