Vikings basketball sweeps the week

by Declan O’Malley

Sounder contributor

Boys’ basketball

The Orcas High School boys’ basketball team began last week with a dominant performance in Darrington, defeating the Loggers 75-48. Viking Coach Ed Lago expressed satisfaction with his team’s efforts, noting how well the boys executed offensively.

“The boys passed the ball well and moved the defense out of balance. We were able to capitalize and were very productive offensively,” Lago said.

Riding the momentum from the early-week win, the Vikings faced the Coupeville Wolves for the second time this season. Their first matchup ended in a thrilling double-overtime loss to Coupeville, and the second game proved equally close, with OIHS falling 52-47 in a hard-fought contest.

“Our teams pretty banged up at this point at this point of the season, so to come out and put up a good comeback fight against a very solid team like Coupeville gives me so much hope for the mentality of our team going forward,” said senior Zane Howard. “We still came up short because of some early defensive breakdowns, but I think mentally we are finding where our heads need to be, and that’s being as dialed in as possible for these must-win games coming up.”

Lago also added his thoughts on the loss.

“We were hoping to get a revenge win, but we couldn’t get it going,” he said. “Despite some brilliant scoring from senior Remy Lago, our offense as a team lacked the production we needed.”

Following this week’s results, the Vikings are now 4-9 overall and 2-5 in the conference. They’ll face a busy week ahead with three home games: La Conner on Tuesday, Lopez on Thursday and Granite Falls on Feb. 1.

“Moving forward, we need to move the ball with less dribbling and quicker passing. Rebounding and second-chance baskets are things we need to improve on if we’re going to make a run in the playoffs,” Lago said.

Girls’ basketball

The Lady Vikings are coming off an intense week in which they swept their competition over two games. First, the OIHS girls’ team dominated the Darrington Lady Loggers, holding them to just 11 points while racking up 52 points in a 52-11 victory. Ava Aschcraft would net 19 points in the game to lead in scoring.

The Lady Vikes followed that performance with 15 15-point game from Sofia Mahoney Jauregui to secure a 44-36 win over Coupeville on Tuesday, avenging an earlier loss to the Wolves.

Junior and team captain Charlotte Winter-Lamphere was thrilled with the team’s performance, especially given the team’s challenges earlier in the season.

“The first time we played Coupeville, we had a lot of people either injured or sick, and we lost by just a couple points,” Winter-Lamphere said. “So last night was kind of a revenge game for us, and we’re all glad we won this one.”

“We played a couple of great games this week. We knew Coupeville would be tough, and we held them with some solid defense,” said Coach Haley Cruz Winchell. “We had some shining moments of offensive plays on Friday night.”

With the two victories, the Lady Vikings now sit at 10-8 overall and 3-4 in conference play. They’ll have a chance to even their league record to 4-4 with a game against La Conner on Tuesday, Jan. 28.

“This week we are going to dial in our full court D. And continue developing trust on the offensive side,” said Cruz Winchell.

Both teams are showing strong potential as they look ahead to the rest of their season, with the boys focusing on fine-tuning their offensive and rebounding efforts and the girls looking to build on their recent success.

Cienna Richardson contributed player quotes to this story.