King's teammates Sara Mosiman, left, and Caitlyn Faidley share a laugh before Thursday afternoon's quarterfinal game against Chelan in the SunDome.   KRIS HOLLAND/Yakima Herald-Republic

A friendship in time

King's teammates weren't always on good terms
 
By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

On the way to becoming one of the state’s best basketball players, Sara Mosiman of King’s has made a lot of first impressions.

To the staff at her kindergarten, she was the little tomboy who always played rough-and-tumble games with the boys, never backing down — the girl who had to be taken to the nurse’s office for a bloody knee on the first day ... before she ever even made it into the classroom.

To Dan Blackmer, the school’s director of athletics, she was a cute munchkin, the littlest of three sisters whose family sat one pew up in church every Sunday. Most amazing thing? She was well-mannered and sat still — quite an accomplishment for a kid who couldn’t seem to walk through any door without jumping up to try to swat the crossbeam.

To King’s coach Eric Rasmussen, she was the phenom he began hearing about when she was just a seventh grader in her first year at King’s, when she would dominate in phys-ed flag football, intercepting every pass and making spectacular catches.

“You got one coming up, coach,” Blackmer, who teaches middle-school P.E., would tell Rasmussen, who quickly agreed upon seeing her play basketball in Blackmer’s class.

“You could just tell, from an athletic standpoint,” Rasmussen recalls. “Her hands, her ballhandling skills, her instincts — it was just obvious.”

To Caitlyn Faidley, who would become one of Mosiman’s closest friends and high school teammates, she was that girl who scored just about all of her team’s points in a loss to Cait’s third-grade AAU team ... who then became one of Cait’s teammates the next year.

And Faidley didn’t like her one bit.

“We hated each other,” she says.

“I don’t think that was it. She just didn’t like me,” Mosiman retorts. “It was more just her and her friends being mean to me.”

Mosiman’s presence on the team — at the invitation of the coach, who happened to be Faidley’s mom — meant that whenever the new girl was on the court, one of her long-standing teammates had to be on the bench. “My best friends were on the team,” Faidley says. “I didn’t care to get to know her much.”

If anything, she tried to chase her off. In postgame stops at Dairy Queen, Mosiman couldn’t go to the restroom without returning to find that Faidley and her buddies had wolfed down her fries or flooded her burger in ketchup or salted her drinking water. “She would cry, she’d get so mad,” Faidley says. “We were really immature.”

But their moms were both teachers at Shorewood High School, and they conspired to make the girls work out their differences. They took the girls to lunch together at a beach cafe in Edmonds, at which the quaint touches included bikinis on the women’s restroom door and swim trunks on the men’s. When the girls saw that, both of their mischievous minds went in the same direction, and they proceeded to fill the bikinis with sand.

Somehow, that did it. For weeks, they called each other “Sandy” or “Sandy Bottom,” their own inside joke. Their friendship grew as teammates and fellow practical jokesters — Mosiman perhaps more so. “We’d both come up with an idea of something to do,” Faidley says. “I’d think it was a joke, but Mo would convince me to do it ... and we’d both get in trouble.”

On the court, though, they were trouble only for opponents. Their AAU team earned a trip to nationals in Utah one year, then to nationals in Florida the next, each time as the top Washington team in their age group. By the time they got to high school at King’s, they were immediate contributors. Mosiman became a four-year starter at point guard, helping the Knights to third- and fourth-place Class 1A trophies in her first two years. Last year she won a trifecta of sorts, earning 2A state player-of-the-year and state-tournament MVP honors while leading King’s to the 2A crown.

After spending five weeks on the road with a high-profile summer team of West Coast major-college prospects, Mosiman picked Washington from the long line of Division I suitors lining up to woo her in any of three sports. (She’s also a state-champion javelin thrower and one of the state’s top outside hitters in volleyball.)

Now, on a King’s team built around its only four varsity returners from last year — Mosiman, Faidley and juniors Danielle Clauson and Sarah Strand — Mosiman is the 2006 2A girls tournament’s undeniable force. She averages 19.1 points, a number that could be much higher if she’d only listen to her coaches.

“We’re telling her, ‘We’d like you to take maybe 20 shots a game,’” Rasmussen says. “But she has this mentality that she wants to get it done with maybe 12 shots, and make 10 of those. She’s just an unselfish kid. She loves to make great passes.”

And to keep having fun. When the four returners did their annual “initiation” of their varsity newbies, Mo and Caitlyn — the lone seniors — hatched an idea to dress the newcomers up as green turtles, complete with green face paint.

“That was bad,” Mosiman says with a laugh. “(The paint) didn’t come off for a day or so. One of the girls (freshman Laura Friar) had to practice with a green face.” Mosiman smiles. “She made a shot today (Wednesday). That was great.”

Hmm. That’s a line that will come up again after Mosiman’s career at King’s is over, when people in that school community look back at a girl who could rip down a rebound, take the ball the length of the floor, stop and pop or make the perfect dish ... in between plotting some mischief that will bring a chuckle.

Yeah. That was great.