| Prairie
girls unbeaten at Nyssa summer camp
Summer basketball? Nyssa brand! Girls basketball? Prairie brand! Pressure ball? Prairie "Red and Black Attack" brand! Imagine if you will a tourney set up where every game is 20 minutes long, one timeout, games scheduled every half hour, meaning 5 to 7 minutes warmup between games! Literally no time lost on free throws as successful shooters are given an extra point if fouled while shooting, thus scoring three, and if fouled while shooting, but missing the shot, given one quick free throw, good for 2 points if made. Other fouls result in a quick side out for the fouled team. Nyssa Oregon style non stop tournament basketball! Thus, Nyssa tournaments result in one 20 minute game after another, allowing each team ten different contests spread out over a Friday afternoon and Saturday! Prairie was there, last weekend, 21 girls in number, and when the action stopped, each team, a varsity and a jv group, walked away with an undefeated ten win and no loss record! The competition? At the jv level, Prairie's 10 wins included a 28 -2 win over one of two host Nyssa teams, plus narrow 15-14 come from behind squeakers over La Grande and Mt. View of Boise #2, and a 14 -12 narrow win over Baker Oregon, with a student population over 400. Nyssa's sport classification puts them in the 200 -400 population bracket, while Mt. View of Boise is classified a top 5-A Idaho school! The Prairie varsity, also using "Red and Black Attack" pressure defense ran roughshod over the following ten teams: Pilot Rock #1, a 3A OR school, 27-8; Grant Union, a 3AOR school, 30-10; LaGrande #1, a 4A OR school, 27-15; Nyssa #1, another 3A OR school, 19-11; Nyssa #2, 14-8, LaGrande #2, 28-14; Eagle, a 5A Boise school, 19-6,Pilot Rock #2, 19-10, and Kuna ID, another 5A school, 28-13. 3A schools in Oregon have attendance between 236 and 400, and 4A school have over 400 students. With nine consecutive wins on their record, the Prairie varsity girls were matched up by a pre-set schedule with a tall, also undefeated team from Vallivue ID. The Vallivue girls, an Idaho 4A classification school with enrollment exceeding 640 students, averaged a good three to four inches height advantage over Prairie, and had won their nine game by an average margin greater than Prairie! A look at the teams warming up would cause anyone to believe Vallivue would take the game! However, Prairie's full court press, at times called the "Red and Black Attack," proved once again more than the opponent could handle! Turnovers caused by the aggressive "in your face two on one" pressure defense so upset the taller girls at the beginning, and so disrupted their normal offensive attack, that they found themselves down 10-0before they could get their act together! Towards the end some successful threes closed the gap a bit, but left them short 24-17 at the end, leaving Pirates the only undefeated varsity team in the tourney! From this impressed and anonymous fan, congrats to the Prairie girls and their coaches Lori Mader, Steve Wilson, and Dave Shears for a delightful but frantic 200 minutes of fast basketball for each of the two teams. Thinking about it, each team played the equivalent of six plus regular games in two days time, without the delays allowed for normal free throw interruptions! Amazing! And again, congratulations to all! |
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