Okanogan girls without key player

By Doug Flanagan

Dec. 30, 2010

The Okanogan High School girls basketball team was the preseason favorite to win the Caribou Trail League. If the Bulldogs are to fulfill that promise and make a deep postseason run, they may have to do so without the services of one of their best players.

Okanongan coach Gary Smith said Tuesday that sophomore guard Kara Staggs, the team's leading scorer, will be out of action for an undetermined amount of time with an unknown illness. Staggs hasn't played since the team's game Dec. 20 against Cheney.

"She's had some dizziness," Smith said. "She went through a similar thing over the summer and she actually passed out. She hasn't done that again. The doctors are doing a bunch of blood tests. They're testing for diabetes, looking at blood sugar issues, but there's no answer yet. Hopefully we'll get one soon."

Smith said Staggs called him one day last week, told him she was feeling better and expressed an interest in returning to practice. But when she stepped on to the court she started to feel dizzy once again.

"Her parents are real concerned. Nobody has been able to put their finger on it yet," Smith said. "They've taken cat scans, drawn blood and done lots of tests. They haven't seen specialists yet, and I wish they'd do that. We'll see what happens. She did come to (the Bulldogs' game on Tuesday against Republic), although I didn't see her afterward.

"We're just more concerned about her health rather than when she's going to get back on the court. She's a neat kid, just a sophomore, and it's crazy when you go to a doctor for 10 days and nobody is sure what's causing it. She doesn't know if she's going to pass out if she goes out onto the court."

Even if the Bulldogs are forced to play a significant amount of games without Staggs, Smith believes that his team is well-equipped to play at a high level thanks to the core quartet of guards Kolby Marchand and Teddi Reese and forwards Meka Townsend and Tyler Schreckengost.

Okanogan beat Republic and lost to Brewster during this week's Brewster Christmas Tournament to run its record to 6-3.

"We can (compete) because we're still real strong inside, and our outside game is pretty solid," Smith said. "We've got four or five people that can score. We've got other players that can shoot, although Kara usually does quite a bit of it. Kolby is a heck of a ball-handler, and Teddi can get hot and shoot it pretty well. Tyler helps clean up the inside, along with Meka. We're tending to go inside more often right now. The teams we've played recently - Cheney, Almira/Coulee-Hartline and Colville - have strong inside games, and it was good for us that we're strong inside too.

"We've played better competition that we did last year, but it wouldn't be a good situation to not have Kara once we get into league play. We're going to play Cashmere and Cascade here pretty soon, and things could get nasty quick."