YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

It’s probably the last thing that Tana Stickney and her East Valley teammates had on their mind or wanted to think about Friday night, in light of their team’s semifinal loss to Lynden Christian, but Stickney surpassed an individual landmark during the game.

Her first basket of the game — a layup barely
2 1/2 minutes into the contest — put her over the 1,000-point mark for her career with the Red Devils. The Red Devils’ coaching staff had hoped she would reach that landmark in Thursday’s relatively easy quarterfinal victory over Woodland, so they could celebrate it in style before their exceedingly more difficult matchup with Lynden Christian.

The coaches and her teammates had all signed a basketball for her, as well creating posters commemorating her career with the Red Devils. So that — following Thursday night’s victory — was when they gave her the gifts, knowing it wouldn’t take her long to score one more point.

CHAMPIONS IN THE CLASS: East Valley’s boys basketball team didn’t get to play on the state-tournament court on Saturday, having been knocked out in on Friday by Hockinson in a loser-out, winner-gets-a-trophy game. But the Red Devils were on the court on Saturday because of what they did in the classroom.

The Devils were honored as the 2A state academic champions during halftime of Saturday’s Lynden Christian-King’s boys title game. East Valley’s players accumulated a 3.802 grade point average.

OFFENSIVE OFFENSE: Suffice it to say that the 2A’s reign in Yakima didn’t end with a bang — at least, certainly not an explosion of points.

In the girls tournament, in not a single game over the first three days did both teams manage to top the 50-point mark. When that finally happened, it was just barely — a 56-50 Chelan victory over Woodland in Saturday’s fourth-place game.

The boys tournament wasn’t much better. The 50-50 standard was topped just twice, including Grandview’s 67-59 loss to Vashon Island on Saturday.

CENTURY MARK: For Lynden Christian, Saturday’s dual state-title games against King’s were numerically special. It marked the 100th state-tourney game for both the Lyncs’ boys teams and their girls. For the record, the girls have done better over the years, with 75 wins and eight titles coming into Saturday’s trophy games to the LC boys’ 65 and three.