By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The smallest school in the Capitol City Classic wrapped up their trip in the annual big tournament Tuesday morning.
It was a growing and learning experience for the young Western Christian squad coming off their 2A State Championship win last year and probably the biggest upset of last year’s CCC when they defeated Chatsworth, but the Pioneers walked out of this year’s journey better for it. The squad went 1-3 in the tournament, defeating 6A Sprague 61-51 for their lone win at Willamette University as they’ll take what they learn into their next stretch of games.
“This tournament has helped us with ball pressure. All the teams we’re playing have crazy ball pressure, making it really hard to score and I think that’s going to help us out with Regis, they have good ball pressure. It’s going to help us stay in control of the game and not worry if we get down, it’s going to help us stay strong no matter what,” said Sammy Quesada.
In their 66-44 defeat to North Salem, it was actually their bench players who rose to the occasion. Landon Orth, Garren Bowes and Bryson Wattenbarger, all freshmen, all stepped up big for Western Christian in the tournament finale. The trio combined to score 14 points in the game.
It was a plus points Head Coach Geoff Martin, who spoke to the importance of working on their bench with Tri-River Conference play starting in January and fine tuning that over their next two games against Valley Catholic and Oakland. Western Christian opens TRC play on January 9 against Regis.
“They came in and they weren’t afraid at all. They were the guys that outscored my starting lineup i think today. You try to find the silver lining in all of your losses and that was the silver lining today was that our freshmen came in. Yeah they made mistakes, but they grew and in order for us to make a run this year, we have to develop a bench and today was a big step forward in that,” Martin said of his freshmen.
“We got a new look team this year. We got a lot of young guys too, it forced them to group up quickly,” Martin said of the tournament. “You take your high’s and your low’s. We had moments where it was really great. Moments that we definitely struggled and we could learn from, but that’s ultimately the message after the game was ‘what do we take away from it? How can we get better?'”
Parker Reed scored a team-high ten points as the Pios will host Valley Catholic on January 3 and Oakland on January 6 to close out their non-league schedule.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
