Ron Kantowski takes in eight state title games in a day and a half that filled his notebook with unforgettable moments and personalities

Monday, Feb. 26, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

During a 28 1/2-hour period beginning at 6 p.m. Friday and ending at 10:30 p.m. Saturday, I witnessed eight Nevada high school state championship games at the Orleans Arena.

I saw a grand total of two slam dunks. And one was in a Class A game.

I saw 104 players get whistled for traveling and at least that many fail to block out or help on defense. I saw a pep band that had five members, only four of which you could see, because the saxophone was bigger than the person playing it. I saw some of the worst mascot costumes since the Stanford tree.

But at the end of two very long days, I witnessed the thrill of victory 16 times. Ditto for the agony of defeat.

And I saw a lot of really neat things leading up to them that I think I am going to remember for a very long time.

CLASS A GIRLS

Owyhee 61, Pahranagat Valley 45

Pahranagat Valley is the UCLA of Nevada girls' basketball. It had won five consecutive state championships heading into Saturday. But the Panthers won't be taking home an extra one for the thumb, or however they put it when the Pittsburgh Steelers were collecting Super Bowl rings.

That's because Owyhee had come too far to be denied.

Literally had come too far.

It is 743 miles from Owyhee to Las Vegas. It is so far that the crow that flies between faraway places had to stop twice for gas and directions. It is so far that the wheels on the Braves' bus that usually go round, round, round were square by the time they got here. It is so far that half of Owyhee's players live in another time zone, on the Idaho side of the border.

It's conceivable that if you are a parent of one of the Braves, and preferred the interstate highway system over dusty two-lane roads where buzzards circle for road kill, your sojourn to Las Vegas would have taken you across parts of four states Idaho, Utah, Arizona and, finally, after 11 hours, Nevada.

When I asked Gwen Ann Thacker, the Owyhee principal, if there was a McDonald's in Owyhee, she looked at me as if I were from Neptune. She said the closest one was in Elko, about 100 miles away. The closest multiplex movie theater is in Boise, 140 miles away.

This was Owyhee's second state title. The last time it won, in 1999, coach Carol Couchum's daughters played on the team.

But afterward, Couchum seemed more proud that 12 of the 16 Shoshone Paiutes who formed Owyhee's last senior class are now studying in college.

A basketball coach who has her priorities in order. Sometimes you've got to drive a long way to find that.

CLASS A BOYS

Trinity 61, Lake Mead Christian Academy 59

This was easily my favorite game of the tournament. For starters, a ninth grader named Budweiser Hawkins III scored a basket for Trinity. Five other Trinity players combined for 13 points.

Jonathan Atkins had the rest.

Atkins, a wispy left-handed guard with more moves than Bobby Fischer, scored a state record 46 points and never left the floor. He's a 3.99 student who will be playing basketball and shining shoes as a freshman at the Air Force Academy next year. He said the latter part and the discipline that goes with it really don't bother him.

"That's how I was raised," Atkins said.

Another unusual thing about this game was that after it, players from both teams gathered at midcourt and prayed. I don't think it was because Trinity has acquired only about half of the $150,000 it has been told it must raise by the end of the month to keep its doors open.

But with only a week to go before deadline, additional prayers and $20 donations in honor of the new state champs will be gladly accepted.

CLASS 2A GIRLS

Battle Mountain 60, Needles 46

If there's one thing that differentiates girls' basketball from boys' basketball is that the girls usually run the plays as they were diagrammed. And in girls' basketball, even the winners cry after the state championship game.

After Battle Mountain beat Needles, which is actually in California but is so far removed from the population centers that it competes in Nevada, I noticed Arantxa Kovis and Jenna Mariluch, the Longhorns' only seniors, dabbing at reddened eyes.

Kovis told me she and Mariluch had been playing together since the third grade and were inseparable, a sentiment that was proven in the third quarter when the two collided, leaving Kovis, who scored 16 points, with a nasty cut on her knee that was still oozing blood.

