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The COVID-19 pandemic has scuttled post-season action, but the La Conner High volleyball team is playing like another state title is on the line. Lady Braves head coach Suzanne Marble, who has guided the program to five state crowns, would not have it any other way. The two-time defending state champions swept NW2B rivals Coupeville and Concrete in straight-set decisions last week. La Conner bested Coupeville 25-15, 25-7, 25-9 in a key road test last Tuesday against the former Class A Lady Wolves, who moved back to the NW2B ranks this year. It...
After not taking the court for 17 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the two-time defending state 2B champion La Conner High volleyball team needed less than an hour to defeat league rival Orcas Island in the season opening match for both schools Thursday afternoon at Landy James Gym. Waiting nearly a year and a half to play less than 60 minutes is not an ideal scenario, but La Conner is on a mission during its modified one-month spring campaign to make the best of a situation that is still a...
The La Conner and Coupeville high school football teams worked overtime Saturday night, but it was the host Wolves who cashed in with a hard fought 6-0 NW2B triumph in the season debut for both programs. Coupeville running back Ben Smith, who had been bottled up much of the contest by a stout La Conner defensive unit, scored the game’s lone touchdown with a one-yard blast to cap the Wolves’ sole possession of the extra session. The Braves, who had avoided key mistakes in regulation running out of their new Wing-T formation, fumbled on La Con...
Will Nelson is a new face in town. But it will not be long before his will be a familiar face. Nelson, chosen last Wednesday as the new superintendent of La Conner Schools, plans to be a visible administrator, interacting regularly with students, staff and the community at large. “I’m really passionate about the position,” Nelson, director of equity and student success at Arlington Public Schools and a member of the Blackfeet Nation, told board members during a rigorous interview process last...
The first pitch of the last season of youth baseball at historic Hedlin’s Ballfield has yet to be thrown, but game plans are already being developed for next year. At least in terms of securing a new sports venue in 2022. Spring practices have begun much as they have this time of year going back decades, but now prospective building lots for a planned new residential development are staked out behind the ballfield’s backstop and parallel to its first base line. These are subtle signs that the nearly two-acre Maple Avenue site is soon to be con...
The La Conner High track and field and softball teams made up for lost time in big ways last week. After having their entire 2020 schedules shelved by COVID-19 and losing two weeks this season due to positive virus test cases, the two local school sports programs wrapped up their shortened 2021 campaign with a flourish. The track teams competed twice last week, including their lone home meet, a Senior Day clash with NW2B rivals Mount Vernon Christian, Coupeville and Concrete on Wednesday that saw La Conner top both halves of the leaderboard....
They say 90 per cent of success is just showing up. The La Conner High baseball team, sidelined for the 2019 and 2020 seasons, reached the 90 per cent mark this spring with a rebuilt young roster loaded with eighth graders and freshmen. The next step for veteran co-coaches Jeremiah LeSourd and Andy Otis is to bring the team the remaining 10 per cent during what hopefully will be a full schedule next spring. The Braves dropped their final two games of a modified and shortened 2021 varsity season with conference losses last week to Darrington...
For the La Conner High baseball team, idle the past two seasons, progress is not always measured on the scoreboard. Take the Braves NW2B home clash with Orcas Island last Friday, for example. The Vikings posted a 20-6 triumph in six innings, but that does not reflect the strides that La Conner – with seven freshmen and two eighth graders on its roster – has made in three short weeks. The hosts, fueled by timely hitting, several catching gems and a strong start by pitcher Haydin Dinuis, held a 6-5 lead after four frames before...
Last Friday marked the first home baseball game for La Conner High in three years. But the youthful Braves, whose roster includes seven freshmen and two eighth graders, did not enjoy a total home field advantage. That is because La Conner was paired against NW2B rival Mount Vernon Christian, which had already played twice on the Braves’ diamond this spring. The Hurricanes, who for a third time brought a large entourage of fans, are using the La Conner field as their home venue this season u...
The award-winning La Conner High Knowledge Bowl program is used to having all the answers. And, true to form, not even 2020’a universal campus lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has kept team members from participating at a high level. By using technology and collaborating with other knowledge bowlers across Washington state, the team has found a way to practice and compete despite the virus crisis, which forced schools to start the academic year with remote learning formats. La Conner’s Chronically Iliad entry, com...
They go in the books as a pair of double-digit losses, but the La Conner High baseball team’s setbacks at Friday Harbor and Coupeville last week represent a win-win situation of sorts for the Braves. The team is back between the chalk lines after not seeing action since 2018. It is also, so far, prevailing over COVID-19. La Conner was unable to field a baseball team in 2019 due to low numbers. The onset of the virus crisis last spring wiped out the 2020 baseball season. Thus, the Braves’ 27-...
Let the games begin. In fact, they already have. The La Conner High track teams swept a league meet at Coupeville on Friday. The school’s softball team hosted NW2B/1B rival Darrington Saturday afternoon, dropping a 25-3 verdict in four innings. La Conner’s golf teams traveled Monday to Grace Academy, while the Braves baseball program was scheduled at Friday Harbor yesterday. Those represented the first La Conner High sports action in nearly a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed campu...
