‘Out the window’: East Valley girls basketball program struggles through shorthanded season

It’s another Monday at East Valley High School and Mondays tend to bring around bad news for the school’s girls basketball team. COVID-19 testing happens three times per week and Monday is a testing day.

But last Monday the bad news wasn’t virus related.

Getting sidelined by a virus happens and the team recovers. Coach Rob Collins himself tested positive earlier this season and had to quarantine for a week.

But Monday Collins received a text message: the team’s second-leading scorer, freshman Willow Burrill, decided to transfer to West Valley. In a normal year, that news would be a major blow, but you can move on.

But this year has been anything BUT normal. No, this is a gut-punch.

East Valley started the 2021-22 season with just eight players turning out for the program – not even enough players to hold a full-court scrimmage in practice. And on game nights, all eight have been available at the same time just once – on Opening Night.

Now they’re down to a ‘Magnificent Seven’ – at least, they hope to be. State tournament veteran Ellie Syverson, Kyra Johnson and Athena Lyons-Huss are seniors. Cecilia Syron and Mckenzie Ervin are juniors. Hannah Rasmussen and Fasai Xiong are freshmen.

Senior night is Tuesday against Rogers, and Wednesday is the spirit game against West Valley at the Arena. Collins said “as of now” they are planning to play, but the situation is still tenuous at best.

On Friday the Knights still had a player in COVID protocol. And Syverson, the team’s point guard and leading scorer, hopes to find her way back to the court after injuring two fingers on her right hand, her shooting hand.

“I saw the doctor and they took x-rays,” Syverson said last week. “It looks bad, but it’s just sprained.”

She asked her doctor when she could get back on the court.

“The doctor looked at me and said, ‘Can you make a fist?’ I said no. It’s going to be at least a couple of weeks, but I’m determined to get back for the Golden Throne game (Wednesday).”

With Burrill gone, Syverson is the only true ballhandler the team has left so that adds a sense of urgency to her recovery.

Meanwhile, last Monday Collins could only count to five, and the school made the difficult decision to forfeit their games for the week.

The forfeits drop East Valley to 0-13, 0-6 in Greater Spokane League play.

“It’s frustrating,” Collins admits. “But it makes you appreciate just how good we had it there for a while.”

March 2, 2019 seems so very far away. On that night East Valley lost a tough, 49-40 decision to Washougal in the championship game of the state Class 2A tournament, capping a 22-6 season as the high point of a five-year run that saw the Knights bring home second-, third-, fifth- and sixth-place trophies.

The team played in four out of five state tournaments, and the one they missed had its season end with an upset loss in the regional round.

The ultimate irony this season that there are six EV alums currently playing college basketball, one more than the coach currently has available to play.

Brie Holecek is having a stellar season at Walla Walla. Genesis Wilkinson is at Carroll College and Mataya Green plays at Lewis-Clark State. Destiny Hilliard and Ellie Stowell are at Spokane Community College along with Sage Aldendorf, who started her high school career at East Valley before finishing at Freeman.

That’s all changed this year.

“For whatever reason, we had some players decide they didn’t want to turn out this year,” Collins said. “First day of practice we had just eight players. All the things we normally want to do as a team went right out the window.”

Syverson remembers an important moment at the end of her sophomore season – a year she spent going head-to-head with Holecek every day in practice.

“It was Brie Holecek night at the end of the season and she called me aside,” she recalled. “She said ‘This is your team now, Ellie.’

“This isn’t the season I expected it to be, and it’s been frustrating. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about it with (coach) Collins, about adjusting my expectations.”

Defensive schemes? Nope. Pressuring the ball end-to-end? Not this year.

“We just really had to go back to the basic,” he said. “This year, I’m doing a lot of teaching. I’m just not doing that much coaching.”

“I am so thankful for those players who are now playing in college,” Syverson said. “I’m thankful for how they all pushed me to get better. They taught me about dedication to the team, how even when things were tough you gotta do it because this is East Valley.

“And we need to do this for (coach) Collins. He’s taught me so much – so much that carries over to my studies and to life. He’s been the best coach I’ve ever had.