In the Foss gym last Saturday morning, after a loss the previous night at Central Kitsap, 57-55, none of coach Mike Cocke’s players are feeling his love.

Toward the end of the sluggish practice in preparation for their upcoming game this week with division rival Lincoln, the coach introduces them to a new drill: One player goes to the foul line to shoot two shots, while the others form lines across the lane from each other. If the player misses his shot, he has to run “suicide” sprints - the length of the court and back for each miss. Each player gets two shots in succession until the team has taken 24 shots. If they fail to make 20 of them, they go to the other end of the court and start over again.

It doesn’t go well. The first time, they make 16. They trudge down to the other end of the floor and start over. The next time, 14. The next time, 19. (That was frustrating.)

After each failure, the coach coaxes them to concentrate, to focus.

At one point, after the sixth - 144 free throws and counting - he calls them to the center of the court and challenges them with fierceness reserved for special occasions.

He makes a few pointed comments about lack of concentration and then lowers the boom.

“Do you want to remember your high-school career for missing a free-throw shot that lost a game?” he asks, his voice rising.

“What you do right now in this gym will impact what happens in a game. It’s about what we do now.”

Then he brings down the tone, like he is conducting the school choir, almost to a whisper.

“When you go up to that line in a game, you have got to tune everything out of your head except knowing you are going to make that shot. And I want you to do that right now.”

After three more tries (going on an hour and 20 minutes now), the exhausted group finally succeeds with senior captain Julian Cruell hitting both his shots.

“We lost last night because we didn’t hit our free throws. We won’t go very far this year if that continues,” he explains.

The interesting thing to an observer at this practice is that at one point during this drill, Cocke is seen leaning against the bleachers, exasperated, arms folded, watching every shot, every miss sinking him further into frustration.

“We can stay here all day,” he yells to them.

And he would have.

“He cares so much about these kids,” says his assistant coach Ron Pittman. “He wants them to succeed so badly.”

Later, after the gym is quiet, he is asked if he loves this job.

He smiles, pauses for a moment and says, “I love the kids.”

Mike Cocke is in his second year as head coach at Foss. He worked as an assistant for Scott Sonntag for a few years before taking over and took the Falcons to the semifinals of the state 4-A championship last year.

“He puts everything into this job,” says his Athletic Director Tom Burmeister. “I’m always a little concerned he’ll burn himself out.”

Cocke, whose full-time job is with Comcast in Fife, is not on campus during the day, which makes the opportunities that he does have to connect with his players all the more valuable.

“This is a great group of kids,” he says. “Believe it or not, it is a lot of fun being around them.”

Cocke was asked recently how long after he wakes up each morning is he thinking about this job?

“I’m thinking about it in my sleep,” he said. His wife, Shannon, who was standing nearby, laughed and said, “Yep.”

He has to maximize his time with family and team. His son Michel, Jr. is on the sidelines with him for every game.

“I took this job because I felt very fortunate to have an opportunity to be a part of something special, to work with great kids at a school with tremendous tradition,” the coach says.

As this season began, the basketball winds appeared to be shifting in favor of division rivals Lincoln and Wilson. Those teams came back with a good deal of experience, while Foss lost 10 seniors from last season’s state qualifier. The Falcons were not among those being chosen to contend for the league title, but Foss came into this week tied with both Lincoln and Wilson, all with 7-3 records.

“There was some feeling of disrespect,” says Cocke regarding perceptions of the team. “When I am asked if I am surprised that we are right at the top of our division, I say, ‘Why?’ We’re the defending league champions. We expect to win every game we play.”

While some young players such as freshman Marcus Chambers, with his pure shooting stroke, are having an impact for the Falcons this season, it is one of the seniors, Jamal Byrd, who is having the biggest season.

“I’m not really surprised Jamal is having a great year,” says his friend Cruell, the only starter from last season.

“We all knew he could play. With so many good seniors on our team last year, he didn’t really have his chance last year.”

The same could be said of 6-3 senior forward Anthony Little and 5-10 senior Moogie Lentz, who came up from the JV and have given the Falcons a balanced scoring attack.

The other starter is 6-6 senior forward Dontae Davis, a transfer from Curtis, who has been battling an ankle injury all season but is handling the bulk of the work around the basket.

After Saturday’s practice, the last hour and 20 minutes of which was grueling sprints and pressure free throws, the starters kind of stagger off the floor.

“We needed that,” said Cruell, the others nodding in agreement.  

“We were in a good position to win the game last night,” said the big man, Davis. “Now we know not to let one like that get away again.”

Byrd is asked if it hurts the team’s confidence, losing a two-point game, with a number of missed free throws.

“It could have been better,” Byrd said. “That’s a tough place to play. But we didn’t really lose any confidence.”

If anything, there is agreement that the problem was one of concentration, which they think has now been fixed.

Cruell said that with 10 seniors on last season’s team, there was a swagger. This team is finding its own identity, but the mold comes straight from Coach Cocke, who has watched a tough, smart and swarming team develop.

About that swagger? Maybe a better word is belief.

“Hopefully down the stretch, we’re getting some of that,” Cruell says.

Cocke says there is as much reason for his team to believe in themselves as any other team he has seen this season.

“Any number of teams can win this thing this year. And we haven’t played our best ball consistently. That could probably be said for any of us. So the team that takes care of the ball, that executes under pressure and takes care of the details will win it down the stretch. If I didn’t think that was our guys, what would be the point of being out here?”