Liberty High School’s first female wrestler defies odds
January 1, 2013
Joanna Moreira, Liberty High School sophomore (right), wrestles her opponent at the Auburn Mountainview Girls Tour in December. By Laurel Bluhm
Just a day before competing in last year’s Mat Classic, Liberty High School wrestler Joanna Moreira stood high up in the rafters of the Tacoma Dome and stared down at the 12 perfectly placed mats laid across the floor.
Skyline Spartans cap off perfect season as state champs
December 4, 2012
Mat Taylor (right), Skyline High School football coach, delivers the state 4A football championship trophy to his team gathered on the Tacoma Dome football field Dec. 1 after a 49-24 victory over Bellarmine Prep capped a 14-0 season. By Greg Farrar
Jubilant only begins to describe Skyline High School and its fans Dec. 1 at the Tacoma Dome, where the Spartans grabbed their fifth state title in eight years. Skyline beat Bellarmine Prep, 49-24, to win the 4A football state championship.
Skyline beats Bellarmine Prep for state football title
December 1, 2012
Skyline High School football coach Mat Taylor (right) cheers for a Skyline victory Saturday. By Lillian O’Rorke
UPDATED — 12:05 a.m. Dec. 2, 2012
It was all smiles for Skyline High School and its fans at the Tacoma Dome on Saturday as the Spartans grabbed their sixth state title in seven years. Skyline beat Bellarmine Prep 49-24 to win the 4A football state championship.
Off the Press
November 27, 2012
A competitive friend is taken too soon
Sunday night, as I was meandering about on Facebook, where more than a dozen of my friends are local newspaper and professional photographers, the Internet suddenly lit up from one end to the other like a lightning bolt across the sky with the sad news that one of our brethren had passed away.
Greg Farrar
Press photographer
The pre-eminent high school sports photographer for our parent company The Seattle Times, and a friend, Jim Bates, had finished his struggle against non-Hodgkin lymphoma. And while I might flatter myself to think a few of my sports photos are clipped out and pasted in your scrapbooks, it’s a sure bet that if you have been a high school athlete or a parent of one at any time during the past decade, and look back in those books, you will find Times photos with Jim’s byline.
There is a contingent of us local photographers who follow our school sports all year, including Don Borin, Jim Simpkins, Jim Nicholson, Chuck Babcock and Gary Babcock. And the truth is, we’re all trying to make sport photos as good as Jim Bates did. In his very unobtrusive and workmanlike way, he always knew exactly where to be for the consummate image.
Whether they are football, basketball or soccer photos, and whether they have been at Issaquah, Liberty or Skyline high schools, Jim Bates was there.
Skyline Spartans inch within one win of another state title
November 27, 2012
Nic Sblendorio, Skyline High School senior wide receiver, is finally taken down by Camas junior defensive back Jorden Payne after making a long pass reception in the second quarter Nov. 23 at the Tacoma Dome. By Greg Farrar
According to the book of Revelations in the Bible, 666 is the number of the beast.
Skyline charges to semifinals with 54-21 win over Roosevelt
November 20, 2012
Skyline’s defensive line holds Roosevelt’s Taku Shiozaki to a 2-yard gain in the third quarter Nov. 16. By Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times
The last time the Skyline football team played under the Space Needle at Memorial Stadium, it had already wrapped up the win by the end of the second quarter, beating Roosevelt 43-7 at the half. Eight weeks later, that wasn’t the case.
When the halftime buzzer sounded Nov. 16, the state quarterfinal game was tied 14-14.
This was the first time in 15 years that the Roosevelt Roughriders had played in the postseason, and after making it to the final eight, they were not going quietly into the night.
“We knew Roosevelt was riding high, had the whole city of Seattle behind them…it was a good story, give them credit; give their coaches and players credit,” said Skyline quarterback Max Browne. “But at the end of the day we kind of got down to our basics and really executed what we did, and it was a good night for us.”
Retiring Sports Editor Bob Taylor shares milestones from a long career on the sidelines
March 6, 2012
Kasen Williams, then-Skyline High School senior, makes his winning triple-jump leap of 45 feet, 5 1/2 inches, during the KingCo track and field championships May 13, 2011, at Juanita High School. File
I kind of know how Bill Gates must have felt when he made his first million. When I joined The Issaquah Press news staff May 22, 2000, I struck it rich, too!
Five days after being hired at The Press I covered my first Issaquah School District state championship team. Actually, it was inevitable that an Issaquah team would win when Issaquah and Skyline met for the 3A state baseball title in Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium. Issaquah won 5-3.
Skyline High School girls’ hoop season ends in defeat
February 22, 2012
NEW — 10:15 a.m. Feb. 22, 2012
The Skyline High School girls basketball team looked like it was headed for an upset when the KingCo Conference entry had an 10-point halftime lead against host Stanwood.
However, third-ranked Stanwood rallied in the second half to post a 61-50 victory in a Wesco/KingCo loser-out playoff for a Class 4A Regional berth.
Skyline, which won the KingCo Crest Division title this season, finished with a 17-8 record.
It was a game where the team’s had the same mascots — both are Spartans.
The Skyline Spartans, sparked by Megan Wiedeman, jumped to a 16-10 first-quarter lead. Wiedeman scored seven of her game-high 13 points in the quarter. Skyline pushed its lead to 31-21 at halftime.
Sluggish start dooms Eagles to 62-51 loss in championship game
February 21, 2012
It wasn’t where Nick Price wanted to be.
After the Issaquah High School Eagles were only able to string together 16 points in the first half of the KingCo Conference 4A boys championship game Feb. 17 against Garfield, he was saddled with early foul trouble and was forced to the sidelines for the majority of the third quarter.
Issaquah rallied for an 18-9 run to bring the game within 10 points in the third, but the Eagles lost the contest 62-51 at Juanita High School.
“It’s always a factor when your best player gets into foul trouble, but at the same time the other kids and the younger guys stepped up,” Issaquah coach Jason Griffith said. “That’s when we went on a run. When Nick came back in, he played more like Nick.”
He credited the Bulldogs’ strength as the best offensive rebounding team in the league — a major factor as Garfield took the lead by as many as 21 points in the first half.
“We had a hard time getting into the rhythm,” he said. “We were forcing shots and we didn’t really play to our strengths, which is getting to the rim, making the extra pass and playing good defense.”
Griffith said he knew his team had the talent and dedication to end up in the championship game early on in the season.
Liberty wrestler Hamilton Noel finishes sixth at Mat Classic
February 21, 2012
When the last chapter closed on the 2012 Mat Classic, all it said about Hamilton Noel’s performance was that the Liberty High School senior finished sixth in the 160-pound division at the Class 3A Tournament.
Not a word about his heart, of which he displayed plenty in the Tacoma Dome. Not a comma about his tears, of which there were also a few. Not a period about how he stepped on the mat weakened by an unspecified ailment that made him look almost nothing like the Noel that dominated at Regionals.
At the end, the fact that Mercer Island’s Blake Johnson, the wrestler who won 160-pound state title was the same Noel defeated at the regional finals seven days earlier, seemed to do nothing but add insult to an already injured warrior.
