Even in the tear-stained euphoria of Friday night, Kent Thomas wasn’t about to get carried away.
“I don’t want to say there’s a shift in power,” the Camas girls basketball coach said after his team had defeated Prairie. “They’re still the best program.”
Yet the significance of the Papermakers’ 59-46 victory in the championship game of the Class 3A district tournament could not be overlooked. The fact that the outcome will elevate girls basketball in this area could not be ignored.
For more than a decade, Clark County opponents had attempted to remove Prairie from the throne. For more than a decade, they had failed.
The Falcons had won 136 consecutive games in league play and district tournament competition, a streak that dated to Jan. 31, 2000. And if it’s difficult to wrap your head around such a stretch, look at it this way:
Melissa Williams, a standout junior for the Papermakers, said she has been aware of Prairie girls basketball since she was in third grade. Which means that in the totality of her memory, the Falcons have never lost to a team from Clark County.
Never.
When something never happens, it’s difficult to conceive, believe, and achieve, to borrow a favorite mantra of coaches.
Not that there haven’t been challengers. In recent years, when Prairie was at the Class 4A level, the Falcons locked horns with Skyview in a series of memorable struggles.
The talent on both sides was exquisite; the tension was butter thick. Two years ago, Skyview lost four times all season and finished fifth in the state tournament. But three of those losses came against Prairie. Which makes Friday all the more remarkable.
“I was just, ‘We beat Prairie!’ ” Williams said. “This is so crazy.”
Make no mistake, this isn’t a vintage Prairie team, and the Falcons’ endured a setback early this year when Heather Corral suffered a season-ending injury.
But the fact that those players represent Prairie means they are a force. The fact that they are Falcons speaks of countless hours of dedication.
So while Camas has plenty to celebrate, Prairie does as well.
In the cyclical world of high school sports, the consistency of the Falcons’ excellence is difficult to fathom. The last time they lost, Bill Clinton was president.
Now the streak is over.
“You’ve got to give credit to Camas,” Prairie coach Al Aldridge said. “We tried to put heat on them, and they responded.”
So few teams have been able to say that, which makes next year all the more tantalizing. Camas starts four juniors and has a group of tall, athletic players. Prairie starts two freshmen and two juniors and presumably will have a healthy Corral next year.
It has the makings of a mutually beneficial rivalry, the kind in which each team is driven to improve simply by the existence of the other. As Camas senior Haley Smith said of Prairie: “They got in our league and we realized how good they are. We thought, ‘We want to be that team.’ “
That’s no longer a pipedream, and Camas has the trophy to prove it. So while it doesn’t necessarily signal a changing of the guard in Clark County girls basketball, the Papermakers’ victory does represent a larger and more significant truth.
“What it means,” Thomas said, “is that if you work hard enough you can play with anybody.
“It means the streak is dead.”
Greg Jayne is Sports editor of The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jayne@columbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbian.com/weblogs/GregJayne
