Yakima's just the latest stop on Bruins' road trip
 
By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

It’s a long way from their Olympic Peninsula home to Yakima, but by today the SunDome will feel just as much like home as anywhere else the Clallam Bay Bruins have been this year.

They’ve been a road team all year. And now they’ll be playing their second straight game in the Dome.

Without the use of their home gym, which is being rebuilt, the Bruins played all of their regular-season home games on the road at Crescent or Forks, each an hour’s drive away, or at Neah Bay, which takes 45 minutes on a narrow, winding road.

The Bruins had to practice in a local elementary school gymnasium with a court barely over half the length of a typical 84-foot-long high school court, and significantly narrower.

“The 3-point line is at the out-of-bounds line,” coach John Wilson said. “We didn’t practice with an out-of-bounds on the side because the walls were right there anyway.

“Your scrimmages aren’t scrimmages. They’re halfcourt practices.”

Not only that, the practice court didn’t even have a hardwood floor; it’s a rubberized court atop a concrete base, and whenever it rained, a puddle would form in one corner. If the rain continued, the water spread over the playing surface, further limiting the playable room.

After doing all their preseason practices on their tiny court, the Bruins played their first game at Mount Rainier Lutheran. They told their coaches the court “looked like a football field.”

Imagine what the SunDome felt like, a pro-length, 94-foot court twice the length of their little practice gym.

“Running for a fast break here, you’d feel like you were already there and you wouldn’t even be to the 3-point line,” said senior Jesse Chartraw.

But running, in the end, is what did the Bruins in. There was no practicing the fast break on their little floor — “Our fast break’s about, oh, four steps,” Wilson noted — or dealing with the exhaustion of facing a full-court press. And with only a half-dozen players who play a lot, exhaustion hit hard. Although Clallam Bay owned a 27-13 lead early in the third quarter against Tri-Cities Prep, the Bruins’ legs were already gone.

“I was dead, especially handling the ball against the press,” point guard Zak Greene said.

“We don’t get much running done in our practices,” added Chartraw, whose 20 points (and 7-for-12 shooting) led the Bruins. “We do what we can, but when everybody gets really tired, nobody’s talking on the court. We weren’t playing with our heads by that third quarter, because everybody’s working so hard and you’re just beat.”

After dominating the first 2 1/2 quarters, Clallam Bay could only watch when the Jaguars got red-hot in the second half. Tri-Cities Prep guard Sergio Lopez, after shooting 1-for-9 in the first half, went 7-for-9 after halftime to finish with a game-high 23.

And even though the Bruins still led going into the final quarter, it was fairly obvious what was happening.

“You could see they had tired legs,” Wilson said. “We were missing a lot of shots we were making in the first half.”

Tri-Cities outscored the dog-tired Bruins 24-8 over the final eight minutes for an entirely misleading 53-39 final.

“All year, we’ve given up leads at the end,” Wilson sighed. “What can you do? You can’t get guys in condition running sideways.”