‘The year of making history’: Life Christian boys, girls basketball teams both headed to Spokane for state

Alea Yun couldn’t have said it better.

“This is just the year of making history,” she said.

Life Christian’s girls basketball team had never before won a state tournament game. It did Saturday in convincing fashion, 67-29, over Orcas Island in the regional round of the 2B state tournament to punch its ticket to Spokane Arena next week.

Just like it had never before won a state title – in any sport – until Yun and many others on this basketball team did that in the fall with a 2B/1B state girls soccer championship.

Oh, and they’ll be accompanied in Spokane by the boys basketball team, which the school has never before happened that the school has sent both teams in the same year to state, according to WIAA records.

And Life Christian will be the only team in any of the state tournaments in the six classifications with one coaching at the helm of both its boys and girls basketball teams.

Did coach Mark Lovelady expect something like this?

“No, no no. No,” he said. “When you lose eight seniors on the boys team – we weren’t expected to do much. And on the girls side, I didn’t even know I was going to be coaching. So I didn’t have any goals for them. It was just about getting them running and keeping it simple.

“I’m super impressed with both of these teams. But at the beginning of the season, to be honest with you – to say both teams are going to state you would have had to convinced me of that.”

But here they are.

The girls won their game by running clock when they built a 40-point lead near the end of the third quarter.

And they’ve done this with a young core. Freshman point guard Jaelyn Turner scored a game-high 25 points, sophomore Landyn Lovelady, Mark’s sophomore daughter, scored 18 points and Alea Yun, a junior, had 15.

Landyn got to watch her brother, Luke, the reigning TNT All-Area first-team selection who is now playing at Point Loma Nazarene in California, when he played in Spokane each of the past two seasons before graduating last spring.

Now it’s her turn.

“It kind of feels unreal,” Landyn said. “I was watching my brother go along this whole journey. But to be able to play here in the same place and be able to have an opportunity to be at state, it feels unreal. I’m so excited.”

And she joined Yun on Life Christian’s state-title soccer team in the fall.

“Everyone doubted us,” said Yun, who said her father is from Seoul, South Korea, and played soccer there before moving to the U.S. “We just have confidence in ourselves that we can actually do this. A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, Life Christian, you’re a 2B school. You’re nobodies.’ But we put in the work. All summer and all offseason and all the house and times. It makes up for it.”

Life Christian’s boys team ran away in the second quarter in its loser-out regional round game to secure its third consecutive trip to Spokane.

Noah Robinson led them with 27 points, Omari Maulana scored 17 points with eight rebounds and seven assists and Eric Overgaard Jr. had 16 points.

Life Christian’s boys team will play at 9 p.m. Wednesday in a loser-out game against Brewster. While the Life Christian girls team plays at 2 p.m. Wednesday against La Conner in a loser-out game.

This story was originally published February 25, 2018 at 1:24 AM with the headline "‘The year of making history’: Life Christian boys, girls basketball teams both headed to Spokane for state."