3/12/2025

Sports fans love the story of the underdog and when comes from nowhere to win it all is the folklore “Hoosiers” comes from. But there  are many impressive performances by overlooked teams that sometimes end early on a Saturday morning in a 4th or 6th place game. Many times a team is blown out in that early morning game at the end of a 30 or so game season and for some their 4th game in 4 days.

The hope here is that very little significance is given to those games for those who fall short. We’d say give a team a ton of credit for coming back and putting up a strong effort but for those who are simply done frankly we don’t blame them one bit.

There was a shining example of this in the Tacoma Dome in the 3A Girls bracket. The 4-time defending Champion Garfield Bulldogs came in as a disrespectful 19 seed. I wouldn’t care if the Bulldogs were 2-20, if they earned their way into the State Tournament I’m not seeding them 19th or any team with those credentials. All that happened is it added a huge amount of motivation and the Bulldogs were a blocked lay-in away from going to OT in the Semifinals as the eventual Champions Central Valley escaped with a 2 point win over the 19 seed.

Garfield had faced at least 4 loser out games and passed each test going back to the District Tournament when they defeated Liberty on February 21st. Once they reached Regionals as the 19 seed they played at #14 Shorecrest on Tuesday, February 25 in a loser out game and won 50-46. They would then play Bellevue on Saturday, February 22nd for 3rd place in the Distirct Tournament with both teams advancing to Regionals and lost to the Wolverines 51-48.

Then in the Regional round on Saturday March 1, the Bulldogs travelled to Longview for a Noon game against #11 Mountain View winning again 50-44. This advanced the Bulldogs to day 1 of the State Tournament in the Tacoma Dome and yet another loser out game against #3 White River and they won 51-47.

Now the 4 time Champs were rolling advancing to the quarterfinals on Thursday, March 6 taking on #4 Stanwood and served notice this was no fluke blasting the Spartans 52-30. Up next was the Semifinals where top seeded Central Valley awaited for a 3:45pm tip-off on Friday, March 7 with a trip to the State Championship on the line.

C-V pulled off a 51-49 win when our tournament MVP Brynn McGaughy blocked a lay-in attempt with mere seconds left to play and was able to secure the loose ball and a very tight win for the Bears. Central Valley would go on to grind out a hard fought win over 6 seeded Lakeside on Saturday night for their 7th State Championship in school history.

This meant the Bulldogs would play in the 3rd/5th place game on Saturday at 1pm. It didn’t go well as a worn out Garfield squad who just had their heart torn out in a very tough loss had to try and get up to play again the next afternoon in a game where you’re going to take a trophy home either way with the only difference one with 3rd on it and the other with 5th.

North Thurston was their opponent and they too were gutted with a 2 point loss to Lakeside on Friday in the 2nd 3A semifinal at 5pm. The Rams had to re-set and come in ready to play on Saturday. And they did running by Garfield 77-49.

Now, am I going to judge the Garfield season on that game? No chance. By the way, all this time they had of course graduated many key players from last year’s State championship team but they were also without one if not the best player on their team in senior Sarah Lessig who was out with an injury.

Let’s add up what Garfield had to do to get to Saturday. They played 7 games in 15 days, 4 were loser outs and had just completed their 3rd game in a row at the Tacoma Dome. The played in loser out games where they won by 10, 4, 6 and 4 points losing a 3 point game in between. Then they won by 22 and lost by 2 heading into their game with North Thurston.

The Rams had played 6 games since February 13 to get to Saturday’s 3rd place game or 6 games in 22 days. They also won their District games 79-16, 94-60, 89-51 and 73-65. They won their regional 59-52 and quarterfinal match-up 63-50 before dropping that tough semifinal loss. I am not downplaying what North Thurston did at all. Believe me, I think the Rams playing Central Valley may have had a different outcome if those two matched up.

North Thurston came into Saturday’s game as the #2 seed no doubt believing they should have been playing later on Saturday and no doubt wanted to prove something in that game. And kudos to Coach Jackie Meyer and her team leaders making sure the Rams finished how they wanted to finish with an impressive game on Saturday to take home 3rd place.

Would it have been impressive to see Garfield bounce back and put up a fight and maybe win this Saturday game? To me the answer would be of course yes.. However, I’d be concerned the Bulldogs were robots and not human.

I’m not saying I’m glad they had their worst game of the season in their final game, in the trophy round but man I sure get it. Everything they went through to get to that magic moment and then have it all come undone in just a few critical seconds. I hope they would have a hard time dismissing that Friday night loss. It showed they are human and the fact they showed up and played as well as they could against a very good North Thurston team was enough for me. The outcome was frankly irrelevent from the Garfield side.

I can argue this run of the Bulldogs is more impressive than any of their 4 straight Championships. I can argue that just making it to Saturday, winning any trophy and now having set a State record as the team with the lowest seed to ever win a trophy is as impressive as any of the State Title wins. I can argue this is the epitomy of High School sports of taking on challenges, coming together as a team to achieve the impossible, believing in yourself when no one else does are all valuable lessons that high school sports teaches young people. And it sure seems we need this now more than ever.

The Garfield coaching staff has to be super proud of this team and Head coach Roydell Smiley II along with assistants Kwajalein Clark and Kevin Johnson showed what you do when you are facing a mountain of a challenge. You climb the mountain, you don’t say it’s too high and quit. The Bulldogs climbed this mountain and I hope they one day will realize just what an accomplishment they achieved and I hope they don’t focus on the number on the trophy.

This achievment should be celebrated just as much as the previous 4 years. This was a momentous achievement, congratulations Bulldogs! You ARE what High School sports are all about.

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