by Marty Zier
Sports contributor
The Viking men headed to Concrete for the first league game of the season and beat the Lions easily 78-38 on Dec. 13.
Coach Corey Wiscomb said his team started slow but found their quick pace and never looked back.
“It was a nice chance for us to experiment with some new line-ups and run some things we don’t normally do,” he said. “Everyone played and played well. Two stand outs in the game were Vanya Bullock who scored 23 points and Cyrus Amour who contributed a strong 25 points. Miles Harlow had 8, Aidan Kruse 7, Grayson White 6, Brother Murphy 3, Yusuf Duni 2, and Hayden Simpson 1.”
The 3-1 overall Vikings lost 69-51 to Bear Creek, a “1A powerhouse” according to Wiscomb, for their homecoming game in an non-league contest on Dec. 16.
“As expected, it was a hard-nose battle with some extremely high intensity basketball,” said Wiscomb. “No matter what they threw at us that first half we handled it, but they did the same to us. The defense in that game was tremendous. We stayed pretty even at half, 25-24, only down one entering the third period where the lead see-sawed back and forth. We opened the fourth period strong for a moment, but then the rug was pulled out from under their feet. The Grizzlies stepped back, I mean way back, like 5 or 6 feet behind the three point line. We were covering them up to the line, but we let them shoot the deep ball. They turned hot and drained three in a row and we went from a one-point game to down 10 in a mere 30 seconds. I give Bear Creek credit, they closed the game well.”
Viking scoring was led by Bullock with 15, Murphy 11, Miles Harlow 7, Hayden Simpson 6, Aidan Kruse and Cyrus Amour both 4 each and Duni and Michael Chesher with 2 each.
The Lady Vikings swept last week with two convincing wins over Concrete and The Bear Creek School and kept their overall record clean at 4-0.
The ladies traveled to Concrete on Dec. 13 and improved their effort against the Lions over last year, according head coach Gregg Sasan.
“At Concrete we had an impressive team defensive effort,” he said. “The Lions’ best player scored 22 points against us last year and we kept her to 11 points with double team pressure helped by Journey Howden and Joanne Mietzner. But our aggressive defense created some foul trouble for us in the third and fourth quarters, so I had to bring up some players from the bench. Parker Landsman came off the JV bench to replace Journey and Bethany Hansen and really stepped it up and helped us out. We pulled out the win 59-35 with Katy Minnis, our high scorer with 18 points, Birdie Greening with 16 and Maia Lewis-Schunk with 10. I was also pleased the we shot 64 percent from the free throw line. We are always trying to improve the basic fundamentals.”
The Ladies traveled to Redmond to play the The Bear Creek School Grizzlies on Dec. 16 and dominated the game 45-26.
“We were able to be creative on defense and showed the Grizzlies some different defensive looks which helped us stay out of foul trouble,” said Ssan. “We had solid offensive and defensive rebounding by Jessie Nichols and Hansen but our free throw percentage fell to 55 percent. Minnis and Hansen lead the team in scoring again with 14 and 12 points, respectively.”
Both Viking teams travel to LaConner Wednesday for league contests.
