Evergreen coach Kelly Blankenship said his team passed the eye test.
Co-captain O’Shay Piper said he realized this could be a special season long before the season began.
Fellow co-captain Stefan Foulstone said it was just a matter of putting it all together on the basketball court.
The Evergreen boys basketball team is No. 1 in the Class 4A Greater St. Helens League, a regular-season championship that is no surprise to anyone associated with the program.
Sure, Union was moving up to Class 4A after winning the 3A state title last season. Sure, Battle Ground was in first place late in this season.
But by the time the 12-game GSHL schedule came to a close, there was only one team atop the standings. It turned out to be a team that believed in itself a lot longer than anybody else.
“Spring ball last year,” said Piper, a senior point guard, when asked when he really started to think it was possible. “We knew if we did our job, we’d have a chance.”
The Plainsmen did get it done, and their reward is a home game tonight in the first round of the Class 4A bi-district tournament. Evergreen will host Gig Harbor at 7 p.m.
Evergreen finished second in Blankenship’s first two seasons. Now in his fourth year, he got to break the big news to his team in a special way.
Last week, when Evergreen beat Skyview to improve to 10-2 in league play, the Plainsmen knew they had clinched at least a co-title. But they needed help to stand alone, to get the No. 1 seed.
“We were hoping for Battle Ground to lose, but we weren’t going to talk about it,” Blankenship said.
After beating Skyview, Blankenship and his staff waited a couple of minutes before going into the locker room to address the players.
“‘Hey, you’re co-champs!’” Blankenship said. “‘Outstanding job.’”
He waited a beat or two before delivering more information.
“‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We just found out. You’re district champions. Union beat Battle Ground,’” he yelled. “They were freaking out, giving each other high-fives. It was really fun to see that emotion.”
“It was a typical first-place celebration,” Foulstone said. “It felt so good.”
Typical? This is Evergreen’s first league title since 2000.
“Everybody just went wild,” Piper said. “Everyone was going crazy.”
Yet, they were not surprised.
“They’re athletic, they have size, and they shoot it a lot better than last year,” Blankenship said of his squad.
“And these boys, they’re close, they’re tight. The really care about each other.”
Caleb Dressler, a 6-foot-10 post, is a double-double machine, averaging 17 points and 14 rebounds per game.
Piper, the point guard, is the distributor, the throw-back to the position, unselfish in his ways. Then there are the outside shooters, who seem to have the green light to let fly whenever they are open.
Warren Edmondon scored 37 in the first game against Union. He averaged 18.7 points per game in his 11 league outings.
Perhaps the second game against Union showed off this team’s talents the best. Edmondson, Dressler, Foulstone, Richie Townsend, and Tre Clark all scored in double figures.
“All the kids want to play college basketball. They want to be in the gym,” the coach said.
Blankenship recalled a recent Saturday when the team got together for a short and simple warm-up practice. When it was over, it really wasn’t over.
“I could not get them out of the gym,” Blankenship said.
In the past week, after clinching the league title and preparing for the bi-district, the practices still had a November feel — with sprints for conditioning, extra sprints for a missed free throw, or push-ups for a missed assignment. The five guys wearing the light shirts were pushing the five in the dark shirts like a scrimmage to determine the starting lineups.
“You can’t slack off,” Foulstone said. “You’re playing as hard as you can not only to make yourself better, but your teammates, too. That has to be your goal in practice.”
The league title just gave the Plainsmen more motivation to reach their next goal — a trip to state.
“We want to make it to state, and if we get there, we’ll try to do some damage there,” Piper said.
Belief in that possibility had to come first. For the Evergreen Plainsmen, that belief started a long, long time ago.
They had the talent. They just had to make it work on the basketball court.
Then they could celebrate.
