With both smiles and tears, the Mountlake Terrace Hawks closed out their 2021-2022 basketball season on Saturday — the final day of the WIAA 3A Boys State Basketball Tournament – succumbing to a highly regarded Garfield Bulldogs squad 80-56 but picking up a new piece of hardware for the school’s athletic department trophy case.

The Hawks were presented the sixth-in-state trophy after the tournament contest at the Tacoma Dome.

The sixth-place finish is just the fifth time in school history and the first since 2013 that a Hawks’ basketball team — boys or girls — has earned a state trophy .

Placing at state was the final accomplishment of many for this year’s squad, including both on-the-court achievements and of team goals set early in the season.

“At the end of the day, the kids were the top Wesco (league) team, they won the Northwest (District 1) District, they got into the state tournament, and our last goal — goal number eight — (was) to play on Saturday, March 5,” noted Terrace Coach Nalin Sood. “How lucky am I to be able to coach these guys.”

The Hawks, the No. 9 seed in the state tourney, went 2-2 in the Tacoma Dome, defeating No. 6 seed Gig Harbor and No. 8 seed Timberline, falling to No. 7 seed Mt. Spokane and the tourney’s No. 1 seed Garfield. The Bulldogs were relegated to the consolation bracket after suffering a heartbreaking overtime loss to No. 2 seed Auburn earlier in the tournament.

In Saturday’s 4th/6th place tourney game against the Hawks, Garfield showed just why they had originally been given the tournament’s No.1 seeding.

“They’re as good a team as any team in the state, any classification,” Sood said.

Leading 38-26 at halftime, the Bulldogs sealed Saturday’s victory by opening the second half on a 17-2 run. The team shot 68% from the field (17-of-25) in the second half to bury the Hawks. The 80 total points scored by Garfield was the most yielded by Terrace this season.

“They play as a team, they don’t play selfish — that’s a credit to Coach (JayVon) Nickens that he gets them to buy-in to that,” Sood said of Garfield. “They play the right way. I thought that (what) they did today, they didn’t have a lot of weaknesses. Maybe you could find a team’s weaknesses or something that’s not their strength and exploit that a little bit — we weren’t able to do that.”

The Bulldogs were led in scoring by senior Raphael Justice with 15 points; Koren Johnson and Jaylin Stewart each added 14 points.

Terrace stayed close to Garfield through some of the first half, even holding slim one-point leads over the Bulldogs four times in the first quarter. But a 20-4 spurt pushed Garfield ahead 35-20 with 1:17 to go in the second quarter, and Terrace was never able to challenge for the lead again.

On Saturday, the Hawks had their weakest shooting performance of any of their four tournament games — Terrace shot just 35% from the field (21-of-60) against the bigger and quicker Bulldogs. 

Going into the contest, Sood had hoped his squad could find some success against Garfield with the fast break.

“Some things we wanted to address — with some run outs and some transition baskets — we weren’t great at, but that’s a credit to them,” Sood explained. “This is 100% credit to Garfield and I’m not going to knock what our kids did or how they played today.”

For the third time in the state tourney, sophomore Zaveon Jones led the Hawks in scoring with 19 points; senior Jeffrey Anyimah scored 16 points.

Saturday’s game was the final time six seniors donned the Hawks’ uniform: Anyimah, Adison Mattix, Emmanuel Jorga, Mason Towne and brothers Vito and Tigran Mkrthchyan. For Vito, finishing his high school career playing for Terrace at the Tacoma Dome was special.

“It means everything,” Vito said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to with any other program … I just wanted to get back on the big stage again and see what we could do.”

Tigran reflected on how his senior year with the Hawks pushed him both physically and mentally.

“Individually there was a lot of ups and downs in my season but I just came into practice every day and worked hard, worked out after practice,” he stated. “I always had to be ready when my number was called.”

After a long postgame session with his players in the locker room, Sood reflected on the season as a whole.

“The narration of this season can’t be tinged by this game today,” he said after the loss to Garfield. “The story of this season was written over the past four months. And I can’t even put it into words. I’m just fortunate to work with these guys.”

The omicron variant of COVID-19 was still in its infancy when practices for the 2021-2022 season began last November. But its growth and subsequent COVID protocols put into place rocked the winter season of high school sports, especially in late December and throughout the month of January.

“We started the year off with COVID — are we going to have a game? Postponements, cancellations, 13 kids having to go into quarantine, 26 days without a game, just uncertainty,” Sood recalled from the season. 

“And no matter how I phrase it or mask it, it weighs on kids,” Sood continued while trying to hold back tears. “And how these kids handled it — anyone that says we need to worry about the future, they’re not around kids. I am so confident now about our future with kids like this. If they can deal with what they dealt with this season and outside the gymnasium and outside of the classroom and also inside — if they can deal with stuff like this, our future’s as bright as ever.”

“I think people that say that might not know kids,” Sood added. “I know kids. I just spent four months and I spend everyday being around these guys and it’s just remarkable how they handled it.”

Sood finished with a prognostication of what he’ll be doing this spring and summer now that the 2021-2022 season is over.

“I’d be doing my yard work — pulling weeds and doing my yard — and having an offseason just (thinking) how lucky am I to work with these guys and work with the (basketball) staff,” Sood concluded.

To view the entire 2022 WIAA 3A Boys State Basketball Tournament bracket, click www.wpanetwork.com/wiaa/brackets/tournament.php?act=view&tournament_id=3466. 

Prep Boys Basketball: Garfield vs. Mountlake Terrace, March 5 (WIAA 3A Boys State Basketball Tournament 4th/6th place game)

Garfield 17 21 27 15 — 80

Terrace 16 10 11 19 — 56

Mountlake Terrace individual scoring: Zaveon Jones 19, Jeffrey Anyimah 16,Jaxon Dubiel 7, Vito Mkrtychyan 6, Chris Meegan 5, Tigran Mkrtychan 2, Adison Mattix 1, Don Brown, Mason Towne, Emmanuel Jorga, Andrew Delgadillo

Garfield individual scoring: Raphael Justice 15, Koren Johnson 14, Jaylin Stewart 14, Kenzel Massey 9, Legend Smiley 7, Tremaine Guidry 4, Jazel Brown 4, Yemoni Howel 4, Emmett Marquardt 4, Lemarion Fiddler 3, Jamaica Myres 2, Maliki Winston

Records: Mountlake Terrace 20-4; Garfield 24-1

Mountlake Terrace next game: 2021-2022 season completed (6th place in state 3A)

Mountlake Terrace state trophies history (boys basketball):

State champions, 1976-1977

3rd place, 2004-2005

4th place, 2012-2013

5th place, 1988-1989

6th place, 2021-2022

— By Doug Petrowski