The envelopes,
please ...
 
The Dribblies: the only awards that really matter.

By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

You’ve seen the Golden Globes, the screen actors’ and directors’ guild awards, the Spirit Awards and, finally, the Oscars. But breathe deeply and get your second wind, because it’s state-tournament basketball season now, and the Academy of Motion Offense, Hearts and Sidelines presents its first round of, yes, the long-awaited, mysteriously prestigious and marginally infectious (like influenza) Dribblies.

The envelopes, please.

And now, without further adieu, laggers and Gentle Ben, we present the 2009 Class 1B Dribblies ...

BEST PICTURE: The heartfelt, though tear-filled hugs between the girls from ST. JOHN-ENDICOTT and victorious COLTON following the girls championship game. Those girls had all gotten to know each other well, this being the fourth time the teams had met this season and the fourth time SJE had been on the losing side. But as the Colton players posed for their team picture with the trophy, there were the Eagles, standing off to the side, all of them in tears, and all of them applauding. True class. Great stuff.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A LEAD ROLE: To RIGGS YARBRO of MOSES LAKE CHRISTIAN and KELSEY MOSER of COLTON, the most consistently effective players on the best teams in this year’s 1B tournament. (You could make a very good argument that the best player of the whole week was LESJAR MCKINNEY of TULALIP HERITAGE, who would be your top draft pick out of this week’s tournament and just about any other one we’ve had here. But then, you could also argue that Meryl Streep and Sean Penn should win the Oscar every time they blow their nose on camera, and that just wouldn’t be right.)

And, of course, Yarbro’s team didn’t win, because they were beaten by a better team — in every sense of the word. So, the Dribblie for ...

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST: The TRI-CITIES PREP boys team. Tournament MVP SERGIO LOPEZ was the best player on the team, but if WILL HOPPES doesn’t hit a huge basket down the stretch and if RYAN MERCADO doesn’t step up at the free-throw line and if JON CAMPBELL isn’t harassing the Lions guards, it’s a different story. And the reason they did that was because of ...

BEST DIRECTOR: To JOE PEREZ, whose TRI-CITIES PREP team completely stymied high-scoring Wellpinit, worked its game plan to perfection in beating Almira/Coulee-Hartline in the semifinals and then did the same thing again in knocking off top-ranked Moses Lake Christian in the championship game.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: To the ST. MICHAEL’S fans. It didn’t matter if their team was ahead or behind — or how far behind they might be — their support remained loud and almost invariably positive. With the first-time-at-state Warriors trailing perennial powerhouse Sunnyside Christian in a lopsided 22-4 game, their fans remained relentlessly supportive. They chanted “Warrior power!” or “DE-fense! DE-fense!” and only very rarely occasionally fell into the tiresome blame-the-refs routine of so many trailing teams’ fans. (Of course, that might have had something to do with three of the school’s nuns sitting in the middle of the crowd ...)

Honorable mention in a supporting role goes to the ALMIRA/COULEE-HARTLINE boys, who got up at 7:30 a.m. Saturday to go root on the Warrior girls at 8:30 in the fifth-place game, then went back to the hotel for a coach-mandated 2 1/2-hour nap to rest up for their third-place victory over Cusick.

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PLAY EDITING: To SPENCER SHANHOLTZER of CUSICK, whose buzzer-beating leaner to beat Sunnyside Christian was prefaced a moment earlier by what turned out to be a brilliant split-second decision not to pull up for a 3-pointer. He paused to pull up and launch one — he admitted later that was his intent — but when two Knight defenders rushed to him, he took two more steps to the corner, cut around them and banked in his game-winner from about 14 feet.

BEST NOT-SO-UNORIGINAL SONG: To ALEX MABEY, a LAKE QUINAULT cheerleader whose daily renditions of the National Anthem were arguably the best thing about a couple of those early sessions. The kid has serious pipes, which is why she’s already got a couple of CDs out and has been accepted to Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., renowned for its music and music business programs — and, coincidentally, also the alma mater of Sunday’s SunDome concert headliner, Brad Paisley.

BEST SCORE (and we’re talking musical score, not point production): To the ROSALIA band, which plays with a lot of fire and energy, has a great drummer and could easily play up a couple of classifications and compete with those 1A bands. Honorable mention to the ALMIRA/COULEE-HARTLINE band, largely made up of parents and community members, not only because they sounded great but because they played a lot of classic stuff that was perfect for older Dribblies compilers.

BEST WAKE-UP: To LAKE QUINAULT’s boys, who had to play the first game of the day Wednesday and got blown out, then had to play the first game again Thursday, and won ... and again Friday, and won ... and again Saturday, when they finally fell to Rosalia. Basketball at breakfast time is tough once, much less four times.