Peninsula girls basketball ready to defend league title with new leaders

Two seasons ago, first-year coach Mike Schick took his team into enemy territory for the first time to take on the crosstown rival Gig Harbor Tides.

It didn’t go exactly as planned.

The Seahawks were 5-0 and were averaging nearly 65 points per game up to that point. Yet in Schick’s first go-around with a Tides team that was dubbed unbeatable, Peninsula scored just 30 points, and allowed 60.

“We walked into Gig Harbor’s place and got smacked,” said Schick, Peninsula’s coach since 2017. “I was like, ‘This is ridiculous. This will never happen again.’”

Since then, it hasn’t.

Despite losing that season’s rematch by six, Peninsula would go on to take two of three from the Tides last year, including the regular season finale, which decided the 3A SSC crown.

With that 51-49 win, the Seahawks clinched a league title before finishing second in the district.

“It was a progression of ‘We can play with these girls’ to ‘We can beat these girls’ to ‘We should be able to beat these girls,’” Schick said. “We wound up getting to play them three times last year which was great, because [we were] two of the top ten teams in state. It was just great basketball, especially in those moments the kids will remember for their entire lives.”

Expect the Seahawks to look a lot different this year, with the primary difference being the loss of Belle Frazier, who now plays at Portland State University.

For the extent of her high school playing career, Frazier was “Miss Do-It-All” for the Seahawks program, according to Schick, and established a program that future teams can build on.

Schick even compared Frazier to a former NBA Defensive Player of the Year.

“She did everything, one through five,” Schick said. “She was like our Draymond Green. She could handle the ball. She could break the press. She could shoot the three. She could post up. She could guard the five. She was that swiss-army knife for us.”

With Frazier departed, the Seahawks look to a lead-by-committee approach, with a mix of veteran leadership and two stellar guards.

Last year, Piper Bauer and Linsey Lovrovich earned second team all-league honors as sophomores.

“Those two have the absolute world in their hands in the future,” Schick said. “I expect both of them to be first-team this year. I expect both of them to be fighting each other with one or two other girls to be MVP of the league.”

And as the new faces of the Peninsula program, both Bauer and Lovrovich have strong leadership qualities, according to Schick.

“[Piper] just lives, breathes and eats basketball,” Schick said. “That’s what she loves to do. She’s an absolute purist.

“[Linsey is] one of the most special athletes I’ve been able to coach. She can absolutely take over a game any way she wants to.”

But recent success brings the tough task of dealing with teams that want nothing more than to take down the league’s best.

“It’s always being different being the hunted instead of the hunter,” Schick said. “Now, making a name for ourselves and having success over the last two years … we’re not able to fly under the radar anymore. Everybody knows who we are and what we’re all about. We’ve got to show up every night.”

And with a new-look team and younger players ready to step up in the absence of Belle Frazier, what’s the blueprint for success for Peninsula?

“We’re going to press, press, press,” Schick said. “We’ve got a lot of girls that can contribute and a lot of girls are ready to step up. … We’re going to go up-tempo and just try to wear teams down as much as possible.”

This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 6:00 AM.