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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. |
Panelists Weigh In on the Best By SCOTT SANDSBERRY YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC Top player SUSAN ANDERSON didn't get many chances to go for big numbers, because her Mount Baker coach, panelist JIM FREEMAN, invariably pulled her any time the Mounties built a comfortable lead. The one time he didn't, he lived to regret it. During a game in her junior year, Anderson had 37 points after three quarters. Recalls Freeman, "I thought, 'Let's let her go for 45 or something.' " But at the center jump to begin the fourth quarter -- all quarters began with a jump in those days -- Anderson badly wrenched her ankle when she came down on another player's foot. Doctors put her in a cast and told her she was done for the season. Instead of staying home, though, Anderson came to every practice and worked out alongside the court -- riding a stationary bike, jumping rope on one leg, doing pushups and situps. "She did that all practice long," Freeman says. Five or six weeks later, she was ready to play again. Her first game back was against a good Lynden team, and Freeman told her he was going to put her sparingly, short stints here and there, just to be safe. Yeah, sure. "Lynden jumped on us by 10 points right off the bat and I put her in and never took her out," Freeman says. "And her parents are sitting there biting their nails and I'm biting my nails, thinking, 'Boy, if she gets hurt, I'm toast.' She would dive for the ball and everything else. You'd never know she'd been injured." The Mounties won the game with Anderson scoring in the mid-20s. * Panelist GARY MYERS has another singular memory of Anderson. In a district-tournament game, she had knocked an opponent down while making a rebound and getting off an outlet pass. But instead of racing downcourt -- in what would have been a five-on-four advantage -- Anderson stopped to help the opposing player up. "That," says Myers, "was Susan in a nutshell." * SHERRI JOHNSON, the No. 2 vote-getter in a very close race with Anderson, was a sensational athlete, a state sprint champion and a record-setting basketball player. "One in a million," recalls one of her teammates, RENAE (DUFFIE) NILLES. But Nilles also recalls Johnson's first practices as a freshman, when she looked like a million-to-one shot ever to become a player. "The girl could not play basketball. The girl could not shoot baskets. The girl could not shoot a free throw," laughs Nilles, who was a sophomore then and already a budding star. "She had no clue what basketball was. That's the honest-to-God truth. "The girl walked into the gym, athletic as heck, but give her a ball and she didn't know what to do with it. I remember (coach TIM) PARKER saying to me, 'You and Sherri match up.' I'm like, you've gotta be kidding, I'm going to smoke her." And Nilles could smoke her ... in the beginning. It wasn't long before Johnson began to turn into what Nilles calls "just the best basketball player I ever saw." She had that great speed, great athletic ability and one other easily-overlooked gift. "She had hands like a guy," Nilles says. "She could palm the ball. I still can't palm the ball to this day, unless it's a small one. She had these mitts on her that you would die for."
* It may not be the most wonderful memory for the girls who experienced it, but East Valley's 1993 semifinal loss to eventual champion Cle Elum won't soon be forgotten by anybody who saw it. "We were the All-Throw-Up Team," says panelist STEVE TJARNBERG, then the Red Devils' coach, who calls it "the popcorn-bucket game." East Valley had won its first two tournament games by 15 and 17 points. But on the way back to the hotel, one of the players, standout center JENNY FRANK, got sick to her stomach. "It just snowballed. Basically, all of the kids got sick," Tjarnberg says of the apparent teamwide case of food poisoning. By the semifinals the next day, almost every player had spent time hunched over a toilet, and it wasn't any better by game time. "We had kids getting sick on the way to the locker room," the coach says. "I remember telling the referees before the game, 'If somebody runs off the floor, don't take it personally, it's nothing you did.' " During the game against Cle Elum, which had lost to the Devils twice in three earlier games that season, the team played with buckets and a couple of team mothers at the end of the bench. Whenever a player had to come running to the bucket from elsewhere on the bench -- or from oncourt -- the mothers would hold up blankets and towels to give the gagging player some semblance of privacy. The Devils' spunk -- particularly in light of their funk -- impressed another panelist, radio broadcaster STEVE GRUBBS, who calls it his "most poignant memory" in the tourney's history just because of their effort. "They were so good, and at the same time it was just so