Gar-Pal girls fall short in 1B state title game

It was a storybook season for the Garfield-Palouse Vikings, but this chapter ended in heartbreak.

The Vikings could not delay the Red Devils’ destiny as Neah Bay claimed its third consecutive state championship with a 46-36 win over Gar-Pal in the Washington 1B girls basketball state tournament final on Saturday at Spokane Arena.

“We can’t hang our heads,” Gar-Pal coach Garrett Parrish said he told his team. “The season was good, and we’ll use this to kind of fuel our fire.”

Morgan Lentz led the Vikings in scoring with 11 points, the majority of which came from her three 3-pointers. Ellie Collier and Elena Flansburg added 10 points apiece.

Neah Bay junior Qwaapeys Greene finished a 7-for-15 shooting day with a game-high 16 points, five rebounds and a team-leading four assists.

Neck-and-neck

Gar-Pal (24-3) jumped out to a 6-0 lead about a minute into the contest as Flansburg and Lentz sank back-to-back 3-pointers.

However, it quickly became apparent that the two-time defending 1B state champion Neah Bay (23-1) would not be so easily deterred.

Neah Bay’s Greene accounted for each of the Red Devil’s first six points to tie the game.

It was the beginning of a 14-2 Neah Bay run, which flipped an early 6-0 Gar-Pal lead into a 14-8 Neah Bay advantage late in the first quarter.

The Vikings and Red Devils jostled for control of the game throughout the first half but Neah Bay held Gar-Pal to just five points in the second quarter.

“I don’t feel like we settled for a lot of 3s. That’s the shot we were getting,” Parrish said. “We got to the rim some. We just couldn’t finish as much as we needed to. That was a credit to their defense. They did a great job of contesting.”

Neah Bay’s Green forced the ball through the nylon with multiple left-handed layups and the Red Devils used a 9-0 run over the final minutes of the second quarter to gain a 23-17 halftime lead.

Flansburg opened the second half how she started the first: with a bucket. The basket cut Gar-Pal’s deficit to four points.

Both teams suffered through minutes-long scoring droughts in the second half and Gar-Pal was not truly out of striking distance until the final minute of the game when Neah Bay’s Wiinuk Martin snagged the loose ball and slipped it into the hands of a teammate who sank the dagger to extend the Red Devils’ lead to double digits with under a minute left.

Martin turned in an 11-point, 11-rebound double-double, grabbing several crucial boards in the closing minutes to secure the 10-point state championship win.

Palouse takes over Spokane

Based on the crowd shots of the SWX broadcast of the game, the entire city of Palouse was packed into Spokane Arena, including a boisterous front row of Gar-Pal students clad in various jerseys.

Parrish said that his team felt the community’s love all season and especially the past several days as the Vikings have played in the state tournament in Spokane.

A lot of businesses in Palouse closed their doors on Saturday to be in Spokane for the game, and the ones that stayed open had the game on TV, Parrish said.

“In Whitman County, the ‘State B’ is kind of king, and we understand the pressure that comes with that,” Parrish said. “Our community definitely stepped up and showed up and it was an awesome atmosphere.”

A promising future

Gar-Pal graduates just one senior and will see each of its championship-game scorers return to the floor next year.

The Vikings will also see point guard Ellie Collier enter her freshman year with a season’s worth of high school basketball experience. Collier played for the Vikings as an eighth grader this season.

Parrish said it became clear that Collier would join the varsity basketball team in the Vikings’ first summer league game.

“She plays a lot of basketball, and she just has that feel — she can handle the ball,” Parrish said. “She got the point guard spot the first game in our summer league and she never let it go.”

The Vikings’ eighth-grade point guard earned Southeast 1B all-league first-team honors.

Collier is the youngest of a talented group of Gar-Pal starters, including rising seniors Lentz and Flansburg, rising junior Kyra Brantner and soon-to-be sophomore Molly Huffman.

Gar-Pal is not alone in boasting a young lineup. Waterville-Mansfield will return a majority of its starters after losing the semifinals 60-32 to Gar-Pal on Friday. Three-time state champion Neah Bay is also not going anywhere.

Parrish knows that Gar-Pal is not guaranteed a spot in the tournament. He also knows that — after two straight tournament appearances — his team is ready to work for the championship.

“I know these girls,” Parrish said. “This loss is gonna eat at them and is going to make a few of them work very hard and they’ll come back better next year.”

Parrish said that, unofficially, the 2024-25 Vikings were the highest-scoring team in Gar-Pal history.

“No loss will take away what we accomplished this year,” Parrish said. “We put up a lot of points. We were very entertaining to watch.

“We knew we would be good, but he can’t ever take for granted getting to a championship game.”

GARFIELD-PALOUSE (24-3)

Reisse Johnson 0 2-2 2, Elena Flansburg 4 0-0 10, Kyra Brantner 1 1-2 3, Ellie Collier 3 3-4 10, Morgan Lentz 4 0-0 11, HettyLee Laughary 0 0-0 0, Taia Gehring 0 0-0 0, Molly Huffman 0 0-0 0. Totals 12 6-8 36.

NEAH BAY (23-1)

Angel Halttunen 3 1-2 7, Caylee Moss 3 1-1 8, Cerise Moss 2 0-0 4, Qwaapeys Greene 7 2-4 16, Wiinuk Martin 5 0-0 11. Totals 20 4-7 46.

Garfield-Palouse 12 5 8 11—36

Neah Bay 14 9 11 12—46

3-point goals — Lentz 3, Flansburg 2, Brantner, C. Moss, Martin.

Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2268, staylor@lmtribune.com, or on X or Instagram @Sam_C_Taylor.