Liberty Bell’s Kyler Mitchell, No. 5, lofted a jump shot against Okanogan.
Basketball teams continue in district crossover tourneys
Liberty Bell High School sophomore Cassidy Jones-Mowen will lead a four-wrestler contingent of Mountain Lions into the Tacoma Dome on Friday (Feb. 17) for the 2023 WIAA State Mat Classic. Damien Spears, Lukus Vera Mendoza and Yolo Paz will join Jones-Mowen as she wrestles at state for the second consecutive year. It is the first trip to the Mat Classic for each of the boys.
Spears, a sophomore wrestling at 220 pounds, had his best outing of the year last weekend, pinning Steven Rodriguez of Mabton in the second round of his opening regional bout at 2:46 of the match. Spears’ second match, the tourney semi-final, was over a little earlier when he pinned Columbia-Burbank’s Travis Sloan at 2:20.
That set up the final between the Liberty Bell sophomore and senior veteran wrestler Granger Sutton of Tonasket. Sutton jumped out to a 4-1 lead after the first round. Spears was in the down position to start the second round, escaping at the 35-second mark for that round’s only score. In the third round, Sutton scored a reversal at about the midway point to close out the scoring and secure the 6-2 win.
Paz, the Liberty Bell eighth-grader, brought home a 3rd-place medal and will make his first trip to Tacoma. He won his first match at Highland on Saturday in a 17-9 major decision over Granger freshman Leonardo Hernandez.
Devin Boone, a senior from Columbia-Burbank, turned the tables on the young Mountain Lion, sending him to the consolation bracket with a 13-3 loss. Paz then defeated Warden’s sophomore Junior Santiago 13-6 and pinned junior Adrian Alvarez of Granger just 55 seconds into the first round of the trophy bout.
Freshman Lukus Vera Mendoza may have provided the pleasant surprise of the meet for Coach Colton Skelton when he opened with a pin over Alejandro Ochoa Garcia (Cle Elum) at the 1-minute mark, then made the most of being sent to the consolation bracket after a semi-final loss to Valentin Juarez of Warden. Vera Mendoza pinned Gabriel Serna of Warden in the first round to face the familiar Marvin Valdez of Manson. With a trip to state already clinched, Vera Mendoza lost to Valdez, suffering a second-round pin to the Trojan senior to gather the 4th place medal.
Meanwhile, at Rogers High School in Spokane, Jones-Mowen was wrestling in the girls’ small school division. For the first time the WIAA has divided the girls into two classification, the 1B and 2B schools wrestling with the 1Bs and 2As instead of one single division for girls. The 3A and 4A girls are now a separate class.
Jones-Mowen brought home a 2nd-place trophy and secured a spot in conversations around the girls’ 135-pound division at state. Jones-Mowen opened with a victory by fall over Jaelynn Luna of host school Rogers. That win propelled her into a semi-final match with the familiar Ashley Rosas of Quincy, the Mountain Lion again pinning Rosas in the second round at 3:18. In the final, Jones-Mowen came up against Lakeside (Nine Mile Falls) senior Addy Rippy. Rippy’s record on the season an impressive 29-4, she proved a formidable task for Jones-Mowen. The first round closed with the score 2-0 in favor of the Lakeside senior. Rippy then moved for the pin at 2:40.
With the 2nd-place finish, Jones-Mowen becomes the first ever Liberty Bell female wrestler to compete in two Mat Classics, and could contend for a podium finish at state this weekend.
“I am just so proud of our wrestlers,” said first-year coach Kyle Erickson to the Winthrop Kiwanis Club this week. “We only have five of them, four young men and one female. Four of them earning a trip to state is a real accomplishment for a team this small.” The fifth member, Andy Garcia did not qualify at the regionals, but will accompany the team as a student manager.
The Mat Classic gets underway for the Mountain Lion contingent on Friday morning (Feb. 17), 10 a.m., in the Tacoma Dome. Jones-Mowen is set for a first-round match with Ashley Cruz-Bustamante of Grandview. Yolo Paz faces Alfredo Guzman-Gadwa (Wishkah Valley) in his first match with No. 2 seed Aksel Espeland awaiting the winner. Lukus Vera Mendoza will face Ritzville’s Gabe Smith, and Damien Spears goes up against Rainier’s Matthew Kenney. Coverage online can be found at wiaa.com, the website for the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association.
