by Marty Zier

Sports contributor

The Orcas boys had a surprising loss to Shoreline Christian on Feb. 2, 81-66, after an earlier dominate win. Head Coach Corey Wiscomb explains the unusual loss.

“To have held them to less than eight points a quarter and beat them by over 40 points in our previous game, losing to them was unexpected to say the least,” he said. “It has been my experience that at least once a year a team goes off and has a performance well beyond their average level of shooting.  Unfortunately, Shoreline had that game against us.  I have watched the video, and while we did make some mistakes, overall we played them well.  They simply shot the lights out of the ball. They had guys pulling up from 6 feet behind the 3-point line and hitting nothing but net.  That may happen once and awhile in a normal game, but they had two guys who did it six times each!”

Miles Harlow led scoring with 16, Vanya Bullock 15,  Michael Chesher 9, Aidan Kruse 7, Brother Murphy and Pasha Bullock each 5, Jordan Randolph 4; Mackie Cardinal 3 and Gwydion Mareth 2.

The Orcas boys arrived refocused and beat Darrington 75-29 in their last regular season game on Feb. 5.

“I’d hate to be the team that had to play us after the previous loss,” said Wiscomb. “The guys came out with a fire, and slaughtered the Loggers with class.  By the end of the first quarter it was obvious whose game it was. We moved back to a half-court attack on defense and just kept rotating players through the line-up to get everyone on the team ready for the post-season.”

The Vikings travel to Friday Harbor for their first playoff game on Feb. 10.

“We are tremendously excited about our match-up against Friday Harbor,” said Wiscomb. “We have a real shot at this. We’ve worked so hard to get to this level, and you can be sure that we will hold nothing back.”

The Vikings end the regular season 9-5, behind league leaders LaConner at 14-0 and Friday Harbor at 11-3.

The Lady Vikings beat a Shoreline Christian team that lacked a few key players, 55-20, on Feb. 2

“Some of their main starters on Shoreline did not play due to injuries, so we were able to control the game early, and on top of that, we shot really well,” said Coach Gregg Sasan. “Our bench played well, too, and was able to control the game. They hit their shots too. These games help us. They give us a lot of confidence and all the players get significant playing time. We seemed to have come off our mid season shooting funk and I am pleased that overall the team is shooting much better.”

The Vikings made their last regular season road trip to Darrington for a 59-37 win against the Loggers.

“We jumped on the Loggers early and got a 20-point lead,” Sasan said. “Both Halle Thompson and Bethany Hansen dominated rebounding with a lot of offensive rebounds, which helped our scoring.”

But, as often happens with a team getting blown out, the Loggers changed their offensive strategy and began dropping 3-pointers in the third quarter.

“They hit a bunch of threes but we tightened the defense again and forced them into a lot of turnovers as they tried to bring to ball up court,”said  Sasan.

The Vikings end the regular season 9-5 in league, trailing league leaders Friday Harbor and LaConner tied at 13-1.

Sasan is excited to make the playoffs but acknowledges the first game will be tough.