Well, winter sports are in the books — and what an eventful season it was. The Grant Union/Prairie City wrestling team again crowned two individual state champions, both Prairie City basketball squads punched their tickets to state and other basketball teams throughout the county performed well in district tournaments or season-ending games.

Grappling with success

Sophomore Mallory Lusco won her second straight state championship at 190 pounds while freshman Taylor Parsons won his first state championship at 126 pounds. It has been said before, but winning a state wrestling championship as a freshman is special and doesn’t happen often at any level in Oregon high school wrestling.

Equally rare is a freshman winning state and successfully defending that state championship the way Lusco did this season. Whether Lusco and Parsons wind up with four state championships when their careers are over or not, we should all recognize how special what they’ve done thus far is.

Along with individual accolades, both the boys and girls wrestling teams left the state tournament with respectable finishes. The boys left as the sixth-best team in the 1A/2A level, and the girls placed 11th out of a hodgepodge of teams from the 4A/3A/2A and 1/A classifications. Congratulations to both wrestling teams on fantastic seasons!

Lady Pro basketball

The next team I want to highlight here didn’t win much this year but still managed to teach everyone some very important lessons, even in losing. The Grant Union girls basketball team won just one game all season and spent the lion’s share of the 2022-23 season on a more than 20-game losing streak.

It would be easy in that type of dynamic to give up and simply go through the motions. This team never did anything like that. They competed and wanted to win every game they played during their losing streak.

Not only that, I never once saw coach Jason Miller lose his temper with his team. I never saw members of the team get short with one another in games when they struggled, either. There is something to be said for that.

The team stayed together and finished out the season with class and poise. They never complained and never made excuses as to why the season wasn’t going in the way they had hoped it would. It takes a good coach and great kids for that to happen, and this team has both.

Despite the way the 2022-23 season went for the Lady Pros, I think the team has a bright future. The remaining girls on this squad are going to remember this season and all the hardships and struggles they endured.

I may get accused of being blindly optimistic about the home team, but I would bet that this squad will be one that nobody wants to play in the coming years. For these girls and all that happened this season, I hope that prediction becomes a reality.

Grant Union boys hoops

The Grant Union boys rebounded from a tough start to their season to place third in the Blue Mountain Conference, just missing out on a berth in the state tournament. The team continued to improve every week following that rough start, a testament to the solid coaching job RC Huerta did with this team.

The squad loses a single senior to graduation this year. Like the girls, this Grant Union boys team is going to be one that nobody wants to play in the coming years.

D/M basketball

Similar things can be said about Dayville/Monument’s boys and girls basketball teams. Both teams were young this year, with the boys having three seniors and the girls having none.

Both teams endured losing seasons that will probably be channeled into motivation for the 2023-24 campaign. The girls especially will be a team to watch. Losing absolutely nobody along with the memory of how this season played out could make for a very gritty and dangerous team.

Long Creek goes coed

Watching what Amos Studtmann is doing in Long Creek is fascinating. The guy takes a new crop of exchange students and teaches them the fundamentals of basketball, every season.

To complicate matters, the school doesn’t have enough students for separate boys and girls teams, so the team is coed. Despite those challenges, Studtmann continues to coach.

The team only won a single game this year, but that’s OK. The German exchange student I interviewed following a Long Creek game will be able to go home and tell everybody she won a basketball game playing against a full team of boys. You can’t beat that.

Panther hoops

Finally, the Prairie City/Burnt River basketball program as a whole was the county’s flag-bearer this season. Both boys and girls squads qualified for state, and both suffered heartbreaking losses to end their seasons.

The boys placed third in the High Desert League before a season-ending five-point loss to Lost River in the opening round of the state tournament. Coach Kelsy Wright guided the team to an 18-10 mark on the season in his first year as head coach of the program.

The team does lose a pair of key pieces in Cole Teel and Eli Wright, but the cupboards are far from bare. Wright’s younger brother, Tucker, returns next season as does another standout, Doyal Lawrence.

Given the success the team had during Wright’s first year as head coach, it shouldn’t be a stretch to say this team could be even better next year.

What can anybody say about the Prairie City/Burnt River girls team that hasn’t already been said? They were the only squad in the county to win 20 games this year — 22, to be exact.

They gave 1A powerhouse Crane all it could handle in an early February showdown, losing to the Lady Mustangs by just two points. The team placed second in the High Desert League before absolutely blowing out Sherman in a first round state tournament game in Prairie City.

Like the boys, the girls had their season end in heartbreaking fashion as they were unable to recover from a slow start and ultimately fell to St. Paul 48-44 in the second round of the state tournament.

I can’t speak for the team, of course, but I feel very confident in saying that the ending to the 2022-23 season isn’t what the team had hoped for. Despite that, the season was an overwhelming success and the future is bright for Lady Panther basketball.

The loss of Betty Ann Wilson is going to sting. The senior was the team’s Swiss Army knife and did a little of everything.

Also graduating are seniors Laken McKay and Kat Ashley, whose catch-and-shoot exploits behind the three-point arc will be sorely missed.

There are others ready to step into the voids left by those players, however, with both Jaycee Winegar and Savannah Watterson already looking the part of offensive leaders. Brooke Teel, who is arguably the team’s best defender, returns next season as well.

This team, more than any other in the county, is in prime position to see continued success into the future.

I’d like to thank all the coaches and athletes for giving me all the access I needed to cover their teams in the way that I did this year.

Congratulations to all the coaches and athletes on a great 2022-23 winter sports season.