Foss Falcons 2000 state championship basketball team recognized by school
These days, some of the best high school basketball teams are a collection of recruited talent from all over, with programs eager and willing to pluck kids out of their hometowns and bring them somewhere else in pursuit of a state ring and likely, some exposure to college scouts along the way.
That wasn’t the case with the 2000 Foss team, which won the Class 4A state title at the Tacoma Dome in March of that year, beating Kamiakin, Kentwood, Garfield and Bethel in state to take home the crown.
The Falcons weren’t a thinly-veiled All-Star team with kids that had grown up in different area codes. They were just a bunch of kids who grew up playing basketball at Al Davies Boys & Girls Club in Hilltop and all over Tacoma.
“It wasn’t, ‘Let’s recruit this guy or that guy,’” said Rachi Wortham, Foss’ point guard on the 2000 team, who went on to play at Tacoma Community College and Eastern Washington University. “We just played together. It was kids that were really from the community.”
During last Friday night’s game against White River on Jan. 31, the team reunited and was honored during halftime. Foss posted a 25-4 record that season and won the Class 4A title, becoming the first Tacoma school to win the title since Lincoln in 1975. Lincoln would go on to win state championships in 2001 and 2002, marking three consecutive years a Tacoma Public School won the title. But 2000 was all about the Falcons.
“Everybody on our team could play,” said Marc Axton, who went on to play at Eastern Washington University. He was named the conference Freshman of the Year and was named all-Big Sky in his final three seasons, leading the Eagles to 60 wins in his career and first-ever berths in both the NCAA Tournament (2004) and the National Invitation Tournament (2003). “The whole starting five, five guys averaged double digits. Everybody gave it their all every game.”
John Ruby, the team’s coach, said the Falcons were great on gameday because of their work in practice. They pushed each other.
“What these guys taught me as a coach, that if we played tough defense in practice with the athletes that we had — when we saw another team, they weren’t seeing as tough a defense as they saw in practice,” Ruby said. “So they’d go into a game with a lot of confidence because they knew they were seeing better talent and effort. We just got on a roll.”
Ruby recalls sending three full buses to the Tacoma Dome, full of students. The energy around the team that year was the thing everyone involved remembers most fondly.
“It was really about the community,” Wortham said. “Our community came more than anybody to support our gym every single game. There was a waiting line to come to these games. The gym was completely full every game.”
A lot of the players still keep in touch, have attended each other’s weddings and have made an effort to stay in each other’s lives, even after life took them to different cities and in separate directions.
“It’s a close-knit family,” Wortham said. “I was at Marc’s wedding. We had his bachelor party in Ruby’s backyard. It’s not just a team, it was really about the city of Tacoma when we played. We had a target on our back and we didn’t care where and who we played.”
This story was originally published February 4, 2020 at 6:11 PM.
