MARYSVILLE — Resiliency and perseverance are both words commonly associated with professional athletes.
Whether it be overcoming a deficit or playing through injury, professional athletes deal with and overcome adversity all the time — but not the kind that the student-athletes at Marysville Pilchuck High School have faced since the Oct. 24 shooting on their campus.
On Tuesday, the Tomahawks’ girls basketball team went to the gym for a practice like any other, only to get a visit from one of those professional athletes, along with two of her coaches, who wanted to recognize the resiliency and perseverance of a team and a community that has been through a lot in the past 6½ weeks. Seattle Storm point guard Sue Bird, a two-time WNBA champion and multiple Olympic gold medal winner, joined by Storm head coach Brian Agler and associate head coach Jenny Boucek surprised the Marysville Pilchuck girls basketball program just moments into practice.
Agler, Boucek and Bird have spent a good portion of their lives teaching and showing others how to play basketball. Whether the Tomahawks knew it or not, it was them doing a lot of the teaching Tuesday.
“The word resiliency is definitely something that comes up a lot in basketball,” Bird said. “I know in my life I’ve never had to deal with anything that they’ve had to deal with. To see them out here still playing and competing and enjoying playing basketball, that shows a lot of resiliency and that’s something that I’m definitely going to learn from this group.”
That sentiment was echoed by Boucek.
“Perspective is the biggest thing,” she said. “It’s always a blessing to see people playing basketball or coaching basketball for the love of the game. That’s why we all started. To see the resiliency of these kids to have gone through what they’ve been through and for basketball to be their getaway from whatever it is that they went through in their own way through this horrible incident, I think we can relate to that because we usually use basketball as a getaway as well.
“It’s just a reminder of what’s important in life and the proper place that basketball should have in our lives — and that’s for fun.”
Bird and Boucek made sure the Marysville Pilchuck players had fun. Both were full participants in Tuesday’s practice.
“Today, I was running up and down, but there was always a smile on my face and I think things like that can be contagious,” Bird said. “I noticed that the players around me started to have a good time as well. Usually in sports and in basketball, when you’re having fun and you’re enjoying it good things happen.”
Marysville Pilchuck head coach Julie Martin was impressed with Bird’s willingness to participate.
“The neatest thing about it is she’s just like us,” Martin said. “She jumped in here without hesitation and with a smile on her face genuinely wanting to be out here.”
Late in the practice, Bird took questions from the Marysville Pilchuck players. The practice ended with a closed-door speech from Boucek.
“Sports teams are part of the community and we’re here, I think, to serve our communities as well as we possibly can and try to give back to give back and reciprocate the support we get from them,” Boucek said.
“Community is the best word to use,” Bird added. “Just because our pro sports teams are in Seattle doesn’t mean that it doesn’t extend outside of that. The community is bigger than that and we’re a huge part of the community. As athletes, we have a platform and that’s something that a lot of us take very seriously. Any time you can have a positive impact on anyone, you want to make the most out of that opportunity — and that’s really what today is.”
The student-athletes at Marysville Pilchuck have certainly needed their share of support in the wake of the tragedy, but many of them don’t realize that they have provided that same support for the community around them.
“The high school in a community is sort of the foundation piece,” Agler said. “High school sports give the students and the community a chance to really bond together after a common goal and that is just to support the students. That being said, it doesn’t matter if it’s the girls basketball team or the football team, I’m sure that the high school sports teams have really been a healing mechanism for this community.”
Agler added that what the team is going through now will make the individuals on it stronger as they go through their lives.
“We preach to our team how you have to be resilient,” he said. “Things don’t always go your way and everyone is going to go through difficult times. You have to persevere through those things. This team has obviously done that and is doing that right now. They’re going to have a unique bond as they go through life with their teammates — probably more so than many teams.”
If any group could rise above after everything that has happened, it’s this group of Tomahawks.
“They’re mentally tough,” Martin said. “In the 12 years that I’ve been here, I’ve yet to see a team that works as hard as this group does as a collective whole. It’s nothing against any of my past teams, it’s just they have a different drive than I’ve seen before.
“They all are competitive and want to achieve one thing and honestly, it’s not fully winning, it’s loving something all the same and building off that.”
In a unique show of support, Bird, Agler and Boucek asked every girl in the Tomahawks’ basketball program to sign a ball that they will keep with them in the upcoming WNBA season.
“When it comes to sports, you sometimes get caught up in it and you think it’s the most important thing in life, but there are other things,” Bird said. “There’s life outside of basketball and I think sometimes you need to take a step back and realize that.
“That ball will definitely be a reminder for our team.”
Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers @heraldnet.com.
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