No one should be surprised that Lauren Kanyer is a basketball coach.
You might remember her as Lauren Short, point guard for the Prairie girls basketball team from December 1999 to March 2003.
I remember her as one of the smartest basketball players I have ever had the fortune to cover.
Almost every time, she made the right decision. Almost every time, she was in the right position. And every game, whether she scored 16 points or six, if her team won, she knew she did her job.
She was the quintessential point guard, just as happy to set up her teammates for a score or making the pass that lead to the pass for a basket. She might as well have been an assistant coach on the court.
No wonder the game never left her. No wonder she is trying to pass along her wisdom to the next generation of basketball players.
Right now, though, she is not teaching a lot of girls. Kanyer is the head coach at Morton, a Class 2B program with nine players in the entire program. In fact, Morton needed an exemption from the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association to allow for three eight-graders to play high school ball, just to have a program this year.
“We’re really small, but I’m loving it,” Kanyer said. “I just love basketball.”
After leading Prairie to a state championship her senior year — Prairie’s last state title team — Kanyer played college ball at Central Washington.
“I really enjoyed playing college basketball. I was not the star of the team by any means. I came off the bench for most of my career,” she said. “I enjoyed my time and made a lot of good friends. It was a good experience, and I got to travel around a lot.”
She saw exotic locales such as Fairbanks, Alaska, where she endured a day when it was 56 degrees below zero.
“It makes your nose hairs freeze,” she said.
Don’t feel too bad for her, though. Her senior year, the team went to Hawaii.
“That made up for it, I guess.”
After her career as a player ended, Kanyer was not certain she would jump right into coaching, but she was hired as an assistant at Union for the Titans’ first season.
“I thought, at first, I might take a little time off and enjoy a Christmas break for once,” she said. “Then the Union thing happened. It was a great opportunity. And I fell in love with coaching right away.”
That led to her job as a teacher and coach at Morton.
She credits her high school coach, Al Aldridge, for where she is today.
“I am very confident in my knowledge of basketball because of what I learned from Al,” she said. “I was a point guard for him for four years. I really learned a lot from him.”
She is passing some of that knowledge to her players.
One of the biggest lessons came from a very rare loss for the Falcons. Kanyer was a freshman the last time Prairie lost to a Clark County opponent, back on Jan. 31, 2000 to Battle Ground. She remembers the game like it were Jan. 26, 2010.
She recalled how Prairie’s philosophy back then was to switch on every screen and roll. For some reason, it wasn’t happening this night, and the Tigers kept making open 3-pointers during a fourth-quarter comeback.
Kanyer said this season, she switched philosophies mid-game once, and it hurt her team.
“Find out what your team is best at, and have that defensive or offensive philosophy to stick to,” she said. “In that Battle Ground game, we became uncharacteristic in how we were doing things.”
She also remembers the locker room after the game and the next day’s practice.
“Not good at all,” she said. “I knew after that game I didn’t want to lose another one.”
She still follows Prairie. She is proud of the streak. Remember, after that Battle Ground loss, she and her teammates never lost to a Clark County opponent again.
Kanyer likes watching other former players, such as Ashley Corral, stand out in college. And she still has her competitiveness. You see, Corral broke just about every one of Kanyer’s high school records.
“I still have the state (tournament) career assist record,” Kanyer said, proudly. “She always let me know when she broke my records. She never got to tell me she broke that one.”
Lauren Short will be telling basketball stories for the rest of her life. The game is in her blood.
After watching her all those years back, it came as no surprise that she became a teacher and a coach.
In a way, she already was one back in her playing days.
Paul Valencia covers high school sports for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4557 or e-mail at paul.valencia@columbian.com
