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They say it is an ill wind that blows no good. If that’s the case, conditions at Whittaker Field Friday were plenty bad as heavy rain, fierce winds and a partial power outage made for an uncomfortable night of high school football. And that was just in the stands. Down on the field, a young La Conner High football team suffered a 61-0 blowout loss to perennial NW2B title contender Friday Harbor. The Wolverines (1-2), who opted out of last spring’s modified grid season due to a COVID-19 surge in the San Juan Islands, stormed past a La Con...
Idled by the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago, the two-time defending state 2B champion La Conner High School volleyball team couldn’t wait to get back in the gym this fall. And when that time came last week, the Lady Braves got back to business by making short work of 2A foe Sehome and NW2B rival Darrington with twin straight-sets victories to open the 2021 net campaign. Ellie Marble delivered 20 kills and Emma Keller fueled the attack with 30 assists to lead a 25-11, 25-6, 25-20 rout of Sehome last Tuesday at Landy James Gym. Marble added 15 k...
The Sultan Turks shut out La Conner 21-0 in non-league football action at Whittaker Field Friday night. But despite the zero on the scoreboard, first-year Braves head coach Charlie Edwards said all wasn’t lost for his young club in their home test with an undefeated 1A Emerald Sound Conference foe that was coming off a 50-42 win over Evergreen of Seattle the week before. “It was a hard-fought game,” Edwards told the Weekly News afterward. “Our young players stepped up and did great. “We los...
Having turned the page on the Labor Day holiday, La Conner High sports teams are poised to get down to business this week with the return of their regular fall sports schedules. The La Conner High volleyball team, which won State 2B crowns in 2018 and 2019 and did not lose a single set during last spring’s modified season, opened their current schedule with a non-conference home match opposite 2A Sehome Tuesday night. “Filling a non-league schedule with larger schools will help our girls to improve and play at a higher level,” La Conner head vo...
Calling the La Conner High School girls’ soccer team a work in progress is a compliment Lady Braves players and head coach Christian Warman accept with pride. That’s because the retooled roster has taken a blue-collar, hard-working approach to preseason workouts. And the result, according to Warman, is steady progress made leading up to the team’s Sept. 16 conference opener at Coupeville. “Preseason practices have been going fantastic,” Warman told the Weekly News Tuesday. “Our captains worked very hard in the off-season to keep this team t...
Rachel Cram has focused on local history this year, developing an in-depth anecdotal history and virtual tour of landmark La Conner downtown buildings. The La Conner High senior is also eyeing the future – her future. Cram, a 5’6” guard, has signed a letter of intent to attend and play basketball next year at Carroll College, a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) school in Helena, Montana that boasts a strong women’s hoops tradition. The Fighting Saints won Front...
It seems like yesterday that the surprising La Conner High football team was securing an NW2B title with a season-ending four-game winning streak after three straight single victory years. And, in a way, it was yesterday as the upstart Braves and their league foes shifted traditional fall schedules to spring in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet much has changed in just four months. First-year La Conner head coach Jeff Scoma stepped down in June to lead the 3A Stanwood High grid program and has been replaced at the Braves helm by defensive...
On a fundamental level this preseason is no different for the La Conner High School volleyball team than any other during the 29-year tenure of hall of fame head coach Suzanne Marble. In other ways, however, it is a far different vibe now than last August. The team, which captured the 2018 and 2019 state 2B net crowns, is looking forward to a full fall season after having been limited to a short spring campaign due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “This year more than ever has been the season we have all looked forward to the most,” Marble told the...
An abnormally dry summer here didn’t stop the Pacific Northwest Rain from descending on the Valley of the Sun. The Rain, an area girls’ travel team, took top honors in their high school age division of the recent 2021 Summer Sizzle basketball tournament in Phoenix. Five La Conner High players – Juna Swanson, Rachel Cram, Sarah Cook, Ellie Marble and Josie Harper – were members of the tourney title winners, coached by former Mount Vernon High standout Tyler Amaya, who played col...
After sustaining heavy graduation losses from its NW2B football title team, La Conner High School will likely sport a youthful lineup this fall. It only made sense, then, that the school district would tap someone with past success developing young talent to succeed championship coach Jeff Scoma at the Braves helm when the season kicks off in a few weeks. Charlie Edwards, a longtime local youth sports coach and member of the Braves staff this past spring, has been promoted to fill the head coaching vacancy created when Scoma left La Conner in...
C.J. Woods represents the latest branch off a decades old Friday Harbor basketball coaching tree dating to the late Dean Turnbull, for whom the gymnasium at the island school is named. Woods is now looking forward to setting down roots in La Conner as the new Braves head hoops coach. The Friday Harbor and University of Idaho alum was chosen to succeed Todd Hinderman, an award-winning science teacher at La Conner Schools who guided the Braves to a State 2B sweet sixteen berth in 2019 and whose up...
The two-time defending state champion La Conner High School volleyball team has had few close calls in recent seasons. But a clothes call is part of the Lady Braves game plan this summer. La Conner players are serving up a five-week “Clean Out Your Closets” campaign, collecting clean and sellable clothes and household textiles as part of an eco-friendly team fundraiser. They are asking participants to place gently-used items in bags to be collected between now and the third week in August. “We would like everything by Aug. 20,” said head co...
There was no state 2B Hardwood Classic in Spokane this year. But there was a state level tournament in Mount Vernon last week. And as was the case in Spokane in 2020, La Conner High’s entry advanced to the final round, earning top runner-up honors. La Conner (15-2) placed second in the girls’ Summer State 2B basketball tournament hosted Wednesday through Friday by Mount Vernon Christian. The Lady Braves routed Toledo and edged Wahkiakum before falling to top-seeded Warden 72-66 in overtime for the championship. The three-day, eight-team event p...
