The Interlake swim team started off with a bang at the Class 2A boys swim and dive championships, but came up just short to Sehome, finishing second and coming up short by just eight points.
“It is definitely deserved,” said Interlake coach Christina Hunsberger. “They’ve worked really hard to get not only where they are individually, but where the team has come. All the pieces kind of fell in piece this weekend.”

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Isaac Dotson could hear the jeers.
The sophomore couldn’t help but hear the Redmond student section yelling, screaming and chanting ‘choke, choke, choke’ as he stood on the free throw line, his team trailing 41-40 with just 5.8 seconds to play.
But Dotson pushed the taunts aside, calmly swished both free throws and Redmond missed a lay-in at the buzzer, giving Newport a 42-41 victory over the Mustangs in the loser-out Sea-King 4A District tournament game.
“I just did my best to clear my mind of everything and focus on those two free throws,” said Dotson, who scored Newport’s final eight points. “I just did my best to block everything out and pictured myself in practice, shooting free throws like I do every day.”
Newport (15-8) forced Redmond into a shot-clock violation with just 22.7 seconds left, giving the Knights one final possession to take back the lead in the back-and-forth affair. Senior Cole Wiper’s jumper banged off the rim, but Dotson grabbed the rebound and was fouled going back up. After the sophomore made both free throws, Redmond’s Andrew Squiers drove down the court and dished to 6-foot-6 junior Conner Floan, who couldn’t convert the lay-in as the buzzer sounded.
“It’s been quite the ride,” said first-year Knights coach Steve Haizlip, a Newport graduate. “I’m glad it could keep going.”
The Knights came out firing in the game. Newport, which split the season series with Redmond, took a quick 9-2 lead and led 17-8 after one quarter of play. Both teams struggled to score in the second quarter, an ugly eight minutes that featured more turnovers (10) than total points (eight).

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Victor Hsiao doesn’t have a lot of free time.
Take the average day for the Interlake swimmer. He rises around 4:30 a.m. and packs a few snacks for the day. Fifteen minutes later, he’s left the house and on his way to the Pro Sports Club in Bellevue, where he’s in the pool by 5 a.m.
At 6:30 a.m. he leaps out of the pool, showers and heads to Interlake, where he starts at 7:45 a.m. because of his enrollment in the school’s gifted program. At 12:15 p.m. he’s on the road to Seattle, where he interns until 2:45 p.m. Then it’s back to the Pro Sports Club for more swimming practice. Six p.m. marks the start of practice for Interlake’s swim team, where Hsiao is until about 9:30 p.m. After that comes homework and sleep.
“Usually I don’t spend a lot of time dilly-dallying,” Hsiao said. “I kind of go, go, go.”

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With Wednesday serving as national signing day, a day celebrated as a holiday to some hardcore recruiting followers, five area…

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He may not have had the biggest impact on the field – that honor will undoubtably go to his quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell – but Bellevue native Rusty Haehl was able to play a big part in Eastern Washington University’s Football Championship Subdivision national championship win over Delaware.
Haehl, a redshirt sophomore linebacker for the Eagles, was one of the players who snuck his way up behind Beau Baldwin, raised a cooler high and doused the Eastern head coach in the traditional gatorade bath as the final seconds ticked off the clock in EWU’s improbable comeback win.
“That was a pretty special moment, one that I’ll always remember,” Haehl said. “We got three coaches at almost the same time. So much fun in the moment.”
Haehl, a special teams regular, had a front-row seat to the Eagles’ title-winning rally, which saw Eastern trailing 19-0 with little over two minutes left in the third quarter.

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It’s easy to understand why Newport first-year coach Melissa Baker knocks on wood when talking about her gymnasts remaining healthy throughout the regular season.
Because of the format to reach the state tournament for teams from the loaded KingCo 4A conference – a winner-takes-all district meet – it’s important for a team to stay injury-free until the big meet.
It’s especially important when a team has a trio of big stars like Baker’s squad sports. Freshman Candace Ho and juniors Kristine Wong and Malie Fujii have helped the Knights remain undefeated in meets thus far this season – and have the team looking like it could be a legitimate contender to upset conference power (and four-time defending state champion) Woodinville to represent KingCo at the Tacoma Dome.

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Bellevue High School won the Shoreline Invitational wrestling tournament for the second time in three years on Saturday, with five Wolverines winning their respective weight classes.

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It wasn’t much of a relaxing holiday for some local basketball teams.
Two squads – the Bellevue boys and Newport girls – traveled out of state to prestigious tournaments while another, the Sammamish boys, stayed in town to play in the Bellevue College Holiday Tournament.
The Newport girls returned from the Nike Tournament of Champions in Phoenix, Ariz., with a fifth-place finish, not bad for a squad that had an 0-6 record prior to leaving the state.
“I was extremely proud of our approach down there, as we didn’t enter a tournament of that caliber with the ideal flow and circumstance to our season at that point,” said Newport coach Travis Whitaker, “but the girls had a mindset that we were going to try and get better and made sure we competed at a high level in all four games.”

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On the surface, it’s easy to wonder just what is going on out at Newport High School.
After all, its girls basketball team, which had made two consecutive trips to the Class 4A basketball tournament, started the season a rough 0-5. But a cursory glance doesn’t do the Knights justice.
Newport, which picked up its first win of the season Saturday at the Nike Tournament of Champions in Phoenix, Ariz., graduated 75 percent of its minutes played last year and 80 percent of its scoring. A core group of seniors graduated, a class that had gone 65-34 in its four years at the school.
One of those seniors – Betsy Kingma – was arguably the best player to ever come out of Newport. The freshman at Seattle Pacific University finished her career as the Knights all-time leading scorer with 1,570 points as well as the school’s all-time single season steals leader, with 81.
“You look at film last year and there were definitely times when we didn’t run great stuff and [Kingma] would bail us out at the end of it,” said Newport coach Travis Whitaker. “I don’t think we’ve found that kid with this group yet.”

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Sammamish coach Wes Newton saw a lot of himself in John Steinberg early on.
He saw a kid who was a hard-worker, so much so that he had to be talked out of going to the weight room or the gym. He saw a kid with talent. He saw a kid so passionate about the game of basketball, it sometimes hurt him on the court.
For all the work in the weight room or on the court, the toughest skill for the 6-foot-4 junior to master wasn’t fixed by an extra rep or additional shots.
It was controlling his emotions.

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The horn sounded, hands were shook, the season was over and at the end of the day, the Class 3A trophy ended up right where it started this season.
With Bellevue.
The Wolverines, winners of the past two state titles, won their third straight and eighth in ten seasons with a commanding 38-0 win over Kamiakin Friday at the Tacoma Dome

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An unusual week of practice led to an uncharacteristic first quarter for the Bellevue football team.
Due to the weather and school cancellations, the Wolverines were only able to hold two practices this week. The disruption of their normal schedule was evident in the first quarter of Friday’s semifinal matchup with Lakes at the Tacoma Dome.
Bellevue fumbled twice in the quarter, including once at the Lancers’ 10-yard line. With the timing of the Wing-T offense off, the No.1 Wolverines looked vulnerable.
Then came the second quarter. The Wolverines ripped off 28 straight points and stepped up defensively, cruising to a 35-7 win over Lakes that returns the team to the Class 3A state championship game for the eighth time in 10 seasons.

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The act is small. But the message is big.
A glimpse at the helmets of the Bellevue football team reveals a small pink heart on the backside. A heart that reads a simple four-word message that has become a rallying cry for the entire Wolverines football program.
That message reads “Bellevue battle for Natalie.”

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