By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

The players from the smallest town represented in the 1B tournament -- if Brooklyn could actually be referred to as a town -- had an interesting take on their first visit to the SunDome.

For many, it was their first time to Yakima, or to anywhere far from Pacific County, said North River coach Les Lande.

"Most of them didn't know where White Pass is, or where Yakima is -- and I teach Northwest history, so that really bothers me," Lande said with a grin. "But they're loving this. A number of my boys have never even stayed in a motel before."

And, certainly, not in the SunDome.

"I thought it would be bigger," said North River center Loren Pickering, whose only previous state-tourney dome experience was as a spectator at the Tacoma Dome.

"Me too," said teammate Jeff Oliver. "I thought it'd be bigger."

The stage, though, had been the biggest North River's players had been on, and the bright lights didn't treat them well. The tournament's favorite underdogs saw Pickering get called for three fouls in the first six minutes, affecting his aggressiveness the rest of the game, and the Mustangs shot just 15-for-60 against Rosalia and lost 51-40.

"The shots just wouldn't fall," Pickering said with a sigh. At one point late in the game, after having three straight short shots rim out, center Pickering shook his head with a little smile as if to say, "What can you do?"

"They're downhearted, no question, but they know they're a good team," Lande said after the game, noting that the loss wouldn't affect the Mustangs in today's consolation round game against Odessa. "That I can guarantee you. They'll play their hearts out. There will be blood on the floor."

REACHING THE HEIGHTS: If any team wants a mentor on overcoming adversity to reach a goal, they need to look no further than what North River athletic director Larry Nielson has accomplished. Not the part about being a national-class collegiate track and cross country star at Western Washington, but the part about being the first American to climb the world's tallest mountain without supplemental oxygen.

He had gone up the year before, in 1982, with an American team led by Lou Whittaker -- his tentmate on the trip was Yakima's Dave Mahre -- but was turned back barely more than 1,000 feet below the 29,035-foot Everest summit with a somewhat significant problem. He had terrible frostbite on all 20 fingers and toes.

"The doctor said I was probably going to lose 12 to 15 of them," Nielson said, holding up all his fingers and adding with a grin, "I was too attached to them."

When he returned with a German-American group in 1983, everything physically that could go wrong for Nielson did. He got a bad case of giardia that resulted in his losing 35 pounds over five days. On his summit push, he had an ulcerated toe on which the bone was showing. He suffered a pulmonary embolism just below the summit and had two broken ribs from the coughing.

And he kept right on going, until he stood on top of the world.

SHORT SHOTS: The girls roster for LAKE QUINAULT is unique in that its 11 players include five eight graders, a circumstance that came about in midseason when the Elks found themselves with six eligible players (several others having missed enough practices to be, well, gone). The school administration appealed to the WIAA, and the five youngsters moved into the lineup. None of them played a minute of the Elks' 50-40 loss to Pateros, in which Lake Quinault's best player was, as usual, KELLIE SANSOM with 23 points and a dozen rebounds.

Most dominating performance of the first day? Maybe TOUCHET's girls' 57-24 thumping of Neah Bay, or maybe NEAH BAY's boys, which got a subpar six-point day from its best player, DOMINICK DeBARI, and yet still owned the boards and trounced Oakville by 24. Biggest finish? No question: ALMIRA/COULEE-HARTLINE's 16-2 fourth-quarter run against Taholah, which had led all but 56 seconds of the first half and still led until the final two seconds of the third period.