West Sound Senior All-Stars come out to play

With an abundance of height and high-scoring guards, the Puget Sound boys team had little problem defeating their Cascade counterparts 70-54 Tuesday night at Olympic College in the second annual West Sound High School Senior All-Star Game.

“There wasn’t a lot of coaching,” said OC mens basketball coach Billy Landram of his winning team. “I just said to get the ball, fast-break it and shoot it.”

The Puget Sound boys spread their scoring around as Port Angeles forward Scott Helpenstell and Bainbridge guard Mark Korsack each had 12 points and Olympic’s Brendan Campbell and Sequim’s Brady Marunde had 11 each.

“It was fun for everyone to get together,” said Korsack who won the hot shot contest and was runner-up to Shelton’s Colby Brewer in the 3-point contest. “Fortunately I had a great group of guys playing with me and we gelled well. We were sloppy to begin with, but we had a lot of height and it paid off.”

The average height of the five members of the Puget Sound frontcourt was 6 foot, 6 inches. Their opposing frontcourt averaged 6 foot, 4 inches.

Landram said his team had a bit of “stacked deck” with the opposition missing South Kitsap’s Jacob Beitinger, who opted out earlier in the week.

“We knew what most of these kids could do, and it was fun to see them do it against a bunch of good players,” Landram said.

That left Shelton’s Bill Richardson, who knocked down four big dunks and had a game-high 13 points, to keep Peninsula College mens coach Peter Stewart-led Cascade team in it. Bremerton guard Phil Houston scored 11.

“That was pretty good,” said Houston, who is rumored to go to OC next season. “There were a lot more turnovers than I thought, but it’s like that in every all-star game. It was a good game overall — too bad we came out on the back side of it.”

In the opening game, OC womens basketball coach Rick Peters improved to 2-0 in West Sound All-Star games with a 46-41 win as Bain-bridge’s Mor-gan Zajonc, Alice Russell and Haley Wiggens combined for 32 of his Puget Sound team’s points.

“This is a great chance to get these girls playing together,” Peters said. “Most of the time these girls are busy beating up on each other all year.”

Wearing red jerseys, the Puget Sound started off sluggishly as South Kitsap’s Leah Bradley took the Cascade to an early lead. The 5-9 guard led all scorers with 21 points and won the pre-game hot shot contest. Olympic High’s Shakira Dixon won the 3-point shooting contest.

“Nobody wanted to show up anybody or be a ball hog,” Peters said of the first half. “In the second half it got physical and more girls were looking for their shots.”

Zajonc said took some getting used to playing with other girls on the court. “Luckily, we (the Bainbridge players) were all on the same team so we got into the flow,” said Zajonc who was surprised she led her team with 17 points. “Then it seemed like every one stepped it up in the second half.”

Organizer Rick Walker said he’s already thinking about next year’s games. “I thought the kids had fun and the crowd was not disappointed,” Walker said, noting there was good response to the halftime 3-point shooting contests.

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