Banner says it all for improved Rainier girls basketball team: ‘Small town, big dreams’

At first glance, Rainier High School’s girls basketball season looks like a miracle.

Last season, the Mountaineers struggled to a 2-18 record. Most of the losses weren’t close.

With a new coach, Rainier alumnus Brandon Eygabroad, coming in and the team expected to rely on a group of freshman to carry the scoring load, the degree of improvement that could be expected this season was a huge question mark.

That was the view from the outside.

In the Mountaineers’ modern 1,800-seat gymnasium, largest in the Class 2B Central League, hangs a banner reading, “Small town, big dreams.”

But, when Rainier (21-2) completely flipped the script on its recent past to grab the No. 8 seed in the WIAA’s RPI rankings — guaranteeing a trip to the Spokane Arena next week, no matter the outcome this weekend’s state regional game against top-seeded Wahkiakum — no one inside the building saw it as a dream come true.

It was more the result of planning and practice that took hold last summer.

“I definitely wanted to make it to state,” said freshman guard Faith Boesch, whose mother and three aunts played for Rainier. “If we worked hard and blended together as a team, I thought we could make it.”

Eygabroad wasted no time putting big goals in front of his team of seven freshmen, one sophomore and just five upperclassmen.

“Our goal from the beginning was to make the state tournament,” he said. “I really wanted to put winning in these girls’ minds.”

The only fear, as the team assembled for summer ball, was that the mix of youth and veterans could sour.

“We were kind of scared the freshmen would come in cocky, acting like they owned the court,” senior forward Sandra Miles said. “After we started playing with them, we realized they were about the team. We got into a groove and I thought, ‘This is fun. We’re actually getting things done.’ ”

Kaeley Schultz, a 5-foot-10 freshman forward who leads the team in scoring averaging nearly 20 points per game, had the opposite worry.

She, Boesch and most of the other five freshman had played together since fourth grade. They’d watched the varsity for the past few years, and knew they could play a role in reviving the Mountaineers, but wondered how they’d be accepted.

“The upperclassmen were welcoming, they trusted me,” she said. “They let me come in and do what I could do to help the team.”

Eygabroad appreciates his players’ team-first nature.

“There are sacrifices being made,” he said. “There are freshman starting over seniors, juniors who sit. It’s a matter of what does it take for us to get to the top.”

Once the high school season started in earnest, two games proved pivotal.

After an opening rout of Northwest Christian of Lacey, Rainier hosted Tenino, another local team on the brink of having one of its best seasons in recent years. The Beavers got out to a 12-point lead in the third quarter, but the Mountaineers didn’t fold and rallied for a 39-37 victory.

“That was when we showed things were changing, that we’re going to compete and we’re going to succeed,” Schultz said.

“We played as a team in a tight game,” Boesch said. “We didn’t choke. We didn’t freak out and try to play hero ball.”

Eygabroad also cited the Tenino game as a turning point.

“Past Rainier teams, there’d be times when they might check out, like, ‘We’re not winning this one.’ This team has never done that,” he said. “Early in the season there were three or four times we got down by double digits and came back to win.”

One time that didn’t happen was in the 2B Central opener against eventual champion Wahkiakum. The Mules blew out the then-undefeated Mountaineers, 82-46, handing them their only defeat until a Southwest District tournament loss to Willapa Valley.

“We hadn’t played anybody with their high intensity,” Miles said. “It was like hitting a brick wall. Now we’ve gotten some pegs into the wall, and we can climb up a little higher.”

“We didn’t know what we were walking into,” Eygabroad said. “We’d played them close in the summer, but summer ball is different. We got out there and they were going at a different speed than us.

“Mentally, we’re more prepared now. We’ve been through the ringer.”

Since the game Saturday serves only to bracket the final 12 teams headed to Spokane, the Mountaineers will reach a cherished goal no matter what.

Boesch has a picture of the Spokane Arena taped to her mirror at home with the legend, “Great teams play in great places.”

“It’s a reality check for us,” Schultz said. “It tells us this is where we belong.”

Eygabroad sees his team favored to make at least a few more trips across the state.

“They’re ceiling is as high as they want to take it,” he said. “They’re a hard-working group. They get into the gym whether I’m there or not. They’re going to get faster, they’re going to get stronger.”

This story was originally published February 21, 2019 at 4:42 PM.