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March 3, 2004 :: Home This story is part of "Tourney Titans," a special section profiling the top players and teams in the history of the Class 1A state basketball tournament. |
Lyncs to History Lynden Christian's 1996 unbeaten state-championship team voted all-time best by YH-R's panel of 22 experts By SCOTT SANDSBERRY YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC Down by two points with seven seconds to go. The other team's star stepping up to the foul line. They didn't know it at the time, but the 1996 Lynden Christian Lyncs were just about to lose a chance at one day being considered the best team in Class 1A state tournament history. No, this wasn't in the state tournament, which the Lyncs would win -- fairly easily, in fact -- three weeks later. And, yes, they would still have been the same outstanding team had they lost.
But there's something magical about an unbeaten record. And, in the waning moments of a late-season game against Blaine, the Lyncs -- who eight years later would top that list of all-time teams -- didn't have the lead or the ball. Sometimes, even great teams need a little bit of luck, plus the kind of players who will step up to take, and make, the big shots at the critical moment. For the Lyncs, at this moment, that would be Shannon Dykstra. "Just a real all-around player," recalls Carla Geleynse (now Carla Proctor), who patrolled the high post for the '96 Lyncs. "She could play point guard, get it down low and score, shoot from wherever ... she could do everything. The go-to player.
"Whenever you got stuck, you wanted to get her the ball." Blaine's Heather Ridnour -- not as well-known as her brother Luke, but an all-state talent in her own right -- stepped to the line with seven seconds to go for the first shot of a one-and-one situation. "Definitely not the person you'd want on the line with a chance to beat you," Geleynse says of Ridnour. But Ridnour missed the first free throw. The ball hit the rim and bounced long past swiping hands and into the grip of Dykstra, who turned and bolted for the other end, dribbling as fast as she could. Just outside the top of the key, with the clock nearing :00, she stopped and launched a 3-pointer. "I remember the coaches yelling (before Ridnour's free throw), 'If she makes it, go for a 3, go for a 3!' That's probably what I had in my head," Dykstra says. "That was probably one of my only 3-pointers. I was OK, but I didn't have confidence in my shot. I more liked to pass, to drive and dish. "Three-point shooting wasn't my expertise, that's for sure." On this night, though, she was golden: Nothing but net. A one-point victory. That was really the only game out of the Lyncs' 28 that season that was even close. They won their regular-season and district tournament games by an average of 30 points, and a few of their victory margins looked like misprints. Fifty-seven points ... 76 points ... even -- no kidding -- 97 points. They had to work a little bit at the state tournament, winning by seven points in the semifinals and then beating Cascade and its superstar, Megan Franza, by nine in the finals. And that was just fine with the Lyncs' standout 6-foot center, Lisa Berendsen. "We had to fight for it," she says. "I never wanted to walk through state, because I think if things are closer, if the games are closer, it makes you feel more like you deserved it. If you blew everybody away, I mean ... what's the point?" For this group of girls, the point was the successful culmination of a six-year run. The team's five seniors -- Dykstra, Berendsen, Geleynse, Erin Hof and Ranae Meenderinck -- had been teammates since seventh grade. The first two years of that run, when this group was still in middle school, Lynden Christian had won state titles. "We had watched those older teams play and win state championships, and for us, that was a dream," Geleynse says. "Starting that young and being able to play together and stick together as a team ... we wanted that." Indeed, that togetherness may have been the Lyncs' strength. "We just all got along," Dykstra says. "We were good friends, really close -- there was none of the bickering you can sometimes get on a team. It was all just true friendships. That made it so special ... where you just loved everybody on the team and got along good." These good friends could also play. Berendsen went on to star at Western Washington University, where she set a single-season school record as a senior by making 67.6 percent of her field-goal attempts. Geleynse became a four-year starter at Dordt College in Iowa. Dykstra could have been a college standout but ignored recruiters, having had enough basketball by the time she graduated high school. The Lyncs had so much talent, in fact, that 6-2 sophomore center Julie Wynstra -- who would go on to play Division I ball at Idaho -- didn't get much playing time in the big games. Senior guard Erin Hof was a deadly shooter from the perimeter, and coach Curt De Haan -- who knows talent, having coached six state-championship teams -- calls the 5-10 Geleynse "probably the best passer we ever had in the high post." On the wing, junior Kari Hamstra had a quick move to the left that routinely abused defenders who didn't realize that, well, she was left-handed. "She did the same moves, and it always worked," Berendsen says of Hamstra. "I remember her one dribble down the baseline and then stop for the shot -- and she could nail it every time." But then, very little the Lyncs did was free-lance. De Haan was a master of detail, and almost everything the players did in games had been choreographed a hundred times in practice. "We always had 101 things going through our brain," says Geleynse, an assistant varsity coach at a high school in Kansas. "It's amazing to me, now that I'm coaching, how many plays we ran. (De Haan) was always coming up with new plays for the teams you knew were going to be a tough game." "I don't know how many plays we had memorized," Berendsen says. "A lot." Most of them, though, were ultimately designed to get the ball inside to Berendsen, who De Haan calls "the MVP" of that 1996 championship season. And if it looked in the stands like that girl in the middle was having an easy game, just taking passes and putting them in the basket, listen to her teammates. "Lisa had amazing hands," Dykstra says. "You didn't have to finesse the ball to her, you didn't even have to get it to her at the right spot. She could always get to the ball." "Even if the pass was off the mark, she was going to grab it," Geleynse says. "Even if it was at her ankles, she could pick it up. Most posts can't do that." "And she had such a soft touch," Dykstra adds, "that everything she put up went in." Just as, in the one moment of that season when the Lyncs absolutely had to have a shot go in, Dykstra's did.
Great teams seem to find a way.
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