By Christina Corrales-Toynewcastle@isspress.com

Going in to the Patri-ots’ Jan. 10 meet against Mount Si, Liberty High School gymnastics coach Lori Copenhaver knew it would be an uphill battle.

The relatively short-in-numbers Liberty squad failed to match Mount Si’s strong depth, falling to the Wildcats, 161.05-127.15.

“It was kind of expected, but I think the girls did really well,” Copenhaver said.

Despite the loss, Co-penhaver said she was encouraged by what she saw out of her gymnasts, especially seniors Tia Riley and Shawna Sarrett.

“Tia actually had prob-ably her best meet so far this year,” she said.

Riley took second place on the vault with a score of 8.65, and placed third overall with a score of 31.65. Sarrett placed sev-enth overall with a score of 29.9.

It was the Patriots’ first meet since the holiday break, and with a strong Mount Si team coming up, Copenhaver said it was important to get her gym-nasts refocused as they returned to school.

“You’ve just got to work on keeping the

girls focused during the week, because we re-ally don’t have a lot of depth,” she said. “It was kind of a better week because they knew who they were going against and so they worked harder.”

Mount Si’s depth was on clear display, where the Wildcats dominated every event, earning several top-10 finishers in each category.

While Sarrett and Riley were the only Patriots to place in the overall top 10, Liberty gymnasts Helena Frestadius and Candace Baltazar, just missed it. Frestadius placed 11th overall, while Baltazar placed 12th.

“We had some girls that didn’t place that also did awesome, compared to previous meets,” Copen-haver said. “So I’m really proud, even the girls that didn’t get their name called.”

As the season winds to a close, with just two meets left until the conference

championships, Copenhav-er said Liberty’s focus will be to improve every meet.

“Our expectations are to improve every meet, so I’m hoping that we continue to do so,” she said. “Bars have been

one of our weaker events, and we are getting more girls to try bars, and we have some girls that have a lot of potential on vault, so we’re hoping to get more girls involved on that too.”

SPORTS WednesdayJanuary 16, 2013B4

B4

BY GREG FARRAR

Elise Bugge, Issaquah High School sophomore, is in a zone of happiness as she works on her uneven bars routine Jan. 10 during the Eagles’ gymnastics meet against Roosevelt.

BY CHRISTINA CORRALES-TOY

Shawna Sarrett, Liberty High School senior, poses on the bal-ance beam, earning a score of 7.0 on Jan. 10 against Mount Si.

CONTRIBUTED

Dallas Cross (left) and Ward Harris, one of his longtime fish-ing companions, catch kokanee on Lake Sammamish for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to tag with radio trans-mitters for tracking their activity.

By Dallas Cross

It isn’t just about fishing; it never was. Being with family and friends in the fields and forests where streams run is enough.

That there are still fish in some streams is testa-ment to the meager respect we have given to nature. In our busy ways, we tend only small effort toward preserving or enhancing the environment that gives us beauty, feeds us and quenches our thirst.

Because of our priori-ties for work and space for man, we diminish the ability of natural waters to sustain us. The fish in them then become the harbingers of our own future health and nourishment. When they are threatened and disappear, we have to work even harder to provide our-selves with healthy water.

It was for these rea-sons I volunteered, almost five years ago, to write a monthly column for The Is-saquah Press and affiliated weekly newspapers. My pay was simply that I might help readers enhance their fishing experience, and to become aware of envi-ronmental problems that would challenge this right as given by Congress in one of the first laws it passed. That was reward enough.

I am moving out of Wash-ington state back to near where I first stepped into a stream with my father and mother at my side. Thus, this is my final column for the newspapers that were kind enough to give me a journalistic platform. In

departing, I leave my read-ers with a poetic painting of what I hope to continue to enjoy — now in Idaho.

