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| Published March 12, 2004 :: Home |
Ridgefield's Peru Stars No Matter What the Sport By SCOTT SANDSBERRY YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC Clearly, he just wasn’t awake yet. Ridgefield senior Jonny Peru, one of the most prolific offensive players in the Class 2A ranks — in whatever sport he happens to be playing at the time — was fairly abysmal in the Spudders’ 42-34 loss to Chelan in Wednesday’s late game, shooting 1-for-11 from the field and 5-for-11 from the foul line. With the shortest turnaround time in the tournament — off the floor Wednesday night by 11 p.m., back in the gym 14 hours later to prepare for a 2 p.m. game — Peru lit up the SunDome with a 23-point, five-assist, five-rebound game. “It’s just getting used to the environment, to the faster game,” says Peru, one of the quickest guards in the tournament. “From league to this level, the game just steps it up a little, and it takes a little time to get used to it.” Peru has actually spent an entire high school athletic career forcing opposing defenses to get used to him, and they usually fail in the attempt. In basketball, he carries a 21.0-point scoring average, and earned league MVP honors this season. In football, he was named all-state at running back after rushing for nearly 1,700 yards — despite missing the last three games with a broken collarbone. In soccer, he’s all-world, having broken just about every scoring record Ridgefield has — freshman record, single-season and career records. After scoring 40 goals last year, he has 93 in his career — with his senior season yet to go. And through all this he has time to carry a 3.76 GPA. “I take Running Start classes at Clark (Community PLUS, HE’S OLD ENOUGH TO DRIVE: For semifinalist Lakeside, forward Kyle Schreibeis is The Man. Not only is the Eagles’ only senior (on a team with six sophomores), a first-team all-Great Northern standout and, coach Ron Cox says, “like having an assistant coach on the court,” he’s the guy the other players look to for leadership. “We can tell them to be in bed by 11 o’clock,” Cox says, “but if Kyle tells them to be in bed by 11 o’clock, they’re actually IN bed by 11 o’clock.” HOW LOW CAN THEY GO? A few 2A teams this week have had trouble locating the basket on the regular basis. On day one, Elma’s girls broke the tournament record for lowest score with 19 points, and the next day Orting seemed determined to break it, with just 11 points midway through the third quarter — before they “exploded” for 18 more points over the last 12 minutes. Then, at about 4:45 p.m., fans were looking simultaneously at two games with the potential to break records — for lowest total points by both teams in a game. The girls’ game between East Valley and Pullman had produced just 26 first-half points — a 13-13 tie — while the boys’ game at the other end between Medical Lake and Cashmere was even short of that with a 14-11 Medical Lake lead. Both of those games eventually picked up the scoring pace and no records fell. Of course, the boys’ game had lots of time — it went two overtimes before Medical Lake pulled out the 47-46 thriller. AROUND THE RIM: Medical Lake boys coach Arnold Brown has a connection with the SunDome other than the fact that he’s coaching here this week. His own high school coach at Medical Lake — yes, Brown is coaching at his alma mater — turned the SunDome into his home court in recent years. Brown’s mentor? The late Jack Cleveland, coach of the 2002 and 2003 East Valley girls state champs. ... Nooksack Valley’s boys won’t win a championship to add to their 2003 title, but they’ll leave their mark on the record book. Their 21 steals — led by Ben VanDyken’s seven and Jason Visser’s five — broke by two the tournament single-game record set in 2000 by Omak.
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