She said it really didn't dawn on here until halftime that this would be their last time playing together, and she was kind of sad about that. She was almost making me feel melancholy until she told me she was a 4.0 student who is going to study pre-med at the University of Arizona.

I think she is going to do just fine without basketball.

CLASS 2A BOYS

The Meadows 83, Lincoln County 50

If there's another thing I have learned about covering sports, it's that 10th graders who come off the bench usually are not very good interviews.

"It felt good," said Mike Wallace, after scoring 18 points in less than "60 Minutes" as The Meadows won its fourth consecutive state championship under Greg Goorjian, who once upon a time played for Jerry Tarkanian at UNLV.

Goorjian summoned Wallace after one of the Mustangs made him mad in the first quarter. Every time Wallace threw the basketball at the rim it wound up in the bottom of the net. He attempted six shots, all 3-pointers. He made them all.

So when I asked him about it afterward, and he had little to say, I thought he was just being a bashful 10th grader not accustomed to the spotlight.

Then I realized he still might have been unconscious.

CLASS 3A GIRLS

Spring Creek 46, Pahrump Valley 33

Sometimes, you can tell a lot about a team from its picture in the souvenir program that is, when it bothers to send one in. Based on the quality of the black-and-white photos in this year's program, Ansel Adams has nothing to worry about.

But the one picture I notice is of the Spring Creek girls. In it, several of the Spartans are posing with their hands on their hips and none are smiling, like they've got an attitude or something.

The one in the middle, No. 3, is Johnna Ward. I make a note of it, figuring that if Spring Creek wins, she probably will have something to do with it, because girls who pose with their hands on their hips in the middle of the team photo usually do.

My theory is correct. Ward scores 17 points. She's the only Spring Creek player in double figures.

Afterward, she tells reporters she's looking forward to continuing her basketball career at UNR next year. Then she poses for more photos.

Only this time her hands aren't on her hips. They are locked on the commemorative game ball.

CLASS 3A BOYS

Faith Lutheran 57, Dayton 53

The first thing I notice when the Crusaders take the court in pursuit of their third consecutive state title is that three of the starters have bright yellow hair. Triplets, maybe?

Then my gaze shifts to the Faith bench, where I notice that every player in a warm-up jacket, with the exception of one, also has hair like a Ken doll.

Dave Anderson, the one natural blond on the team or at least the one that didn't use peroxide said his teammates decided to curl up and dye on Wednesday as a sign of team unity.

Too bad, I told him, that Stephen McCall and Diontea Wright, F aith's two African-American players, didn't go blonde, too. That would have looked really cool. Or bizarre.

"They wanted to," Anderson said, "but their parents wouldn't let them."

CLASS 4A GIRLS

Bishop Gorman 87, Centennial 66

Ohio State and Michigan. Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Seabiscuit and War Admiral.

Centennial High and Bishop Gorman.

It had been 22 years between big school state championships for Southern schools until 2002, when Centennial won the first of its four consecutive titles. Now Bishop Gorman has made it two in a row. And with its three best players and five best assistant coaches returning next year, when the Gaels will move into a new arena roughly the size of Madison Square Garden, it would appear the torch officially has been passed - from Karen Weitz, the Centennial coach who wears a jogging suit and sneakers, to Sheryl Krmpotich, the Gorman coach who wears form-fitting slacks and five-inch heels.

The good thing is with all those assistants, Krmpotich needn't worry about burning her fingers.

After Luke Babbitt, the 6-foot-8 junior with more game than Milton Bradley, had powered Galena past upstart Mojave, I spotted UNLV basketball coach Lon Kruger in the players' tunnel, walking toward the Galena dressing room where, no doubt, he hoped that Babbitt would notice him.

He didn't take two steps before he crossed paths with UNR coach Mark Fox, who had just been there, done that.

The night before, after the semifinals, it was Arizona's Lute Olson and Gonzaga's Mark Few who nearly collided while trying to catch Babbitt's attention.

A referee friend told me that Few was whistled for a blocking foul although he clearly seemed to have position until Olson arrived.

archive