Seeing double? White River girls basketball is a family atmosphere, ‘weird twin stuff’ included

If the White River High School girls basketball team’s quick passing and flurry of outside shooting leaves opponents seeing double, well, that’s understandable.

But there’s another reason why defenders may need to take a second look when facing the Hornets attack.

Two sets of twins play on the White River girls basketball team, and they are all about the same height, and they all have blond hair and blue eyes.

Sofia and Georgia Lavinder are sisters, and twins, and specialize in hitting 3-pointers.

Then there’s Emma and Megan Cash, who are also twins and like to hit jumpers.

Fourth-ranked White River even has another player, freshman Taylor Schmidtke, who is also a twin, but her sister Tori isn’t on the basketball team.

The Cash and Lavinder sisters are all seniors, which makes this a bittersweet season for coach and athletic director Chris Gibson.

“They are amazing kids. They are great teammates; they’re unselfish,” said Gibson who is in his 21st year of leading the Hornets. “And I think that more important than them being sisters, and twins, is that they’re such amazing teammates.

“And they do the weird twin stuff. They reach over and grab the water bottle at the same time, they talk at the same time and they do some of these weird things and we all look at each other and we’re like, ‘Did they just do that?’ But I think they’re such a huge part of our family atmosphere.”

On a recent road trip to Lynden the twins all rode together in the same van and stopped at a Dairy Queen. When they went up to order the cashier thought they were quadruplets.

“So we were trying to explain and I stood by Sof and was like, ‘No, this is my twin, this is her twin’ (referring to Megan and Emma),” Georgia said. “But the guy did not get it so we just got our food.”

On the court, the look-a-likes have had a bit of fun as well.

And maybe this is a slight advantage?

“We always try to do our hair different we obviously have different numbers but teams get really confused and they’re like, ‘Which one’s which?’ And they don’t know who is who,” Megan said. “They’ll both end up on her (Emma) and none of them will be on me because they think they have the same person.”

Georgia holds the school record for most 3-pointers in a game with 10, a mark she set last year. Sofia is a key leader for the Hornets offensively as well.

“They have left their footprint on this program,” Gibson said about the Lavinder twins. “What I love about them is that they’re really quiet but they have such a will to win, and that carries over to their teammates. They’re really gritty and they are so competitive.”

Emma and Megan bring a lot to the court as well for the Hornets.

“The Cashes, they know every play, they know where they are supposed to be and they help the young players,” Gibson said. “I joke with them that they are coaches.”

One time during the summer, White River was hosting a tournament and had multiple games going on at the same time. Gibson went to go start another game and got delayed recording scores. He realized he was late to start his own team’s game.

“I come running back into the gym and the game is already started. Megan’s got the board out, the coaching board, and she’s already got a starting five,” Gibson said. “She’s already got us in the defense, the offense, she’s got it all taken care of.”

This last summer the Hornets also competed at the San Diego Classic and won seven straight games over four days to capture the championship trophy.

Gibson said it was the first time, after 19 tries, that White River accomplished the feat.

White River is 13-4 a year after reaching the 2A state quarterfinals and leads the 2A SPSL Mountain with a 10-0 record. It graduated its all-time career leading scorer in Kendall Bird, who is now at the University of San Diego (she’s played in all 16 of their games so far).

But here the Hornets are, back as a team to beat. Their losses so far are to No. 1 (1A) Lynden Christian, No. 1 (2A) W.F. West, 3A Bishop Blanchet and 3A Ferndale.

“Families build programs and I’m so fortunate to have had all these kids as families in my programs,” Gibson said. He added that because older siblings have gone through the program before, the younger ones know what to expect.

“We outwork everybody and we’re disciplined,” Gibson said.

This story was originally published January 18, 2018 at 6:26 AM with the headline "Seeing double? White River girls basketball is a family atmosphere, ‘weird twin stuff’ included."