Gallery • 8 Photos

Brian Patton

Pollyanna Hansen sedulously guards the ball from the grubby paws of her adversary

The tournaments of these next three days were presaged last night, Dec. 9, by a Cerberus'(or a Fluffy to those of greater attunement to the turn of the millennium), that is, a “triple-header”, as it serves as said commencement to our three teams in respective games, all against visiting Paradise High School. The first of these was the JV boys’ team, who were served an unequivocal blowout of 70 points to their mere 24, which was, in accord to the reader’s reflexively blanching, rather pitiable to look upon. Notwithstanding, the reader need not abandon hope for them yet, as this was but the debutante’s first outing, and whilst one does so hate to see her trip over herself during the intensive waltz, they have much time throughout the season to rectify their footing. 

Next to rite was the girls’ varsity team, who sluiced with spring water the foul taste abiding from the aforementioned, for their ultimate triumph felt as a fait accompli from the end of the quarter at 12-4, and a fait éstablie by the half of 25-10; the coup de grâce was swung in the next quarter of 40-17, and met its mark in a final quarter of 48-23. There was a conspicuous dyad of pre-eminence sinking shot after shot, but also retaining the acuity and sloughing the jealousy required to lob suitable passes, this being. Pollyanna “Polly” Hansen and Brianna “Bri” Hayes, fittingly running under consecutive #22 and #21, respectively, and attaining to respective point totals of 20 and 15, for an aggregate of 72.9% of the team’s total score! Of course, shots secured is a dreadfully myopic means of adjudicating the worth of any given player, and thusly the reader ought to remain cognizant that the entire team, taken on the whole, appeared to execute a deft performance, running efficacious screens and sticking fast to their man or zone, enough, anyhow. 

Any such exhibition betokens sound coaching, and such was this duos judgement of their new coach, one Mikayla Bumgarner: Bri affirmed she “knows what is best for the team,” and Polly accorded “she cares a lot” for the same. The coach herself reciprocated the warm sentiments: “I feel like when I see them play a game, it’s as if they’re an entirely new team…they’re always improving. They’re working really hard, and it’s going to pay off.” Coach Bumgarner graduated from CORE in 2022, returned to coach boys’ JV, and just this year has begun coaching girls’ varsity; to the adaption, she said, “Boys are very competitive, and so they’re very competitive with each other, they’re very “me” and “my”; whereas with girls, as you saw, there’s a lot more “we”, working to make it hard for the person in front of them rather than next to them.”

And perhaps something of the sort was exhibited in the deficit ‘twixt the two teams, for the boys were utterly creamed out the gate, the tabulations of points per quarter running as follows: 3-12, 10-32, 20-50, and 27-63. Four players exceeded one point scored, these being #4 Dylan Garcia with 5, #1 Miguel Cardenas with 6, #3 Bryan Patton with 7, and #12 Josiah “Joey” Condit with 7. One is rather chary to importune the coach after such a clearly melancholy outcome, but one must accede to the demands of the job, and so the coach, a certain Benjamin Salberg, did as well when solicited for a remark: “It was rough. These guys hustled hard they did their thing…but it was all on me,” sighting a lack of preparedness. We here at the Insider think the imputation rather rigorous upon himself, and figuring he was understandably prevaricating to divert any fault from the players, we pressed him further as to his true feelings. He replied, “If you look at the best coaches, they never blame the team…I’m never going to go out and say this and that the team did bad, because they’ll read this too.” Commendable and politic forbearance on his part (though it could be said he does rather overestimate the reach of our articles), but, by virtue of the trust commissioned to us, we unfortunately cannot exhibit the same restraint, and necessarily shall offer critiques to the team when so thoroughly robbed. Recoursing to wiser counsel, namely two obliging student spectators, Devon Stewart and Gavin McGarr, who apprised us that Paradise was alternating ‘tween man and zone defense, halting the progress of the offense, and that CORE on defense continually lost their man, most detrimentally the player in the corner directly to the right of the hoop. To the veracity of these critiques, we cannot with qualification endorse, but the lads seemed trustworthy and knowledgeable, so the reader may take it how they like. 

The monotony of failure was kindly broken by a half-time performance by the cheerleading squad, who performed the “Criminal” routine as orchestrated through JAMZ (an entity which convokes cheerleading competitions), to a remix of a song of the same name by Meagan Trainer. Again, the Insider is not entirely conversant with the minutiae and punctilio of cheerleading, but everyone seemed to be in sync, the moves appeared to be executed correctly, and the effect thereby produced was agreeably endued with moxie, particularly the “mic-drop”, replicated with pom-poms, at the conclusion of the set. 

To all three of the teams, the CORE Insider wishes the best of luck in the upcoming days of the tournament: to the girls, the papers bids them tidings of continuity, to the boys of volte-face.