After graduating all five starting seniors last season and with many believing the 2008-09 campaign would be a rebuilding one, Inglemoor High’s girls basketball head coach John Augustavo wanted to prove his doubters wrong.
The Lady Viks did just that with an outstanding 11-5 league season en route to being one of the top seeds for the 4A Kingco tournament, out of which four teams would advance to the class 4A state tournament at the Tacoma Dome this week.
Inglemoor opened the double-elimination tournament with a 51-44 victory over a tough Garfield team, which eventually rallied to win four loser-out games to make state.
Unfortunately, the Vikings’ Cinderella story struck midnight last Tuesday when the Newport Knights stunned the Vikings at home, 54-38, to knock them out of the playoffs.
“They were a little more fresh than we were,” said Augustavo, whose team was playing its third game in a six-day span. “We were tired.”
Just like last year, Augustavo was able to start five seniors again for most of the season, providing a tremendous amount of leadership to guide the future of the program.
“It was awesome, they had been in the program for a while, and knew exactly what they needed to do,” said Augustavo of his core group of Brittany Gardner, Lynsey Sandum, Brynn Hamel, Alex Nelson and Melissa Hough. “They worked with the younger kids to make them better, and when you look out there and you have all seniors, they can get you over a lot of humps that you wouldn’t regularly get with your underclassmen.”
Although the Vikings may have surprised plenty of teams this year, their goal was simply to get into the playoffs and have a home game, which they accomplished — but not quite with the desired result.
“After you get a winner-to-state game (52-37 loss to Issaquah Feb. 21), you kind of get greedy, but for the most part it was a wonderful year,” Augustavo said. “It did end a little short, but we did as much as we could.”
Bothell Cougars
Despite a lackluster 8-8 regular season, the steadily improving boys Cougars were able to sneak into the playoffs. After a 55-37 loss to Northshore rival Inglemoor in its 4A Kingco opener, Bothell knocked Ballard out of the playoff picture with a 48-42 loser-out win.
That set up another loser-out matchup against Redmond last Tuesday, but unfortunately for the Cougars, the Mustangs brought their guns to the table in a 66-54 loss in which both teams scored an incredible 26 points in the fast-paced fourth quarter alone.
“We just didn’t shoot well against Redmond,” said Cougar head coach Ron Bollinger. “They came out firing on all cylinders and hit a bunch of 3s, and we just couldn’t recover.”
In what would definitely be deemed a rebuilding year for the Cougars, Bollinger made sure to commend the senior leaders he did have for their contributions to the program.
“Kurt (Stottlemyer) is one of those special athletes that is a 4.0 student and a leader on the field in football, basketball and baseball,” Bollinger said of his star student-athlete. “He goes 100 percent all the time.”
Leading scorer for the Cougars was 6-foot-4 senior guard Devin Willis, who battled through two difficult seasons to average 12.1 points per game this year, including a season-high 25 against league-dominating Garfield back on Jan. 20.
“Devin’s last two seasons were injury-prone, but I thought he did well battling through that,” Bollinger said. “It’s hard to see him go on one leg, but he had some big moments for us.”
Being such a young team, Bollinger knew that his squad would have a lot of work ahead to be competitive in 4A Kingco, and the Cougars’ ability to earn a playoff berth in a tough league showed that hard work does pay off.
“If you work hard and dedicate yourself during the season, you can get better,” said Bollinger when asked what his team will take away from the 08-09 season. “They came in being picked to get last and they ended up sixth (in the league) … It’s about work ethic. Work hard and things will happen.”
