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Published March 3, 2004

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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.		   Tourney Titans: The Voting Panel
 
   That the players and teams featured in this section are the best in the Class 1A girls tournament history is, of course, a matter of opinion. But, taken as a whole, it is the considered opinion of a group of people whose history with the tournament gives them a pretty fair perspective.
   The selection committee recruited by the Herald-Republic ran the gamut and included past and current coaches, former players, media members and knowledgeable fans. Each voter picked his or her top 10 teams and players in order, 10 points going to a No. 1 pick, 9 to a No. 2 and so on.
   The voting committee might best be broken down into groups. They include:

On the bench

   As high school coaches go, CURT DE HAAN, LINDA RICKER and TIM PARKER were as successful as you'll ever find. Ricker's Cle Elum teams won three consecutive titles in 1981-82-83 and Parker's Foster teams won back-to-back championships in 1986 and 1987. De Haan? Well, his Lynden Christian teams matched both of those accomplishments, with title runs in 1990-91-92 and 1998-99. His six 1A championship teams also include the vaunted 1996 Lyncs, voted the tourney's best ever.

   STEVE TJARNBERG and DAN COLBY also coached title teams, Colby at Connell in 1994 and Tjarnberg at East Valley the following year, squads that between them won 54 of 55 games.

   The rest of the current and former coaches on the voting panel constitute a virtual Who's Who among the state's prep coaching fraternity: DENNIS BIRNEY, JIM FREEMAN, MIKE HAERLING, MIKE LEWIS, GARY SMITH and JIM THARP.

   They don't have a girls title among them, but each sure had a run at one or more. Birney's 1981 Goldendale team reached the finals, only to lose a close one to Ricker and Cle Elum. Haerling's 1993 Quincy squad reached the semifinals, and Tharp took Toledo to the championship game in 1989. Smith's 1990 Omak Pioneers and Lewis' 1996 Cascade Kodiaks, both of whom finished second to powerful teams from Lynden Christian, were each good enough to receive Top Ten votes from other panelists.

   That leaves Freeman, whose 1986 Mount Baker team came the closest of all, losing a semifinal heartbreaker to eventual champion Foster in what several panelists recall as the most exciting game in tournament history.

On the court (and bench)

   Panelists CHERYL HOLDEN and JODI BELLAMY each have the added perspective of having both a player in the tournament and then seeing it from the vantage point of a coach. Holden and Bellamy (then Greenfield) were among the tourney's early scoring and rebounding stars, Holden at Zillah and Greenfield at Goldendale. The voting panel also included a third standout-player-and-later-coach who asked to remain anonymous.

In the stands

   KATHY BOS of Lynden and ERMA KEMP of Cowiche have been knowledgeable fans of this tournament since its inception, often seeing nearly every game of a year's tournament while jotting copious notes and picking their own all-tournament teams.

On the air

   Between them, STEVE GRUBBS, GARY MYERS and RANDY STUECKLE have done the play-by-play for perhaps half of the games in tournament history, both for their own stations -- Grubbs and Stueckle in Colfax, Myers in Bellingham and Chelan -- and on contract game-by-game basis for other stations across the state. Their cumulative history spans from the tournament's early days at Central Washington University and Pacific Lutheran University to the modern era in the SunDome.

Taking notes

   The Class 1A girls tournament's most knowledgeable historian just might be JIM CARBERRY. Not only did he write the only book on the tourney -- 1986's "From Dream To Dome," chronicling the event's first 11 years -- he also spent years covering the event as a reporter at the Bellingham Herald and his wife is a former player at Lynden Christian. As for the other ink-stained wretches on the voting panel, GARY LINDBERG and SCOTT SANDSBERRY, have covered this tourney off-and-on since its outset for, between them, four different newspapers -- most recently the Wenatchee World (Lindberg) and the Yakima Herald-Republic (Sandsberry).


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 Tourney Titans
      Susan Anderson Truly Blessed With Her Success
     Lyncs to History
     How Would Top Three Teams Match Up?
     Mount Baker-Foster Game Could Be Best Ever
     What If Top Two Teams Had Met?
     Top 20 Players
     Top 20 Teams
     The Voting Panel
     Panelists Comment on a Special Group of Players