Caribou Chatter
Doug Flanagan
Okanogan's Smith ties for CTL wins mark
By Doug Flanagan
Feb. 16, 2011
Gary Smith can now say that no other Caribou Trail League girls basketball coaches have won more games than he has.
According to wa1asports.net, Smith has tied former Ephrata coach Don King with his 230th career win, which he picked up on Tuesday night as his Okanogan squad knocked off Colville in a Bi-District 6-7 tournament contest.
But Smith probably isn’t focused at all on personal records right now. He’s just happy that his team now appears to be fully healthy.
The Bulldogs’ leading scorer, Kara Staggs, missed several games earlier in the season with a neck problem that inflicted her with fatigue and dizziness at times. She returned later in the season, but the problem flared up again, and as a result Staggs played sparingly in the Bulldogs’ loss to Cascade in the CTL district championship game on Feb. 12.
However, Staggs approached Smith last week and told him that she felt good enough to try to practice for the Colville contest.
“I told her, ‘Look, here’s the deal. We can treat this like a sprained ankle. One option is that we can tape it up, you can go out there and you can make it worse by playing on it, or it’s just something where it hurts too much that you can’t play on, or else you’ll screw it up more,’ ” Smith said.
“She made the decision. She said, ‘I feel fine.’ I said, ‘Show me your neck.’ I looked at her neck, and it looked good. She went out there for a light practice. I could tell she was pretty weak, but I said, ‘OK, let’s go with it.’
“I started her (against Colville) and watched her closely. She only asked for a couple of breaks. She missed a few free throws, which is something that she doesn’t usually do, and you could tell her legs were a little wobbly. But she played great defense and rebounded well. I think with a couple days rest, she could really help us out. She didn’t make it any worse by playing (Tuesday).”
Staggs led the Bulldogs with 12 points against the Indians. Right behind her was post Jameka Townsend, who tallied 10 points. Townsend has been dealing with some concerning medical problems of her own this year; earlier in the season, she underwent surgery to correct a racing heartbeat
Townsend missed several games while recovering, but returned later in the season. It was obvious to Smith that she wasn’t at full strength during the CTL district championship game – she scored just two points against the Kodiaks. But she looked much better against Colville.
The Bulldogs will take on Freeman on Friday in Spokane in a winner-to-state contest.
“It’s not that we haven’t played good lately. It’s just that we’ve been out of sync,” Smith said. “When you take your top inside player and top outside player away, you’re going to be out of sync. We had to try to get other things going. Against Cascade, we had no timing and no smoothness.
"Now we’re back with a full team. I think that with some rest, we’ll be able to step up and give it our best shot against Freeman. They may be the best team in the state. We wanted a chance to play them. We’ll get that on Friday.”
Smith has a record of 230-92 over his 13 years of coaching in the CTL with Omak, Tonasket and Okanogan. King put up a mark of 230-81 over 12 years with Ephrata.