‘Releasing’Upstream, downstream the banks all aboundWith grasses, bushes, trees in surround,Sun shining, wind moving clouds overhead,Dances of ripples o’er mossy bed. Wading cold waters cleans out one’s thoughtOf query from matters worldly wrought,Swirl here, a race there, gurgles abound,Was that a splash? Better look around. Ripple ring tells historical sip,A well-thrown fly may induce a nip,Too hard a cast away from this view,I watch moss glissade over my shoe. Rocks in water above a deep poolCrawl with bug-nymphs hiding from the school,Line in the air, loop danc-ing as thrown,Chasing fly lightly parting the foam. Some slack to the pull, rod tip drifts down,Imitator pretending to drown,What view is seen by fly passing by?I extend my sight through

FISH JOURNAL

A fishing companion casts final farewell

Liberty stumbles against Mount SiUP NEXT

Liberty vs. Mercer Island47 p.m. Jan. 174Interlake High School416245 N.E. 24th St., Bellevue

By John Leggettip-sports@isspress.com

The Jan. 11 basketball game being hosted by the KingCo 4A Crown Division-leading 8-1 Skyline girl cagers, which featured win-less Garfield as the guests, was like a train wreck. As a hoop humanitarian you wanted to look away, but morbid curiosity prevented you from doing so.

The lopsided result of the mismatch was a 67-17 onslaught in favor of the Skyline girls in the green-and-white uniforms, and the silver lining in the massacre was the fact that every single player on the Skyline bench got plenty of minutes on the hardwood.

Oddly enough, it was Garfield that broke the scoring ice in the opening moments of the one-sided affair, as the Bulldogs’ de-mure 5-foot, 2-inch fresh-man point guard, Aireonna Davis, dribbled down the baseline and fired up a shot to register the encoun-ter’s first bucket, furnish-

ing a 2-0 advantage for the visitors, three minutes into the tilt.

Unfortunately for Bulldog girls, that early deuce was the only point production the Garfield contingent could muster in the entire initial frame, as by the end of the opening eight min-utes, Skyline had dashed out to a 17-2 advantage and a 38-6 upper hand by intermission. The game’s leading scorer was Sky-line’s stable 5-foot, 8-inch sophomore wing, Stella Mazzaferro, who lit up the scoreboard with 14 points for an evening’s work.

The huge lead at half-time equated to an early exit for most of Skyline’s

Skyline crushes winless Garfield

UP NEXTInglemoor at Skyline46 p.m. Jan. 164Skyline High School41122 228th Ave. S.E.

See FAREWELL, Page B5

By John Leggettip-sports@isspress.com

The Issaquah High gymnastics squad made the most of its only home appearance of the regular season Jan. 10 to trim the visiting Roosevelt contin-gent, 150-139.

The gymnasts stepped up on Senior Night, and dedicating their endeav-ors to the late Bob Taylor, longtime sports editor for

The Issaquah Press and a gymnastics enthusiast.

Issaquah junior standout Rebecca Chinn turned in solid performances in the vault and the beam events with a pair of bronzes, recording a tandem of 8.55 points.

Meanwhile, Issaquah junior gymnasts Amanda Dumont and Elise Bugge finished in the top 10 in the vault and floor exer-cises.

Dumont and freshman teammate Michaela Knoll-man managed to appear among the list of leaders in their bar, beam and floor efforts.

The more experienced Dumont finished fifth on the bars and ninth on the beam with respec-tive scores of 7.05 and 7.6, while her promis-

ing younger teammate, Knollman, earned ninth-place accolades in the bar competition (6.45), 10th on the beam (7.5) and came through with a set of 19th place finishes in the vault (7.95) and floor (7.40) events.

Also contributing to the narrow victory over the Roughriders was junior Lexi Fleek, who finished 16th in the all-around scoring with a 27.00, by tying for 21st places in the vault and the beam exercises, in addition to nailing down 18th place in the floor exercises (7.7) and notching a 22nd place on the bars (5.0).

UP NEXTIssaquah vs. Redmond47 p.m. Jan. 174Bothell High School49130 180th Street N.E.

HOME SWEET HOME

Girls dedicate lone home meet to Bob Taylor

See SKYLINE, Page B5

THE ISSAQUAH PRESSTHE ISSAQUAH PRESSTHE ISSAQUAH PRESS