sad, because they could have thrown in the towel and they just wouldn't," he says. "They'd run over to the sideline, get sick and then ask to come back in the game. You wouldn't expect to see 16-, 17-year-old girls do that." While the spirit was willing, though, the bodies were weak. The Devils went scoreless in the second quarter and lost by 16. Cle Elum won the title the next day. * As was the case with the 1A boys Tourney Titans panel last year, a few of the girls' history panelists gave their thoughts on a couple of other category "bests." Three, JIM CARBERRY, KATHY BOS and RANDY STUECKLE, all pegged the best game in tournament history as the 1986 semifinal between Foster and Mount Baker -- in which Foster, led by the No.2 player on the all-time list, SHERRI JOHNSON, came from behind in the final three minutes to beat Mount Baker, led by top vote-getter SUSAN ANDERSON. Another thrilling game remembered fondly by panelists was the 1993 final between Cle Elum and Lynden Christian. The Warriors trailed by a point in the waning seconds before CHEA SIMPSON and ANGELA ERICKSON combined for a steal and all-tournament standout NIKKI FIELDS drove for the game-winning basket in Cle Elum's 39-38 victory. * In a tremendous demonstration of non-homerism, JIM FREEMAN -- who coached SUSAN ANDERSON at Mount Baker -- didn't put his star No. 1 on his list. He picked Cascade's MEGAN FRANZA and Anderson second. "Just the versatility," Freeman said of Franza. "She could do everything. She was the complete package -- handle the ball, shoot, play defense, block shots and she could rebound well. Susan was a position player, and Megan could play anywhere on the floor. "But I also have to turn the thing another notch: If they'd had the 3-point line when Susan was playing, Susan had that range. She was a pure shooter from anywhere on the floor; we just never went out that far, because there was no point to it. Give us a 3-point line and Susan would have hit a few. "But, still, I'd put Franza up there. She was the best athlete of all the ones I saw -- about as athletic a girl as you're going to find." * Panelist GARY SMITH couldn't find a spot on his list of top 10 players for a personal favorite. "If there was a No. 11, JILL PIMLEY would have to be in there," says Smith, who coached state-runnerup teams at two schools (Omak in 1990, Tonasket in 2003) and also coached Pimley in summer select-team ball. "She didn't shoot that well, but she was a devastating defensive player," Smith says of the Goldendale star. "She was a 38-foot triple jumper, just a great athlete -- if you leave her open for a 3, she's not going to hit too many of them, but she's going to drive around you and score. She's real short but she could jump out of the gym. So you had to have her on the floor." * Panelist CURT De HAAN, the longtime coach at Lynden Christian, was mentioned by several panelists as the best coach in tournament history. (Four of his six state championship teams were among the panelists' top 15 vote-getters.) A player he put high on his top-10 list was Prosser's KELLY BLAIR, who was a one-woman show when the Mustangs knocked off Lynden Christian in the 1989 semifinals. "I think she'd seen double-coverage all year," De Haan recalls. "In the fourth quarter, she hit two NBA 3's to open up the quarter, and that gave them a little cushion. The thing I remember about her was she was so focused; I don't think I'd ever seen an athlete so focused. You could see it in her face, totally focused on the task at hand. "And being a phenomenal athlete didn't hurt." Panelist STEVE TJARNBERG, echoed that thought, calling Blair "the best pure athlete I ever saw." * One panelist, DENNIS BIRNEY, coached another one, JODI (GREENFIELD) BELLAMY, when the latter was a standout at Goldendale. Birney was understandably proud when Bellamy went over 1,000 career points, making her the first in the school's history and one of the first girls in the Valley to accomplish the feat. But this touched Birney even more: When his senior star was about to go over the 1,000-point mark, he asked her what she wanted to do about it, what the announcer or the school might do to commemorate the moment. "Nothing," she told him. "It's a team thing." Says Birney, "I'm proud of her personally." * The 10th-leading vote-getter among the players, SHANNON DYKSTRA of Lynden Christian, was one of those "legacy" kids -- the offspring of a well-known basketball dad. Dykstra, who was a four-year state-tournament starter for the Lyncs who led her team to four trophies and the 1996 state title (and, now, the lofty status as the best 1A team ever), is the daughter of Glen Dykstra, the star of LC's 1976 state champions. The senior Dykstra was the fourth-leading vote-getter in last year's boys Tourney Titans. "Very smart, heady player," Lyncs coach Curt De Haan says of Shannon Dykstra. "And defensively, she was tougher than nails."
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