Chiefs are raising the rim of possibilities

Moses Lake girls basketball team drawing regional, national attention

MOSES LAKE - Fourteen days before the season officially begins, the Moses Lake High School girls basketball team is preparing to make history.

On this evening, as a couple dozen girls gather in shorts and T-shirts to play pick-up games, there's a scent of anticipation floating through the air. A program that has never before qualified for a state tournament, which won just one game five years ago, is drawing some unprecedented attention.

Chiefs head coach Matt Strophy, entering his sixth season at the program's helm, is watching from afar but nothing more. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association rules prohibit him from instructing the girls before the season's official start date on Nov. 12.

The WIAA can't stop Strophy's tongue from nearly unraveling, however, as he talks about the promise of the upcoming campaign, the high expectations being placed on the team - internally and externally - and the future of his three biggest stars.

Following last season's 22-4 mark, the Sporting News recently named Moses Lake as one of 20 programs to watch nationwide. That would be news enough except that, on this night, assistant coach Jim Sexton of Northwestern University is in the gym to check out three players - forwards Carly Noyes and Ann Noyes, and point guard Jordan Loera.

Sexton made a two-day trip to the region, stopping first to check out perennial Oregon power Jesuit High School and landing in Moses Lake briefly before heading back to the Chicago area. Collegiate recruiting rules don't allow him to talk about specific recruits before they're signed, but Sexton is candid about his program's interest in landing a big-time Pacific Northwest player.

"We just saw some kids in the summer that we really liked," Sexton said. "For us, as much as we try to regionalize our recruiting in the Midwest, we have to look nationwide. We're looking for kids that are great students as well as solid basketball players. There are always kids out here - the hard part is just trying to pull them out of the Northwest."

If it's a bit surreal for Strophy and his players to have a Big Ten coach eyeballing their every move, they don't show it. Strophy says it's all part of the maturation process he's seen throughout Washington and, in particular, from the Greater Spokane and Columbia Basin leagues.

"I think our state has really produced a number of high school basketball players who've gone on to college, whether it's been Arizona State or Tennessee," Strophy said. "There's one at Georgia Tech now. We're sending some girls a lot of different places. I think that does draw some more attention."

Still, it's attention that feels almost premature for a program that has yet to nail down its first state tournament berth. The Chiefs almost accomplished that task last winter, going 11-1 in league play before losing to Mead for the region's third and final spot at state.

In any other part of the state, Moses Lake might've easily cruised through and played at the Tacoma Dome. But not in the GSL-CBL gauntlet, which last year featured the first-, second-, and fourth-place trophy winners in the 4A classification - Lewis and Clark, University, and Mead.

As team captain Lorin Montgomery puts it, the Chiefs aren't dwelling on that dream-shattering loss to Mead any more than necessary.

"It was a hard loss. How can it not be?" Montgomery said. "But I think it'll just help us - we can learn from that and it'll just give us motivation for this year."

Moses Lake has innumerable reasons to think 2007-2008 is the year it gets over the hump. In fact, if you ask five different players what the strength of the team will be, you'll probably get five different answers.

"I think our strength this year will be fast-breaking and running the court, since we do have Jordan Loera," Ann Noyes says.

"Our starting five all have a lot of experience," Carly Noyes says.

"We should do pretty good as a team because we know each other," junior shooting guard Kelly Sutherland says. "It's not like we've got a bunch of players just coming together - we've been playing together a while."

"Our strength would definitely be our defense - we have a pretty good defense, I think," Loera remarks.

"We have a definite advantage because we have a couple 6-3, 6-4 girls," Montgomery says, going on to talk about the ball-handling magic of Loera and Sutherland, and the sweet 3-point stroke of senior Shayla May.

Strophy doesn't hesitate in saying that Carly Noyes is the biggest key. After scoring 18.5 points per game and winning the league's Most Valuable Player award as a sophomore, she's already closing in on the school's scoring record of 1,227 points set by Kim Sandberg.

"She's been hitting the weights hard this offseason and has gotten a whole lot stronger," Strophy said. "She's got a lot of the burden on her shoulders and she's got to be willing to accept that role and I think she is."

The older sister, Ann Noyes adds the most versatility of anyone the Chiefs can throw on the floor.

"She's tall and can play inside, but she's really flourished at that semi-perimeter game," Strophy said. "She's a great talker on defense and sets things up on the offensive end. She's going to be very important for us, even if she's not the focal point of our offense."

Think Moses Lake will struggle getting the Noyes sisters in proper scoring position? Doubtful - not if everyone's projections are correct on the incoming freshman point guard Loera.

"She's the most anticipated person we've had coming up to our program in a long time," Strophy said. "When she was in seventh grade she won the 3-point competition at Gonzaga's team camp. Twenty other varsity teams and she's coming out on top as a seventh-grader."

Sutherland spent her first two varsity seasons as the Chiefs' point guard, but gladly surrenders that role to Loera.

"If she'd been here last year, we definitely would've gone to state," Sutherland says of Loera.

So how will the Chiefs respond to the hype? Very carefully.

"Yeah, it's a lot of pressure, but we're really looking forward to the season," Ann Noyes said. "It should be fun and hopefully we can get a lot of support from the fans."

"I'm just trying to tell the girls to embrace the attention because it doesn't come around that often," Strophy added. "Five years ago, when none of these girls were a part of it, we got the attention for being 1-19. It's kind of fun to get the attention for being 22-4."