Gig Harbor girls basketball prepares for second half of season, tough stretch in 3A SSC

Two weekends ago, Gig Harbor’s girls basketball team left their holiday tournament — the Cloud 9 Christmas Classic in Lynden — winless.

The plan wasn’t to lose. Neither was losing Baylee Young, the team’s leading scorer, to the flu before the first game.

But the message Coach Mike Guinasso took from the tournament was that his team has the ability to compete with the state’s best.

The Tides, currently with an undefeated record within the league and atop the SSC standings, share the top record with Capital and Yelm.

In the coming month, they’ll face each team twice.

And after coming off back-to-back losses at the weekend tournament in the back end of December, Guinasso believes the experience only helped the team prepare for a tough stretch of teams going forward.

“Over Christmas break, it was a good experience for us,” Guinasso said. “We had a couple of tough losses up in Bellingham, but it was a good growing experience for us going into that tougher part of the league, where we’re going to have (to play) other teams who are also undefeated. Having tough games going into those games … I think that was eye-opening for the girls.”

En route to their 4-0 league record, the Tides have shot well in the opening minutes, resulting in early leads. Not starting a game with a deficit is one way Guinasso believes the team has found success.

“We haven’t really been down in games to start,” Guinasso said. “One thing we’re big on is going on runs at the right time. Like going into halftime, or the start of a game, coming out of halftime and the end of the game… those are the four big times to go on a run.”

With Capital and Yelm on the upcoming schedule, the Tides hope to catapult themselves above the rest of the SSC. With a league title, Gig Harbor secures a first-round bye in the district tournament, which paves a much easier path to state.

Co-Captain Tate McReynolds knows the importance in the details when playing the league’s strongest.

“We’ve been able to work on the little things that matter when we play Capital and Yelm,” McReynolds said. “Find the open scorer, and ultimately just work together and get more comfortable as the games go on.”

Two players contributing to the Tides’ success are Baylee Young and Meghan Edwards. Young, in her freshman year, leads the Tides in scoring with roughly 17 points per game.

But it has been Edwards’ facilitation of the court from the point guard position that’s helped everyone score the basketball, says Guinasso.

“[Meghan’s] really stepped up,” Guinasso said. “She’s done a great job at facilitating for everybody. That’s what makes us so hard to beat. In our last win at home, you look at the scoresheet, and we had three kids in double digits (scoring). I think all but one kid scored, and the kid who didn’t score played great defense. It’s going to take more than (shutting) down one kid to beat us.”

That scoring distribution will be the key for the Tides as their schedule barrels toward the SSC powerhouses.

According to Guinasso, Gig Harbor needs more than one double-digit scorer. If that doesn’t happen, the Tides won’t win.

But if the team can share scoring responsibilities?

Guinasso believes that with a team like Gig Harbor — with such depth and togetherness — there will always be someone to pick up the slack in the event one player has an off-night.

“It happens. Kids have bad games, but another kid is here to pick up the slack,” Guinasso said. “If you have ten kids that can score, and one kid has a bad game, you’ve got nine others who can help pick it up. That’s going to be what it takes.”

This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 6:00 AM.