Oregon City Girls Just Keep Rolling Along

OREGON CITY, Ore. - The gym at Oregon City High School echoed with a symphony of squeaking basketball shoes and shouts of encouragement for the best girls' basketball team in America.

Ashley Smith, the team's 5-foot-4 playmaker, has been part of these practices as long as she can remember. By age 5, she was on the sidelines doing the drills with the players.

Now she's headed to Vanderbilt on a basketball scholarship, joining a list of 21 who have gone to NCAA Division I programs after playing for her father, Brad, at Oregon City.

"I love competition," she said. "I don't like to get beat."

She almost never has been. In her four years at Oregon City, the Lady Pioneers are 99-2 and have won their past 64 in a row.

Smith, 6-foot-1 Brianne Meharry and 6-2 Lindsey Yamasaki - three of the country's best high-school players - have their team, now 22-0, at No. 1 in the USA Today rankings for the third year in a row.

"When I was in the eighth grade, they got the No. 1 ranking and were there maybe a week," Yamasaki said. "I thought that was the neatest thing in the world. And we've been there three years now. It's amazing."

Toughest schedule ever

Three times in December, the Lady Pioneers flew across the country in search of serious competition - to New York, Florida and Pennsylvania. In every stop, they smothered opponents with their relentless pressing defense and unselfish, fast-breaking offense.

They dispatched Oakridge, Tenn., ranked No. 2 before the season, and Christ the King, N.Y., ranked No. 3, by big margins.

"It's the most difficult schedule we've ever put together by far and probably one of the most difficult ever put together for a high school," said Carl Tinsley, Smith's top assistant for 17 years.

The girls' basketball program gets just $2,000 from the school district. To help pay for the trips, the players sell advertisements for souvenir programs and $2 coupons supplied by a hot dog and hamburger chain.

In some cases, the tournament hosts help pay Oregon City's way.

Nike has become an Oregon City sponsor, providing warmups and two pairs of shoes for each player. The shoes stay in the program and are handed down to younger players the next season.

One close call

This year, the players endured three canceled flights, spent an unscheduled night in St. Louis and languished 8 1/2 hours at a strip mall in Dillsburg, Pa., after their bus broke down on a field trip to Gettysburg. By all accounts, no one complained. Such is the chemistry of this teenage dream team.

"We were together about 99 percent of the time on Christmas vacation and nobody got sick of it," said starting guard Jessica Hansen, one of two players who transferred from nearby West Linn last year. "It got to the point where we were a little delirious and everything was funny. It was crazy."

The only close call came in Altoona, Pa., when, with Yamasaki sick back in Oregon, Oregon City edged Trinity of Ohio 64-61. The game-clinching free throw was made by Sarah Warnock, a senior center who was stricken with multiple sclerosis and wound up in a wheelchair, yet recovered enough to rejoin the team last winter.

Knowing that Yamasaki couldn't make it, Warnock took the trip to Pennsylvania even though she knew the strain could cause a recurrence of her disease. And it did.

Shortly after the Trinity win, her right side became numb and she no longer is practicing with the team. She hopes some rest will allow her to come back.

Her sacrifice has provided perspective.

"Sarah always says that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," Meharry said. "She's a big role model for me. When I'm struggling on the court and stuff like that, looking at her I realize there's more to life than just this game. One bad game is nothing compared to what she has."

Two coaches think alike

Oregon City is at the end of the Oregon Trail, the oldest incorporated town in the West and the first capital of the Oregon Territory. Its downtown is crammed between steep cliffs and the Willamette River as it spills over Willamette Falls 13 miles south of Portland. Oregon City High is on the plateau above the cliffs, where the town spreads out into an ever-growing suburbia.

Brad Smith, a three-sport letterman at Oregon City High, returned 18 years ago and took over a girls' basketball program that had just gone 0-19. The Lady Pioneers haven't had a losing season since.

Smith, 43, has a 421-67 career record. He gives Tinsley at least half the credit.

"It's like two bodies melding into one mind," Smith said.

Tinsley runs summer tournaments that bring to Oregon City 64 all-star teams from around the country, 56 high-school teams from across the West, 24 junior-varsity teams, 24 youth teams and some 150 college coaches.

Smith and Tinsley also operate a youth basketball program that begins in the fifth grade, with all of the coaches teaching the Lady Pioneers' full-speed style.

Long ago, Smith saw the talent that would become a national champion.

"Back in 1988, Oregon City lost the state-championship game to Tigard, a real heartbreaker," remembered Gary Lavender, coach at rival Lake Oswego High, "and the next day Brad was in the gym with these young kids. He knew what he had. He knew he had a gold mine. It was a coach's dream."

"We don't recruit"

Yamasaki and Ashley Smith have played basketball together since the third grade.

"I know her every move," Yamasaki said. "I know what pass she's going to make every time."

Meharry transferred to the district in the seventh grade and became Ashley Smith's best friend.

The two had vowed to go to the same college, but Meharry wanted to stay in the West and chose the University of Oregon. Ashley wanted an NCAA championship and picked Vanderbilt over Auburn, Western Kentucky and Oregon.

Yamasaki, also an all-state volleyball player, is a junior who has yet to decide which sport to play in college. She gets letters from coaches every day.

"Basically, she'll go wherever she wants," Brad Smith said.

Smith, deeply religious and a member of the Oregon City Evangelical Church, has grown accustomed to murmurs that he improperly lures players from other schools or pressures girls to attend his church.

Press intimidates foes

Smith said he's never recruited, although parents have moved to Oregon City to get their daughters into his program because of its success.

"We don't recruit and you don't have to be religious or anything else," he said. "We would be foolish to play kids just because they go to church or something like that. What if you've got a great player who is an atheist? I've got news for you. The best kids play. It's that simple."

And, mostly, they play defense.

"Our press is our trademark. Most teams have not seen the intensity of the press as we do it," Smith said. "You're just everywhere, kind of a Kentucky sort of thing. Depending on where the ball is or where we score from, we jump into that press."

Invariably, opposing players are rattled.

"They're just so intimidating to other teams because of their ability to play together as a team," Lavender said. "Then you've got the great athletes. They move in one motion. There's not a lot of meaningless motion out there with that group. Everything has a purpose."

Talent, coaching, organization and style are part of it. But Ashley Smith thinks she's figured out what has brought everything together to create this basketball machine.

"Just this year I think we kind of put our thumb on it," she said. "People have asked us and we have never really been able to say what it is. But I think it's the fact we're so unselfish. We're constantly looking for the next player, the next opening. For a lot of teams, that's the reason they don't win. They're not unselfish enough."

Coach sees letdown ahead

All that's left is a fourth consecutive state championship, seemingly a foregone conclusion for a team that must win by 40 or 50 points or fans wonder what went wrong.

In its final regular-season games, Oregon City rolled over Rex Putnam High of Milwaukie 77-37 and overpowered West Linn 77-39.

And Ashley Smith is not about to allow a letdown in the Oregon Class 4A state tournament this week at the University of Portland.

"If you lose state, you'll remember that for the rest of your life," she said.

A state title likely would bring down the curtain on Oregon City's national reign. Next year, Yamasaki will be surrounded by good, but not great, players.

The team will still be one of the best in Oregon, Smith said, but the days as the nation's No. 1 will be over.

"I think it will be like losing a favorite child," he said. "You'll get through it, but it will never be like it was."