Jeff Scoma had a successful first season as a head football coach, guiding La Conner High to a 4-1 mark and the NW2B spring grid crown, its best showing in several years. Turns out, Scoma might have been too successful – at least as far as Braves fans are concerned. The former Bellevue High assistant was announced last week as the new head coach at 3A Stanwood, whose campus has a student enrollment approaching 1,300 students. Despite the move up in classification, it was not an easy decision for Scoma to leave La Conner. “I loved La Conne...
There truly is no rest for the weary. The La Conner High girls’ basketball team, which after playing five games in a week against top competition – the Lady Braves won four of those, losing only to 2A Burlington-Edison – and now coach Scott Novak’s charges begin state 2B summer tournament play today in Mount Vernon. La Conner faces sixth-seeded Toledo in a much-anticipated 2 p.m. matchup at the Mount Vernon Christian gymnasium on Blackburn Road. The Lady Braves enter the June 23-25 event sporting a 12-1 mark. They are seeded thi...
La Conner High School has held commencement exercises for more than a century. But this year graduation is truly the hottest ticket in town. Due to COVID-19 protocols, each graduate is allotted only eight tickets for family and friends to attend the high school’s 127th annual commencement 5 p.m. Friday at Whittaker Field. For those without tickets, the June 18 event will be livestreamed, said Principal Kathy Herrera. Still, the situation is much more favorable than it was 12 months ago. ...
The short-handed La Conner Braves faced long odds when they hosted 1A South Whidbey in non-league hoop action at Landy James Gym Monday night. For a while, the NW2B Braves were able to beat those odds. With three key players unavailable to square off against the Falcons, La Conner still managed to lead throughout the first quarter and was tied at halftime before fading in the second half. South Whidbey’s Lucas Taksony scored a game-high 15 points and teammates Josh Sterba and Sterling Patton hit two three-pointers each to lead the visitors to a...
The La Conner High girls’ basketball team earned an A for effort in its close home loss to Burlington-Edison last Tuesday, June 8. The Lady Braves received an A for results when they soundly defeated Lynden in another highly anticipated non-league hoop matchup, again at Landy James Gym two nights later. Together, the hard-fought, highly competitive games proved that 2B La Conner could more than hold its own against top 2A foes from the vaunted Northwest Conference. Burlington-Edison (7-3) e...
Thursday La Conner High School’s seniors paraded and were feted from the time La Conner’s iconic 1941 Ford white firetruck and accompany Hook & Ladder Department vehicle fleet left the schoolgrounds parking lot to the end of the parade, bookended with another firetruck, at the Town’s Maple Hall. Seniors waved from car moonroofs, backs of pick up trucks,trailers and, of course, convertibles. A variety of classic cars, from vintage corvettes to old mustangs, were joined by Fire District 13 fire...
The La Conner Braves enjoyed a Jolly good time when they hosted co-league leader Friday Harbor in NW2B boys’ basketball action Saturday afternoon. Senior wing Josh Jolly scored a game-high 18 points, all but two coming in the second half, to lead La Conner to a 56-52 upset win at Landy James Gym. Jolly scored seven straight points over a two-minute stretch of the final period to lift the Braves on top of an ebb-and-flow affair from the outset. With the win, La Conner avenged an earlier road l...
It usually is not a good sign when a basketball team has just one defensive rebound in the first quarter and only 14 for the game. But that was not the case for the unbeaten La Conner High girls’ basketball team Saturday at Landy James Gym. The Lady Braves played such good defense against NW2B rival Friday Harbor that the visitors turned the ball over repeatedly and rarely got good shots at the hoop. Thus, there were not rebounds off the defensive glass to be grabbed. La Conner (9-0) remained a...
The La Conner High basketball teams took different routes in Coupeville on Thursday to reach the same destination: Victory Lane. The Braves squared their season slate at 3-3 with a dramatic 59-57 NW2B triumph when senior point guard Elijah Porter scored in traffic with just one second to play. The La Conner girls, meanwhile, cruised down Easy Street for their sixth win without a loss, motoring to a convincing 74-15 decision. For the Braves, taking the more difficult road had its rewards in the end. “It was nice for us to execute in a close g...
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be no state basketball tournament this year. But the La Conner High girls’ basketball team, the defending state tourney runner-up, played – and won – four games in four days – similar to the Hardwood Classic format in Spokane – to tip off its modified spring season last week. And one of those matchups, a home clash with 1A King’s High School at Landy James Gym on Wednesday, very much resembled a state caliber game. La Conner fou...
Fancy passing was no mere passing fancy for the La Conner Braves during their first week of spring hoop action. La Conner passed effectively both in transition and in its half-court offense, consistently finding open shooters, to post convincing NW2B home victories over Concrete and Darrington. The Braves sped past Concrete 73-29 last Tuesday and used a second half surge to defeat Darrington 56-35 on Friday. The two wins bookended road losses at 1A Meridian (68-38) on Wednesday and league foe...
La Conner’s Kali Adams wowed fans by rushing for more than 100 yards and two touchdowns in the Braves’ 41-0 shutout win at Darrington in the team’s season finale. The sophomore running back impressed state athletics officials as well. As a result, Adams was named the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) 2B football player of the week Thursday. Each week the WIAA, which governs school athletics and activities in the state, joins the Gesa Credit Union in recognizing stude...
