Before taking a shocking victory over the state’s No. 1 team in River Ridge, 62-59, the W.F. West girls were all but counted out of postseason contention.
It’s not over yet.
With two straight wins — including Friday night’s 55-43 home finale over Centralia — the Bearcats are back, and have added an additional game to their schedule: A Monday night showdown at Aberdeen, as both teams finished the season tied with 6-8 Evergreen 2A Conference records and will vie for the pigtail game in the District IV 2A Tournament.
“We have more confidence now that we beat River Ridge and Centralia,” Bearcat post Kaylee Hartman said, “so I think we’re going to do good.”
But for all of that to happen, W.F. West had to go through the Tigers, who tried desperately to play spoiler in Chehalis.
“What a great rivalry between not only programs, but coach (Henri) Weeks and I,” said Tiger coach Mark Westley, who was an assistant with the Bearcat coach in his earlier years. “The bittersweet part of this is we finish our season with a loss, but Chehalis is still alive.”
W.F. West built two 8-point leads in the game, and saw both of them diminished as Centralia fired away to take a 10-9 first quarter lead before going into halftime knotted at 25.
“It was kind of an odd game,” Bearcat coach Henri Weeks said. “I’m thinking to myself, our whole focus tonight was to come out and play good defense. We just had some breakdowns, defensively.”
Things finally started falling into place for the Bearcats after halftime, as they held the Tigers to one field goal in the third quarter before finally pushing for a double-digit lead, with Ryan Tahl scoring 5 straight points in an 8-1 Chehalis run with 4 minutes left in the fourth.
While all five Bearcat seniors contributed offensively — Hartman (6 points), Caitlin Linehan (6), Ashleigh Cox (5), Monika DeTray (4) and Aimee Rabung (3) — it was a freshman that led the team, as 6-foot-2 Jamika Parker shot 6 of 7 from the field and finished with 14.
“Jamika Parker did a great job from the get-go,” Weeks said. “In terms of offense, she was huge tonight. She really gave Centralia a fit because we put our three bigs in there and they don’t have the size to match up.
“That was the difference in the game, really.”
Beginning the attempted rain on the Bearcat parade was Tiger guard Jenny Milton, who helped her team overcome an 8-0 run to start the game with all 10 of her team’s points in the first frame. Milton, though, would wind up fouling out at the 6:10 mark in the final frame with a game-high 20 points.
“At the end of the first quarter, it was Jenny 10, Bearcats 9,” Westley said. “What a great effort by Jenny tonight.”
After quiet first halves, Centralia’s leading scorers throughout the season, Annnie Voetberg and Caitlyn Sande, finished their 2009-10 campaign each making four straight free throws and finishing with 11 points. The Tigers excelled from the charity stripe, going 14 of 19, but couldn’t quite find the bottom of the net in the second half with a 4 for 16 effort from the field.
“In the end, shots were dropping for them and weren’t for us,” Westley said, “but it definitely wasn’t for lack of effort. I’m real proud of the girls for battling to the end.”
W.F. West will now try to continue its string of success Monday night at 7 p.m. in Aberdeen against the Bobcats.
“I’m really excited, because I know it’s not the end,” Hartman said. “We’re going to keep going a long ways.”
“Aberdeen’s beat us twice this year,” Weeks said. “The key for us is to go down there and play our game and not let them dictate us.”
