It took 54 years for Tumwater High School to claim its first boys basketball conference championship.
Ty Gentry and his teammates don’t plan on waiting nearly as long to score title #2.
It was a record-setting year last season for the Thunderbirds on the court. The squad finished with 20 wins, going a remarkable 19-1 over a 20-game stretch, and advanced to the regional round of the Class 2A state tournament.
“This is definitely a football school,” Gentry, a senior point guard, said. “But I think we showed last year there’s more than just football going on here.”
A league title is nothing new for Tumwater on the football field. The T-Birds claimed their sixth consecutive 2A Evergreen Conference championship this past fall and have 29 titles overall and five state crowns since the school first opened its doors in 1961.
Once the winter sports season rolled around, however, the league titles dried up. Sure, the T-Birds have had plenty of talented basketball teams over the last five decades. They’ve had numerous teams advanced to the state tournament – even picked up a state-placing trophy on a few occasions – but league titles had always escaped the program.
That is until last year.
“No one expected it,” Gentry said. “I think we used that as motivation. Once we started winning, we started to develop more and more support from the school. You could see that as the season went on and more fans started to show up to the games.”
Before the arrival of the fanbase, Gentry and his teammates had to convince themselves what exactly they were capable of accomplishing.
“We really didn’t have any expectations coming into last year. I think we all knew we were going to be good,” Gentry said. “We just didn’t know how good we could be.”
Tumwater received the answer to that question during the annual North Thurston Holiday Tournament. The T-Birds opened the two-day event by routing a Timberline team which would go on to win the 4A Narrows League title, 83-55, before edging fellow 2A power River Ridge in overtime, 69-65.
As the wins piled up, so did the team’s confidence.
Tumwater would win 19 of 20 games and defeat Mark Morris, 57-54, to secure the program’s first ever Southwest 2A District championship.
The run would end a game shy of the state quarterfinals and the trip to the Yakima SunDome with a heart-breaking 70-69 loss to Fife, which trailed by 10 points in the fourth quarter, in the regional round.
“The way it ended was pretty disappointing because we felt we should have gone further than we did,” Gentry said. “It definitely serves as more motivation for this year.”
The T-Birds welcome back four starters and a host of reserves from last year – but did graduate David Cooper, the school’s all-time leading scorer and an all-state selection who is now playing at the Air Force Academy.
“David was such a large part of our success,” said Gentry, who has won the last two 2A state singles tennis championships and will attend the University of Oregon on a tennis scholarship next fall. “One of the reasons we wanted to win so bad last year was because it was David’s senior year.”
Now it’s Gentry’s final season and he plans to make the most of it.
The 6-foot-5 guard is about as smooth as it comes on the court, able to create his own shot and attack the rim at will.
But he is hardly the T-Birds sole weapon. Weston Vandenhazel mans the middle with his intimidating 6-10 frame and massive wing span. The senior set the school record for block shots in a season last year.
Senior guards Spencer Dowers (6-2) and Jacob Gibbons (6-3) both can contribute in a variety of ways, while 6-5 junior forward Cade Otton rounds out the starting five and provides all the blue-collar work with his physical play.
“David was obviously our senior leader last year,” Gentry said. “This year that role can be filled by a couple seniors. It doesn’t need to just be me. Weston, Spencer and Jacob are senior leaders too. It takes a lot of the pressure off. I think a lot was asked out of David last year. If one of us is having an off night, there are other seniors who can step up. I think that’s one of the advantages we have this year.”
While football may remain king at Tumwater, Gentry and company are proving there’s plenty of room on the T-Birds royal court for basketball as well.
