Eagles Get Early Scare, But Survive

Night session

The top-ranked St. John-Endicott Eagles defeated the Kittitas Coyotes in the first-round of the 19th girls State B high school basketball tournament Wednesday at the Arena.

But the victory didn’t come without a scare. And it wasn’t from the Coyotes either.

On the Eagles’ way to a resounding 56-32 win over the Coyotes, senior Andee Schmick was hit in the throat while fighting for a rebound early in the third quarter and lay sprawled out on the court for five minutes as she attempted to regain her breath.

Schmick attempted to stay on her feet after she was first hit, but she was soon helped to the floor by St. John-Endicott coach Lorin Carlon and Eagles’ manager Skip Collier.

After sitting out the remainder of the quarter, Schmick returned to play in the fourth quarter with the Eagles well in control of the game.

No one else received such a scare in the other night contests though.

In other night-session action, Reardan defeated Darrington 65-29 and St. George’s advanced by beating King’s West 64-51. Rainier and Waterville started late.

As for the Eagles, and more specifically Schmick, she said her injury conjured up images of her childhood.

“The muscles in my neck have always been over-developed. I used to hyperventilate all the time when I was little,” Schmick said. “I had forgotten how scary that feeling was.”

As for the precise location of the hit, Schmick said: “If women had Adam’s apples, it would have been right there.”

But before Schmick’s injury, St. J-E’s other star, junior Tricia Lamb, slightly rolled her left ankle in the first quarter. Her injury was not serious enough to warrant a departure from the court.

With Schmick out of the lineup, Lamb and Staci Garrett scored all the Eagles’ eight points in the third quarter. Garrett made up for Schmick’s absence on the inside.

“I don’t think we rely on any one person,” Garrett said. “We’ve been focused for so long, it really doesn’t matter who is on the court.”

Lamb finished with 17 points to lead the Eagles while Schmick followed with 16 and Garrett added 11. Before her injury, Schmick scored 12 of St. John- Endicott’s first 24 points.

The Eagles showed absolutely no signs of being tentative in opening-round play.

“And I’m glad,” Eagles coach Lorin Carlon said. “We’ve been doing this for a while now, and I didn’t expect us to be nervous, but sometimes you never know.”

Carlon was also pleased with the fact that his smaller team played tough against Kittitas’ 6-foot-2 twin towers of Aimee Sorenson and Lindsey Brown. They finished with 16 and 10 points, respectively.

Meanwhile, Bryce Wilson and his Reardan Indians have won 12 of their last 13 games. The Indians ran the Loggers out of the gym early and didn’t call off the attack.

In the next to last game of the night, St. George’s used defensive pressure to beat a spirited but out-manned opponent in King’s West, 64-51.

The Dragons made 22 steals. However, offensively, the Dragons shot just 27 for 77 from the floor.

“We’ve got to get those baskets in the transition game,” St. George’s coach Ross Thomas said. “We want those steals and that chaotic pace, but we also need to make those baskets.”

, DataTimes