Young men and Fire

Photo by erica Cooley

STATING THEIR CASE. Davonte Lacy and Dominique Williams are two of the reasons Curtis is a top-ranked team in the state.

Up until last week, the Curtis High School boys basketball team was undefeated. If you talked to players or coaches, it was like, whatever. It was okay, you know. Not bad. Actually kind of random, when you came right down to it. Some close games. Could have gone either way.

Not like that Federal Way team, ranked No. 1 in the state that wins by 20, 30, 40 points a game. They hung 137 on Kentlake and won by 67 points. They have to go to Long Beach, Calif. to find a team (Poly) that can lose to them by only a point, 57-56.

On the other hand, The Vikings had a lot of close wins (Bellarmine Prep by one, Bethel by three, Ferris by three, Kentridge by five, Rogers by two) and a surprising number of lost fourth quarters (seven) that might have suggested that an undefeated season would be unlikely.

So when Curtis took its No. 2 state ranking into Puyallup last week, it was not beyond the scope of reason that team could possibly meet its demise for the first time this season. Two nights earlier, Curtis had ever so gingerly escaped Rogers, 44-42.

At Puyallup, Curtis, a team that is as well-conditioned as any under coach Tim Kelly, lost the fourth quarter 16-8. Then they lost the game, 80-79, in overtime.

At practice last week, before the Puyallup game, Kelly said, “It’s good,” referring to his team’s 13-0 record. “But it doesn’t mean a lot at this point. We are a young team and what you like to see is steady improvement as the season goes on. A win or a loss isn’t always the way you measure that.”

Kelly has taken two teams to state championships, the Lincoln High teams of 2001 and 2002. The 2001 team had a 15-0 record in the Narrows League and 29-1 overall and beat Ferris in the finals, 61-54. The 2002 team had two losses during league play, 27-2 overall, and beat Ferris in the state finals, 50-47.

“A lot of things can happen during the course of a game or a season. All you can really rely on is being fundamentally sound and working harder than the other team. You have to be committed – and I mean committed – to playing defense. Anybody can have a bad night on offense. But there’s no excuse for playing bad defense,” Kelly says. Kelly, a history teacher at Curtis whose favorite subjects are World War II and the American Colonial period, knows very well the difference between winning a battle and winning a war.

“To perform well when it really counts, in championships, you have to play very hard and execute extremely well while you are doing that. You need to have gone through the fire a little bit to know how to react. We work hard at that with drills. Repetition of basic drills. Repetition, discipline and intensity.

“That’s a Tim Kelly practice,” assistant David Adams says.

How does Kelly get his players to buy into the endless repetition, the drudgery of a half-hour of muscle-aching basketball calisthenics every practice?

“They see it as preparation for their success. Coach connects it for them. They aren’t just mindless drills. And kids know he has the same work ethic himself,” says Adams, who played for Kelly at Lincoln from 1996-99.

“And, if you don’t do it, you won’t play for him,” adds assistant Mark Williams, who has worked with Kelly going back to the Lincoln days.

Kelly, who attended Curtis, left Lincoln to return to his alma mater in April of 2007. At Lincoln he had a 222-123 record and took seven teams to the state tournament in 14 seasons. In his second season, last year, he took the Vikings to the state tournament, the highlight of which was a thrilling win over Eisenhower, coming from 22 points down to win 68-65.

One of only three seniors on the team, Dominique Williams says the fast pace of practice and the hard work with his teammates makes playing in a game really fun.

“After about two and a half hours of this (practice), playing 30 minutes in a game is a lot easier. We like to pressure the whole game and we pride ourselves at that. As far as being undefeated, or being a team that blows everybody out, Williams says he does not care about that.

“Sometimes at practice it feels like, oh man, your shoes are on fire. But our chemistry from going through this together keeps getting better.

Kelly says that he does not mind close games.

“You have to win a few of those throughout the season to have confidence that you can win them when they count.”

Alongside Williams, the Vikings are starting three juniors and a sophomore. Because of the youth of the team, Kelly admits to being pleasantly surprised with the season, so far. He likes the effort he is seeing and the scoring balance that Williams referred to.

Davonte Lacy, a 6-3 junior, is leading the team in scoring with 17 points per game. Williams is averaging 15, Darius Johnson-Wilson, a 6-5 sophomore, is averaging 12, James Cooks, 10, and Julian Vaughn, 8.

With one state tournament appearance already under Kelly, it appears the message of what a Tim Kelly team is all about – intensity – is taking root in University Place, at least around the basketball court.

Out of the gym, in the classroom, Kelly’s history students find him to be a kind of introverted, soft-spoken man. “They come to a basketball game and see me along the sideline, see the intensity – that’s a word we use a lot around here – and they are probably surprised.

Kelly is asked what he likes best about his team this year. No surprise here.

“I’m proud of the effort.”

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