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During La Conner High School’s NW2B football game at Coupeville Friday night a disoriented deer sauntered onto the field. But Bambi had nothing to fear. It was a young and injury-riddled Braves team that was in Coupeville’s crosshairs instead. The host Wolves (1-2), paced by four long touchdowns by Scott Hilborn, extended La Conner’s scoreless streak to three games with a convincing 51-0 league triumph. Hillborn scored on a 48-yard option pitch in the first period, returned a punt 51 yards in the second quarter for a TD and reached paydi...
The chemistry is there, but a young La Conner High girls’ soccer team still came up on the short end of the equation in a key NW2B match with Friday Harbor Sept. 22. The hosts fell 7-1 to the Lady Wolverines, averting a shutout thanks to a goal by senior captain Delaney Cobbs, her second of the campaign thus far. Cobbs and Baylee Smith had found the net when La Conner was edged 4-2 in its Sept. 16 season opener at Coupeville. But La Conner had trouble keeping the score close in its home debut opposite Friday Harbor (1-1 in league, 1-3 o...
There was no saving Grace in Marysville Friday. The La Conner High School boys' soccer team saw to that. The Braves won their first match of the young season with an impressive 4-0 triumph over Grace Academy, helping take the sting out of close losses to NW2B foes Friday Harbor and Mount Vernon Christian that opened the fall campaign. Cameron Burks, Isa Rojas-Gonzales, Thomas Kitchen and Christian Fix – all among a core of key Braves returnees – scored goals for the victors. Mason Wilson assisted on two scores, while Samuel...
Close losses can be either frustrating or encouraging. The latter was the case for the La Conner High girls’ soccer team at Coupeville last Wednesday. La Conner fell 4-2 in its season debut Sept. 15 despite goals by freshman Baylee Smith and senior Delaney Cobbs and strong play from frosh goalkeeper Odessa Bates. “Overall, I felt good about the match,” La Conner head coach Christian Warman said afterward. “It wasn’t perfect, but I believe we were able to prove that we are competitors.” Smith scored La Conner’s first goal of the season off a...
They say it is an ill wind that blows no good. If that’s the case, conditions at Whittaker Field Friday were plenty bad as heavy rain, fierce winds and a partial power outage made for an uncomfortable night of high school football. And that was just in the stands. Down on the field, a young La Conner High football team suffered a 61-0 blowout loss to perennial NW2B title contender Friday Harbor. The Wolverines (1-2), who opted out of last spring’s modified grid season due to a COVID-19 surge in the San Juan Islands, stormed past a La Con...
Idled by the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago, the two-time defending state 2B champion La Conner High School volleyball team couldn’t wait to get back in the gym this fall. And when that time came last week, the Lady Braves got back to business by making short work of 2A foe Sehome and NW2B rival Darrington with twin straight-sets victories to open the 2021 net campaign. Ellie Marble delivered 20 kills and Emma Keller fueled the attack with 30 assists to lead a 25-11, 25-6, 25-20 rout of Sehome last Tuesday at Landy James Gym. Marble added 15 k...
The Sultan Turks shut out La Conner 21-0 in non-league football action at Whittaker Field Friday night. But despite the zero on the scoreboard, first-year Braves head coach Charlie Edwards said all wasn’t lost for his young club in their home test with an undefeated 1A Emerald Sound Conference foe that was coming off a 50-42 win over Evergreen of Seattle the week before. “It was a hard-fought game,” Edwards told the Weekly News afterward. “Our young players stepped up and did great. “We los...
After more than a year of remote and hybrid learning, La Conner schools resumed in-person instruction last week by helping students – though still masked and socially distanced due to COVID-19 – get back into a normal campus routine. To do so, school staff did plenty of summer homework prior to welcoming pupils for last Wednesday’s initial half-day of classes. (Thursday was the first full day of instruction for Grades 1-12, with kindergartners having started yesterday). At the elementary school, a good portion of that homework i...
Having turned the page on the Labor Day holiday, La Conner High sports teams are poised to get down to business this week with the return of their regular fall sports schedules. The La Conner High volleyball team, which won State 2B crowns in 2018 and 2019 and did not lose a single set during last spring’s modified season, opened their current schedule with a non-conference home match opposite 2A Sehome Tuesday night. “Filling a non-league schedule with larger schools will help our girls to improve and play at a higher level,” La Conner head vo...
La Conner teachers welcome students back to class today, a return to full-time in-person instruction for the first time since March 2020. But planning for the Sept. 1 back to school date has been weeks in the making, including a series of summer budget workshops and hearings capped by passage in late July of a balanced $14 million general fund budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year. The school district anticipates $14,070,000 in revenues and expenditures of $14,022,000 during the ’21-’w22 year. The budget was approved during a July 26 hybrid sch...
The countdown is on for the start of school, meaning numbers are now much on the minds of La Conner students, teachers and administrators. That’s especially the case as the La Conner School District begins developing a new math curriculum during the 2021-22 academic year, Superintendent Will Nelson told board members at their nearly two-hour hybrid meeting Aug. 23. His confirmation of the district’s emphasis on math squared nicely with the school panel’s emerging road map for short-term and long-range district goals. “I’d love to see a focus on...
Calling the La Conner High School girls’ soccer team a work in progress is a compliment Lady Braves players and head coach Christian Warman accept with pride. That’s because the retooled roster has taken a blue-collar, hard-working approach to preseason workouts. And the result, according to Warman, is steady progress made leading up to the team’s Sept. 16 conference opener at Coupeville. “Preseason practices have been going fantastic,” Warman told the Weekly News Tuesday. “Our captains worked very hard in the off-season to keep this team t...
