The Tualatin girls basketball team has won two straight league titles, and with a combination of key contributors to both of those teams and an influx of new talent, the Timberwolves are aiming higher this year.
“We’ve had really good teams over the last two years,” Head Coach Wes Pappas said. “This one has a higher ceiling. We have really high ambitions. We want another league title, of course, but we really want to pursue a state title this year, and I think we have the firepower to do it.”
The team’s lone senior is Jordyn Smith, who is in her second year on the team after transferring from Tigard before last year. In her first year at Tualatin, Smith was named to the first team for the All-Three Rivers League team.
The Timberwolves ended up leaning on Smith heavily in her first year on the team thanks to some season-ending injuries to key players. Smith stepped up last year, and is a focal point for the team on both ends of the floor again this year, Pappas said.
“Jordyn is just doing a great job. She is just so good in terms of toughness and rebounding ability,” he said. “She really is the key to our zone. She clogs up the middle and really has got a great first step.”
Smith and the Timberwolves are off to a strong start as of our press deadline. They are 3-0 with 30-plus-point wins against South Salem and West Salem, and a 49-37 win against Willamette, which was the No. 3-ranked team in the state at the time of that game.
Tualatin’s other first-team selection for the all-league team last year was Alex Padilla, one of four juniors on the team along with Ries Miadich, Maaya Lucas, and Kylie Weaver. All four are expected to see the court quite a bit this year, and all are going to play important roles in running Pappas’ zone defense, which has made Tualatin a perennial defensive powerhouse in the state,
“This is a system that takes a little while to learn where you continue to perfect it,” Pappas said. “Jordan now has a much better understanding of what she’s supposed to do in it. Kids like Alex and Maya are killing it. Them and Ries all have this kind of experience now of a couple years in the system, and so you do get much better.”
Pappas has also been impressed with how quickly his younger players are picking up the defensive scheme. The Timberwolves have three freshmen: Love Lei Best, Kendall Dawkins, and Bella Amens.
“They are tough and they are just great athletes, so they are very willing defenders,” Pappas said.
Best and Dawkins are both starters and Amens is one of the first players off the bench so far this season. Pappas said they might be the best freshman class he has had as a coach, and they’re a reason he’s so high on the team’s potential this season.
A few of the younger players on last year’s team also saw a bit more playing time thanks to season-ending injuries to two players: Miadich, who broke her right wrist, and senior star Jaylyn Arosemena, who broke one of her ankles. Both were hurt fairly early into the season and missed league play and the playoffs.
“It was a confidence boost for us to win league without two first-team all-league kids that were out for all of league play,” Pappas said. “That was that was pretty awesome, and we were able to rely on our defense and some kids off the bench.”
Arosemena graduated and is now playing at Western Washington, and Miadich is back in the starting lineup for Tualatin. She is one the team’s three captains along with Smith and Lucas, and Miadich was also selected as a team captain last year as a sophomore.
“She’s such a trooper, she’s always a max-effort, 100 percent kid,” Pappas said. “It’s always tough for a shooter to have a right wrist injury if you’re right-handed. But she’s shooting the ball well. It’s getting better and she’s getting her confidence back.”
However, Pappas is still disappointed at how the season turned out, with Tualatin losing in the second round of the playoffs, a round before returning to the Chiles Center for a second straight year. The Chiles Center at the University of Portland is home to the state playoffs from the quarterfinals through the state title game.
“I felt that we were a guaranteed Chiles Center team last year if we don’t have those two kids go down with the injuries,” he said. “That that one’s always going to stick in my craw a little bit.”
