пятница, 2 марта 2012 г.

High Schools: Not much going on this week in preps

This is the part of the newspaper where I'm supposed to tell youabout all the exciting stuff coming up in Southwest Washington highschool sports this week.

The problem is that there's isn't much going on.

In an unusual quirk in the prep calendar, there is a one-weekbreak this year between the end of the winter sports season whichended Saturday with the conclusion of the Class 4A and 2A statebasketball tournaments and the start of the spring season.

That's means a quiet week for high school sports.

Oh sure, there are a couple of teams that will open their seasonson Saturday.

But by and large, the bulk of the spring schedule will kick offnext week. And don't be surprised if that's when our trademarkNorthwest wet weather makes its return.

The most exciting event on the prep schedule this week is theScoreboard Classic all-star basketball series, which will be heldFriday at Hudson's Bay High School.

The annual event features the top senior boys and girls playersfrom the city of Vancouver against the top seniors from the rest ofClark County.

And while Clark County is loaded with talented underclassmen ingirls basketball, that fact is causing Kevin Greenwood, eventdirector for the Scoreboard Classic, some problems.

Greenwood reported that he was having difficulty filling out hisCity and County team roster with eligible girls players this year.That means for the first time in the 10-year history of the event,Greenwood will have to expand the parameters of the Classic toinclude girls from outside of the county lines.

The event gets started at 5 p.m. Friday with the slam-dunk and 3-point shooting contests. The girls game will follow at 6 p.m., andthe boys will play at 8 p.m.

And now some random thoughts coming out of the state basketballtournaments.

Stuck in the office all week, the only state basketball I got towitness was on the television.

But from looking at the scores, I got the impression that thegirls provided a more entertaining game than the boys at state.

On the boys side, it seemed the higher the stakes got, the lowerthe scores got.

In the 4A semifinals, the most points any of the four boys teamsscored was 47 points, by Bethel. By contrast, the fewest pointsscored by any of the four girls semifinalists was 52, by University.

On Saturday, it got even worse for the boys.

The Garfield girls won the state championship with a 63-58 winover Snohomish.

The boys? Bethel beat Kentwood, 33-29.

So the Garfield girls outscored both the Bethel and Kentwood boysby one point.

OK, so maybe the 4A tournament was an anomaly.

Let's look at the 2A tournament in Yakima.

The most points scored by the four boys semifinalists was 39points, and that included a new state--tournament low 23 points byChimacum.

The low point for the four girls semifinalists? 41 points.

On Saturday, King's beat Chewelah 59-55 in the girls final. Whilein the boys final, Medical Lake beat Quincy 44-41.

So can someone explain to me why the coaches in this staterejected a proposal to adopt a shot clock for the boys game so itwould be played by the same rules as the girls?

The most poignant quote of the week came from La Center'sBrittney Roggenkamp, who was upset that the Wildcats played twogames at the 2A state tournament and one of them was against leaguerival Woodland, who the Wildcats had already played twice thisseason.

"We'd rather play somebody else," Roggenkamp said of the Beavers."We come to state for variety."

A good point. In the boys bracket, all four Southwest Washingtonteams wound up playing another team from the district in the secondround on Thursday.

It wouldn't be too difficult for the WIAA to align the statebracket to avoid such in-district matchups in the first two rounds,especially at the 2A level where no district sends more than fourteams to state.

I took a call from a Clark County fan looking for scores from thePrairie teams at state.

His remark was: "Yeah, I got home too late from work to listen tothe games on the radio."

What the caller probably didn't realize is that he got home abouttwo years too late to listen to prep state basketball games on theradio in Clark County.

It's been that long since our "local" radio station decided itcould make more money by having listeners in Molalla hear RayCharles sing "I Can't Stop Loving You" than having Clark Countylisteners follow their favorite high school teams at state.

Oh well. At least we had Carl Click and his internet broadcastson KGW.com.

Of course, I haven't found an extension cord long enough to allowme to listen to the game on my computer while I'm driving in my car.

Could you please work on that one, Carl?

Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator forThe Columbian. He can be reached by phone at 360-759-8057 or e-mailat tim.martinez@columbian.com

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