MILL CREEK — The friendships will go on, but the seniors of the Arlington boys basketball team have played their last game together.
The Eagles, No. 4 in the district tournament out of Wesco North, had a couple of unlucky draws in the double-elimination tournament, falling to a dominant-looking Mountlake Terrace squad that went on to drub Stanwood for a state berth. But then, with their second-round game, they drew a Jackson game that was returning its high-scoring sophomore guard, Brett Kingma.
Kingma still wore a cast on one arm, but it didn’t stop him from scoring 23 points for the Timberwolves as they went on to eliminate Arlington with an 87-74 victory at the Wolves’ Den.
Playing without senior A.J. Richardson, the Eagles still managed to muster one of their highest outputs of the season in the loss, but they couldn’t quite keep up with hot-handed Jackson shooters.
“They shot extremely well tonight,” Arlington coach Nick Brown said about the opposition.
Despite double-digit quarters, Jackson outscored Arlington in every quarter, including a 30-28 shootout in the fourth quarter. It was in that period senior Tyler Busby had 12 of his team-high 20 points, but despite Arlington’s best efforts, Jackson maintained a comfortable 10-point cushion from halftime onward. Sophomore Zach Cooper had 13 points and senior Will Heath had 17, but Arlington had no answer for the combined 51 points by Jackson’s Kingma and fellow guard Ryan Todd.
At last, somber and reluctant, the Arlington team walked out of the locker room.
“It’s hard to leave the locker room because you know it’s the last time,” Brown said. He added that while he is excited to see what his players accomplish in their future, it’s hard to see them go. “They worked hard together. I’m going to miss them so much.”
Senior guard Cole Carpenter, the team’s leading scorer, was wistful. While Carpenter has not yet committed to play college basketball, he said he and teammate Richardson are planning to take a look at Pacific University in Oregon.
“We weren’t expecting it to end tonight,” he said. “We’ve been together so long.”
