Bronco boys do their late fan proud at state

SPOKANE — Somewhere up there Tom Arlt is looking down with a smile on his face.

The longtime Ritzville mailman and high school basketball fan passed away back in December, but he is not forgotten. The Lind-Ritzville/Sprague boys basketball team dedicated their season to coach Dustan Arlt’s dad and the Broncos made good on one part of their promise with Thursday night’s 62-57 victory over No. 4 Life Christian Academy to advance to the 2B state semifinals at the Spokane Arena.

Wyatt Roettger finished with 21 points and four rebounds and Jacob Saetre knocked down four 3-pointers en route to 16 points with four assists.

Not bad for the shortest team in the tournament, one with 10 losses that came out of its district tournament as the fifth seed. Heart makes up for all of that and the Broncos are one game away from playing for a state championship.

“My dad was my mentor and my coach growing up. He loved his sports. He was a mailman so everybody in town pretty much knew him. He passed away Dec. 14 four games into our season and the kids dedicated their season to his memory,” Arlt said. “I teach the kids at school. I’m their coach and they play hard for me. It means a lot to me and I’m more than proud of them. A lot of things are lining up for us and we’re one game away from playing for a state championship.”

Thursday night’s game turned into a real slugfest down the stretch. Life Christian actually outscored Lind-Ritzville/Sprague 24-23 in the final eight minutes. But the Broncos clung to a four-point lead with less than 10 seconds remaining. Roettger and Dylan Becker made key free throws to seal the victory.

“When you get down to those pressure situations, you just have to stay calm,” said Saetre, who was 4 of 11 from 3-point range. “We knew they had to foul us to get the ball back, so as long as we played smart and made our free throws we were in good shape.”

Said Becker, “I thought the key tonight was fundamentals,” the 6-foot senior said. “We’re not the biggest team here, so we have to rely on fundamentals and boxing out. This feels good because no one had us picked to go any further than this game tonight. We got this victory and it’s one step closer to getting to the championship game. Either way you look at it, it’s big for us … it’s big for us.”

They’re a small town, three of ‘em actually, playing with a big heart. They’re also playing for Tom Arlt and everybody who believes the underdog can have his day.

“Everybody’s been playing for coach’s dad all year. He’s a big part of Ritzville basketball,” Bercker said. “He came to pretty much every game and supported the team as much as he could. We’re doing everything we can to play in his memory.”

For nine seniors, this will be the last go-round and they’re making the journey together. They go into Friday night’s semifinal on a six-game winning streak. As long as they play together and stay together they stand a good a chance as any. “This game means a lot when you have nine seniors in your top 10 players. That experience has helped us a lot over the last month,” Arlt said. “We’re a small-town eastern Washington school playing in the Spokane Arena, so we’re going to have a lot of fans here. We played a west side team tonight. We’ll play another west side team tomorrow (Mossyrock). Not too long ago we were the fifth seed in our district and now we’re one game away from playing for a state championship.”

Tom Arlt would be proud.