High School Girls Basketball: Wahkiakum eliminated one win shy of State
1B World – Mules reestablish their brand, ride CORE principals on playoff run
Sam Barbee for Blast Zone Media / blastznenews@gmail.com
1B Prep Girls Basketball / Report
MONTESANO — Coaches love acronyms. How else can you pack massive amounts of information into a small, word-sized package? They’re everywhere, at every level, in every sport.
The Wahkiakum girls basketball program, attempting a rebuild after nearly a decade of sustained success and a brush with total collapse, has one it refers to often. Head coach Ross Lofstrom came up with, and the players, led by senior Jessie LeFever, took it and ran.
CORE. Connection. Ownership. Relentless. Execution.
And even though Taholah beat the Mules 64-27 in a winner-to-State/loser-out contest in Montesano on Saturday, those four principles were present.
“We’ve made a huge improvement,” Lofstrom said. “They’ve just been really scrappy all year and moreso than any other year that I’ve coached. They’ve really bought into the new culture that we’ve built.
“I’ve been told that it takes a few years to really build the culture we want to see in the program. I think finally this year, they started to do that.”
Ask Lofstrom to sum the season up in a word and he asks for a moment for consideration. After maybe four moments he returns, apologetically, with a questions of his own.
Is an acronym okay?
It’s more than okay. It’s perfect!
CORE.
It works. Your core is central to everything you do athletically: throwing, running, lifting, shooting, swinging, blocking, whatever. And the CORE acronym is central to what the Mules want to do. Or, rather, what they’ve already done.
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