Girls at crossovers
The Liberty Bell girls’ basketball team entered district play as the No. 6 seed last week, and they move along to the District 6/7 crossover series still with the No. 6 tag after losing an overtime struggle with Bridgeport, 55-52, at Omak on Friday (Feb. 10) in District 6 consolation bracket play.
The Mountain Lions had their chances to win the season’s rubber match with the Fillies, leading at the end of each of the first three quarters, 8-2, 21-17, and 37-31. The Fillies outscored the Mountain Lions 13-8 in the final period, taking advantage of some late game shooting foibles and ball possession miscues. Bridgeport guard Leslie Moreno closed out the Mountain Lions at the free throw line, hitting five of six attempts in overtime and scoring 8 of the Fillies’ 11 points in the extra period. Helaina Remsberg led Liberty Bell with 18 points including all 8 MountainLion points in the overtime. Ruby McCarthy, the lone Mountain Lion senior, added 15 points.
Disappointment was evident on the girls’ faces after the game, but Coach Korrie Bourn was still looking at the bright side. “I’m proud of the team and how hard they worked for the entire game,” said Bourn. “I’m not sure how many, if any, of them have ever played an overtime game before, so gaining that experience in itself is valuable.”
The season isn’t over yet for the girls. They head to Spokane this weekend for the District 6/7 crossover. A win gets a team into a WIAA state regional pod, leading to the four-day championship tournament in early March. It’s a tough draw, though. As the District 6 No. 6 seed, the Mountain Lions face District 7’s No. 1-seeded team, Colfax, ranked No. 2 in the WIAA’s RPI ranking behind Okanogan.
“There’s no two ways about it,” said Bourn. “Facing Colfax on Saturday is going to be tough, but one thing I love about this team is their fearlessness. Before every game we’ve played where the other team is ranked higher than us, I tell the girls there’s a reason we play the game — any team can win on any given night, and I honestly believe that.”
Tipoff for the girls is 5 p.m. on Saturday at West Valley High School.
Boys advance
After their opening round win over Tonasket a week ago, the Mountain Lion boys dropped a pair of 9-point losses at District 6 to Lake Roosevelt and Okanogan. They will advance to the District 6/7 crossover as the No. 4 seed this weekend in Spokane.
In the semi-final round of the District 6 tournament, Liberty Bell fell behind early, then mounted a furious second-half comeback, only to fall to the Raiders from Coulee Dam, 60-51.
The Mountain Lions were plagued with a miserable shooting first half, and when the dust settled Lake Roosevelt had built a 20-point, 34-14 halftime lead. When asked later about the boys’ shooting woes in that first half, Coach Ryan Surface said, “We got some good looks, but they just weren’t dropping.”
Liberty Bell would mount a comeback in the second half, outscoring the Raiders in the third quarter 17-7, but it wasn’t enough to overcome that disastrous first half slump. They never got closer than 8 points. Bodie Thomson led Liberty Bell’s scoring with 13.
On Saturday, Liberty Bell faced the Okanogan Bulldogs for the No. 3 seed into the District 6/7 crossover, a game that was eerily similar to the previous contest with Lake Roosevelt. The Mountain Lions fell behind early, thanks to shooting woes and stout defense by the Bulldogs. Okanogan bullied their way to a 38-17 halftime advantage.
The Mountain Lions mounted a comeback, again, in the second half, cutting the lead to 5 points at 48-43 with 5:33 left in the game, but Okanogan scored the next 5 points to go back up by 10 at 53-43 near the 3:00 mark, the two teams essentially playing point-for -point from there on.
Liberty Bell travels to Spokane’s West Valley High School on Saturday to face District 7’s No. 2 seeded Northwest Christian. The Crusaders are 19-4 on the season, 12-3 in NE2B league action. The Crusaders pose a significant challenge for Liberty Bell’s hopes to return to the WIAA state tournament for the first time since 2014. A win on Saturday would mean just that, with the round of 16 regional portion coming up next week. The loser is out.
The Liberty Bell-Northwest Christian game tips off at 3:30 p.m.
