MOUNT VERNON – A trip to Yakima narrowly eluded the Mariners at the end of a hard-fought regionals battle.
No. 9-seeded Sehome girls basketball was eliminated from the 2A state tournament following a 45-38 loss to No. 16 Sammamish at Mount Vernon High School on Friday night.
In a game where the largest lead was five for 30 minutes — featuring 11 ties and seven lead changes — slipped away from Sehome in the final 98 seconds of the game to finish with a seven-point margin.
First-year Sehome coach Kim Stensgar said one game, albeit an important one, doesn’t erase what the Mariners accomplished in the program’s best season in eight years.
“[I’m] super proud of them. Super proud of how they battled, how they surprised teams,” Stensgar said. “They’re great kids. They work hard, and I was really proud of those three senior leaders … they just exceeded my expectations.”
The Mariners are junior-dominant, but they will lose senior mainstays Madison Hogan, Mac Cooper and Maya Sargent to graduation.
“I know it hurts, and I can’t take that away for them,” Stensgar said. “It just shows me how much that they care. They wanted to be [at the SunDome].”
Sehome was led by 11 points from junior guard Emmy Hart, while Hogan added 10 and junior guard Madi Cooper finished with nine.
Sammamish got a game-high 23 points from freshman forward Sophia Eastman as senior guard Katie Anderson tallied 14, all in the second half.
“We knew [Eastman] was going to the player to stop, and she had a tremendous game,” Stensgar said. “That’s a young team; credit to them. I hope they do well.”
Sammamish won the turnover and rebounding battle in the first quarter, taking a narrow 9-7 lead into the second quarter.
The Mariners flipped the turnover conversation in the second quarter, but too often those takeaways didn’t result in points.
A three-point Redhawks lead was extended to five at halftime following a roll-around-the-rim buzzer-beater lay-in by Sammamish junior Sydney Ravenscraft, her only points of the game.
Sehome began the third quarter on a 9-2 run, capturing a 25-23 advantage three minutes into the period. Each team held the lead twice in the quarter, but the Redhawks closed out the quarter with a one-point edge.
The fourth quarter followed suit from the previous three periods, and the game was tied at 38-38 with 1:35 remaining. Sehome did not score another basket.
Anderson put the Redhawks up one at the free throw line before Sehome received its second 10-second violation of the game. A floater in the lane by Eastman gave Sammamish a three-point lead with 35.6 seconds to play.
The Mariners had their chances to make up the points, but they couldn’t get anything to fall.
Sammamish extended its edge to 43-38 with 16.8 seconds remaining, and a missed pull-up 3-pointer by Sehome just a few seconds later spelled doom for the Mariners.
After winning its last two district games by two points each to get to this point, Sehome was unable to hold on.
Despite their six-day break, Stensgar said it was clear her team was mentally tired.
“Our last three games have been like this, and we’ve been able to be on the other side of it,” Stensgar said. “It’s kind of like, I started to feel like, OK, ‘is the gas running out?’”
Sehome ended its season 18-6 overall, as the Mariners were eliminated from the 2A state tournament. This season marked Sehome’s first regionals berth since 2015 and, had the Mariners won, it would have been their first round-of-16 victory since 2007.
Sammamish moved to 19-6 overall, advancing to the 2A state tournament round-of-12 on Wednesday, March 1, at the Yakima Valley SunDome.
“For the younger kids, it’s like fuel to the fire,” Stensgar said. “What can we do between now and next fall? I know they’re going to use this. It’s going to be put in their bank and use it as a motivator.”