Rachel Cram has focused on local history this year, developing an in-depth anecdotal history and virtual tour of landmark La Conner downtown buildings. The La Conner High senior is also eyeing the future – her future. Cram, a 5’6” guard, has signed a letter of intent to attend and play basketball next year at Carroll College, a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) school in Helena, Montana that boasts a strong women’s hoops tradition. The Fighting Saints won Front...
It seems like yesterday that the surprising La Conner High football team was securing an NW2B title with a season-ending four-game winning streak after three straight single victory years. And, in a way, it was yesterday as the upstart Braves and their league foes shifted traditional fall schedules to spring in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet much has changed in just four months. First-year La Conner head coach Jeff Scoma stepped down in June to lead the 3A Stanwood High grid program and has been replaced at the Braves helm by defensive...
On a fundamental level this preseason is no different for the La Conner High School volleyball team than any other during the 29-year tenure of hall of fame head coach Suzanne Marble. In other ways, however, it is a far different vibe now than last August. The team, which captured the 2018 and 2019 state 2B net crowns, is looking forward to a full fall season after having been limited to a short spring campaign due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “This year more than ever has been the season we have all looked forward to the most,” Marble told the...
New La Conner School Superintendent Will Nelson cannot stress enough the value of doing one’s homework. That goes for him as well as the nearly 600 students he and school district staff will greet this fall as La Conner transitions from on-line and hybrid instructional models employed last year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. School board members chose Nelson this past spring following a rigorous selection process to succeed Rich Stewart as the district’s lead administrator. Nelson had been director of equity and student success at Arl...
An abnormally dry summer here didn’t stop the Pacific Northwest Rain from descending on the Valley of the Sun. The Rain, an area girls’ travel team, took top honors in their high school age division of the recent 2021 Summer Sizzle basketball tournament in Phoenix. Five La Conner High players – Juna Swanson, Rachel Cram, Sarah Cook, Ellie Marble and Josie Harper – were members of the tourney title winners, coached by former Mount Vernon High standout Tyler Amaya, who played col...
After sustaining heavy graduation losses from its NW2B football title team, La Conner High School will likely sport a youthful lineup this fall. It only made sense, then, that the school district would tap someone with past success developing young talent to succeed championship coach Jeff Scoma at the Braves helm when the season kicks off in a few weeks. Charlie Edwards, a longtime local youth sports coach and member of the Braves staff this past spring, has been promoted to fill the head coaching vacancy created when Scoma left La Conner in...
La Conner High will remain the home of the Braves. The school district’s board of trustees on Monday formally approved a unanimous Swinomish Tribal Senate resolution supporting retention of the Braves name for La Conner athletic and academic teams. Board president Susie Deyo joined members Amanda Bourgeois, John Agen and Lynette Cram in approving the Senate measure. Board member J.J. Wilbur, who also serves on the Swinomish Senate, abstained. The joint tribal-school district action is in accordance with state legislation passed earlier this y...
Reflection and projection. Those two apparent opposites intersected seamlessly during a five-hour La Conner School Board retreat session on the district campus July 19. Board members and new Superintendent Will Nelson reflected upon the past school year and how it was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic while discussing at length strategies for moving forward in terms of curriculum, budget and capital project goals. The retreat opened with a working lunch outdoors at the elementary school, then shifted inside to the board’s meeting room in the d...
C.J. Woods represents the latest branch off a decades old Friday Harbor basketball coaching tree dating to the late Dean Turnbull, for whom the gymnasium at the island school is named. Woods is now looking forward to setting down roots in La Conner as the new Braves head hoops coach. The Friday Harbor and University of Idaho alum was chosen to succeed Todd Hinderman, an award-winning science teacher at La Conner Schools who guided the Braves to a State 2B sweet sixteen berth in 2019 and whose up...
The two-time defending state champion La Conner High School volleyball team has had few close calls in recent seasons. But a clothes call is part of the Lady Braves game plan this summer. La Conner players are serving up a five-week “Clean Out Your Closets” campaign, collecting clean and sellable clothes and household textiles as part of an eco-friendly team fundraiser. They are asking participants to place gently-used items in bags to be collected between now and the third week in August. “We would like everything by Aug. 20,” said head co...
La Conner High School teacher Daniel Castillo believes in giving his students all the tools they need for success. And thanks to a major building trades organization, he will be able to fill their toolboxes when classes resume in the fall. The Building Industries Association of Washington recently presented Castillo a check for $2,500 to purchase tools for a new introduction to residential carpentry class at La Conner that will be part of the school district’s expanded career and technology e...
July 1 started a new month and was the day Will Nelson was sworn in as La Conner’s new school superintendent at a school board meeting called for that purpose. Board chair Susie Deyo called it a very special day, “obviously,” for the school district and for Nelson. She asked Lynette Cram, the longest serving board member, to administer the oath to Nelson. “Excited” was the word most repeated Nelson said he was “super excited to be a part of the community here. I am excited to start the journey...
Recent La Conner High School graduates MacQuaid Hiller and Avery Sloniker enjoyed one last hurrah last week as they closed out their school careers here before taking the next step on their life’s journey. Hiller and Sloniker, graduated June 18 in commencement exercises at Whittaker Field, but were recognized by the school board June 28 for serving as student representatives during a year marked by on-line and hybrid instructional models employed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Board members expressed appreciation for Hiller’s and Slonike...