Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Colton celebration
Maggie Pluid
Colton's Dakota Patchen, Jordyn Moehrle, Maggie Pluid, Rylee Vining and Josie Schultheis beam at the end of their 44-37 win over Pomeroy.
Pomeroy cut the lead to three points with just more than four minutes remaining.
Would the Pirates push Colton to the wire – the Wildcats trying to win the state 1B girls championship after an eight-year run ended last year?
No, Dakota Patchen, the Colton junior guard, downed a three-pointer, then another to ensure her team’s name would again be engraved on the Gold Ball trophy. The Wildcats won 44-37 as Emily Schultheis led with 15 points and Patchen had 14. It was Colton’s ninth championship in ten years, the latest coming after they lost in the semifinals in 2017 and finished third.
“All of the (championships) are all really enjoyable, they are all special,” said Colton coach Clark Vining. “But this one maybe just a tad bit more.”
Before tip-off, with the Spokane Arena lights down low for player introductions, the Pomeroy fans waved a mass of orange glow tubes. They had come prepared – to see either their boys or girls team in the championship game. It was nearly both. Nonetheless, Colton’s crowd responded with a lone waving cell-phone light.
Then their team scored the first 11 points of the game.
Pomeroy was cold early, then started to hit, while Colton kept it up. After the third foul called on Georgia Meyer, she went out of the game just before halftime, 22-16 Colton.
Would Pomeroy make a game of this?
Things that did not bode well at halftime for the Pirates: in a fan-entertainment free-throw contest, for a pair of shooters, Pomeroy sent out Jacob Tewalt, who had just unofficially set a 1B boys state tournament record of 91 points, yet he could not hit a free throw, not making one in the contest. Bad Pomeroy halftime sign no. 2: the school band blared “Crazy Train” and “Surfin’ USA,” the best one-two they had for intermission at the state championship?
The game resumed and Colton’s Rylee Vining, a freshman guard, passed inside to Schultheis who banked in a two-footer and Colton quickly led 30-19. Schultheis made two more inside baskets and the Wildcats kept the lead at nine at the end of the third quarter, 33-24.
“Our intention was to attack them inside,” said Vining. “We knew from previous games they were trying to take Patchen away.”
And they still were as the Pirates offense arrived, opening the fourth quarter with junior guard Sydney Smith hitting from outside, cutting Colton’s lead to four before Patchen hit a three-pointer to push it back to seven.
Smith hit another three-pointer.
A reminder crept up. If Pomeroy continued this and Colton began to miss, the game could resemble last year’s semifinal loss to Almira/Coulee/Hartline, when the Wildcats fell into a cold streak from outside in the second half and their opponents did not.
Smith downed another three-pointer for 38-35. The Pomeroy crowd was in force, but Colton again got the ball to Patchen and again she answered, 41-35 with 3:59 left. Her next shot put the lead back to nine.
The Wildcats were safe, the 1B girls championship was back in their grasp.
Minutes later, the girls hoisted the Gold Ball trophy, some for the first time, such as Vining and Josie Schultheis, another freshman, while for the junior veterans – Emily Schultheis, Jordyn Moerhle and Patchen, along with senior post Meyer – lifted it for the first time as leaders.
The Colton girls did it, a new generation had sought and reclaimed what had been lost, a tradition reborn – which has to be won every year by a different team.
It is a high bar, a pinnacle of a standard set by coach Vining, and his team did it again. At the final buzzer, the scream on his face could be said was, in a phrase, like a schoolgirl.
The coach and his team returned to school Monday with the 2018 Gold Ball – just needing a spot to place it.
“We found some room for it,” Vining said. “We were able to squeeze it in.”
SEMIFINALS:
COLTON 53,
SUNNYSIDE CHRISTIAN 48
The Wildcats’ lead got as high as 13 points in the third quarter before perennial state contender Sunnyside Christian cut it to within three Friday night. Colton held as the Knights had to foul late in the fourth quarter.
Dakota Patchen made 6-of-6 free throws at the end to keep Colton on track to the final.
She finished with 23 points in the game while Emily Schultheis had 11 points and 10 rebounds. Abby Kelly scored eight points.
Sunnyside Christian, the state no. 4 seed, dropped into the third-place game, beating Neah Bay 70-42.
QUARTERFINAL: COLTON 81, ALMIRA/COULEE/HARTLINE 34
A year after Almira/Coulee/Hartline pulled off a monumental upset to end Colton’s streak of eight state championships, the teams met again and Wildcats coach Clark Vining pulled his starters in the third quarter.
Some did go back in, such as Dakota Patchen, who subsequently downed another a three-pointer for a score of 64-27, her sixth of the game to lead with 24 points.
It was still the third quarter.
In the end, the 81-34 game was much the opposite of last year’s semifinal, with every Colton player on, shots falling at will, while ACH was off. Last year, a long third-quarter cold streak for the Wildcats proved the difference in the game, which featured seven of the same starters as 2018, four for ACH, three for Colton. Tiffany Boutain, no. 00, working point for the Warriors and Gabi Isaak on the inside; Colton’s Patchen, Moehrle and Schultheis on the outside, Abby Kelly and Georgia Meyer on the inside.
This year’s game started just like it ended, Colton dominant.
After a three-pointer from Patchen, it was 20-7 Wildcats and timeout ACH.
Next, a three from Josie Schultheis made it 25-7 at the end of the first quarter, then Meyer from outside for 28-13; Schultheis for 31-13 while ACH’s shots kept spinning, bouncing and clanking.
What was Colton’s percentage for three-point attempts?
On defense, the Wildcats’ press forced ACH forward Mikayla Rushton to step on the line, out-of-bounds, and Colton capitalized for 41-19.
Down to a last possession before the half, Patchen caught a pass in the corner and shot; swish, 44-19.
She opened the third quarter with another three. One team could not miss, one team could not hit.
Minutes went by and Vining began to send in substitutes.
Colton tied its record for three-pointers at state with 15. They shot 53 percent from the field in the game. It seemed higher. ACH shot 27 percent. It seemed lower.
“We’d been thinking about that ACH loss the last time since March 6 of last year,” said Vining. “It was kind of fate that we ended up drawing them for our first game back at state.”
Colton’s dominant win and the curiosity of last year’s game makes for a case to be made that if this were the NBA, and a seven-game series decided these things, Colton might have beat ACH 4-1 in 2017, maybe 4-2. This year more like 4-0.
ACH finished fourth in state.
-Jerry Morse photo
Colton's Maggie Pluid befuddles Almira/Coulee/Hartline's Gabi Isaak in the semifinals.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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