Onalaska's Daniel Kelly makes a pass around Zillah's Mitchell Zapien during the first half of their game Thursday in the SunDome. But don't call him Daniel, he's just Deano.   SARA GETTYS/Yakima Herald-Republic

Deano makes a difference for Loggers

YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

"Who's that Number 50 kid?"

That's a question Onalaska coach Dennis Bower gets a lot, usually followed by, "I just love the way he plays. He looks like a really neat kid."

Well, anybody who knows Daniel Kelly apparently agrees, although on the basketball court and anywhere else he's quite the enigma. For one thing, nobody calls him Daniel. He's Deano. Period.

For another thing, he doesn't look like a basketball player: He's 5-foot-10 and built like a center -- a football center. He's not the most athletic guy on the team, but he'll be the guy who will, as Bower says, "set a bone-jarring screen." He also leads the western world in drawing charges, even though that means his own bones are the ones get rattled.

Deano is most at home on a baseball field, but not as a player: He's an umpire who is already working both baseball and softball games at the high school level, has umpired national ASA tournaments out-of-state and has aspirations of being a Major League ump.

Industrious? He carries roughly a 3.75 grade-point average, is one of 12 students around the state on the WIAA's L.E.A.P. committee (Leadership through Education, Activities and Personal development), and works three days a week at a local coffee/flower shop, opening up at 5 a.m. and working the morning rush before going to off to school.

Lots of work, yes. But when the Loggers reached the state tournament, it paid off in another way for Kelly. With everyone in Onalaska knowing who Kelly is -- he is, after all, that No. 50 kid -- every customer wished him luck at state and Deano made $125 in tips over two days, five times his normal take.

THAT CHAIR IS TAKEN: At every Cascade Christian boys basketball game, the chair next to coach Jerry Williams might seem to be empty -- except for the little laminated basketball with the initials M.K. on it, and perhaps a photograph of longtime CCHS assistant coach Mike Kilcup cutting part of the net after the Cougars' 2010 state championship.

That chair next to Williams belongs to Kilcup, just as it has for the last dozen years, even though Kilcup isn't around to occupy it. Kilcup died in his sleep of a massive heart attack on the night of Dec. 12, and the Cougar players immediately dedicated the rest of their season to the popular assistant coach.

Kilcup was quite the handyman around his house, and not long before his death he had made a list of all of the chores he wanted to get done around the house. Last Sunday, those chores (landscaping, deck-removal, patio-extension preparation, retaining wall, et al) got done -- by the Cougars, assistant coaches, team parents and others. "We even had a couple of ex-players asking if they could come help," Williams said. "Everybody loved Mike and people just kept showing up. We ended up with close to 60 people coming out."

That's how the Cascade Christian basketball team spent the last Sunday before coming to Yakima to defend its state title -- not on basketball, but on life lessons and love.

SHORT JUMPERS: Kingston's girls made it to the last three tournaments and managed only one victory, but that's a lot better than the Buccaneers' boys have done. Until this year, the Buc boys had never reached the final 16. This year, thanks to Zane Ravenholt's all-world debut on the SunDome court (28 points on 11-for-16 shooting from the field, nine rebounds) in a 67-47 victory over West Valley, they're in the final four, assured of no worse than fifth place. ... Here's how dominant Freeman's girls were in their 45-19 annihilation of a pretty decent King's squad on Thursday: The Scotties held the Knights scoreless for a 10-minute, 44-second stretch of the first half, during which time Freeman ran off 15 unanswered points and forced nine King's turnovers. Freeman shot poorly (32.7 percent) and it made no difference, because the Scotties dominated the rebounding (41-25), made 13 steals and absolutely rattled the Knights' ballhandlers.