La Conner High spring sports teams launched their 2021 campaign earlier than usual with practices starting Monday afternoon. Even so, they have some catching up to do. After all, the 2020 season was entirely wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic. The school’s softball and baseball teams managed one scrimmage together in mid-March before campuses were closed statewide in response to the virus crisis. In years past, the first day of full spring workouts would have coincided with completion of the s...
Nearly a week after its staff was vaccinated against COVID-19, La Conner Schools received more good medicine Tuesday night. Initial election results posted on the Skagit County elections office website report district voters approved by a 970-374 margin a four-year, $4.04 million replacement levy that will fund school programs in five key areas through 2025. That is 72.2% for and 27.8% opposed. La Conner’s was one of three school districts asking for operations funding, with Concrete and M...
The La Conner School Board on Monday approved a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the school district and La Conner Education Association addressing requirements for returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic. The agreement focuses on putting in place health screening, masking, social distancing and room cleaning and sanitizing standards to safely bring students and staff back to school. “This gives everybody some structure with which to work through the hybrid model,” interim sup...
La Conner students have done plenty of homework this year, due to the remote learning format adopted to curb spread of COVID-19. School officials have been loaded with homework, too. Their assignment: develop a plan to safely transition students to in-person instruction. A Feb. 1 start was part of the framework unanimously approved by school board members during a 75-minute Zoom meeting Monday night. La Conner Schools’ Director of Special Programs Andy Wheeler outlined the plan, which had been d...
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, high school sports schedules have changed again and again. Still more changes were announced last Wednesday. The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) executive board, in response to new pandemic guidelines outlined by Gov. Jay Inslee, has ruled practices for the traditional fall sports season can begin Feb. 1. After several planned launches dating to last summer, the WIAA is now calling the seven-week fall campaign Season 1. “The change in guidelines,” WIAA Executive Director Mick Hof...
Though sidelined all fall by the COVID-19 pandemic, La Conner High’s two-time defending state title volleyball team has still been able to show its championship mettle. Team members have served up two major public service projects in response to the virus crisis, designing and creating custom La Conner Braves face coverings benefitting the Skagit Valley Hospital Foundation and delivering holiday goodie bags to La Conner Retirement Inn. The team has also shared a Zoom Christmas card with the L...
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the La Conner Schools campus has been a remote location this semester. That changed for a couple hours Wednesday afternoon. The La Conner Elementary School parking area morphed into a festive convergence zone with teachers donning favorite Christmas garb – and, of course, masks – while lined up to greet students and families as they drove through the school’s circular drop-off zone. Kids hung out of car windows, waving joyfully, and sharing gleeful s...
The Gilkey Square tree lighting. Fall and spring concerts. Regional music educator festivals. Christmas wreath sales. Pep band. Maybe Disneyland. COVID-19 wiped the 2020-21 school music calendar clean, leaving La Conner Director of Bands and Choirs McKenzie Clark and his students to make music on-line. That is a challenge for an essentially face-to-face endeavor. When meeting in person, music classes begin with call-and-response warm-up exercises. Clark sings or plays a line; students repeat...
The tipoff to the La Conner High basketball season has been delayed once again. The reason is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has rebounded this fall: a tenacious, relentless full-court press. Because of statewide spikes in coronavirus cases, the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) executive board has delayed the start of Season 2, including boys’ and girls’ basketball and wrestling, from Dec. 28 to Feb. 1. The delay is the latest in a series of high school sports’ schedule changes prompted by the pandemic. In response to th...
La Conner wrestler Delaney Cobbs rarely faces a foe she cannot beat. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of those, however. New statewide restrictions put in place to curb spread of the coronavirus have forced Cobbs to forego participation in a major mat tournament in Arizona this weekend. Under mandates imposed Nov. 16, after Cobbs was selected to join a Tacoma-based national travel team for the Arizona trip, she and others traveling from Washington would have had to quarantine for two weeks upon their return. That would not have been feasible for...
A La Conner High student has no trouble grappling with success. Adjusting to new COVID-19 pandemic restrictions might be less certain, however. Delaney Cobbs, a reigning girls’ 2A regional wrestling champion has been selected to square off against top mat talent from around the country at a major tournament in Arizona next month. Cobbs, a junior, is scheduled to compete with the Tacoma-based Ford Dynasty Wrestling Club’s national travel team in Bullhead City, Az., about 100 miles south of Las...
Halloween was full of new tricks and treats for La Conner High football players. The Braves spent two hours Saturday morning working out, starting the day wearing helmet facemasks instead of Halloween facemasks. Afterward, first-year head coach Jeff Scoma treated them to ample shares of holiday candy. Just being able to line up on Whittaker Field was Scoma’s idea of an ideal Halloween thrill. “These guys have gone a long time without football,” Scoma, previously a coach in the vaunted Belle...
Spikes on the volleyball court would be a most welcome change from those in COVID-19 cases. The hope is that will soon be the case. Especially in La Conner, where the two-time defending state champion Lady Braves are cleared to resume full team activities under anti-COVID guidelines set by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), which governs school sports and extra-curricular programs in the state. “The WIAA is allowing full team practices for activities and sports that are considered low or moderate at-risk if they a...
