Brittany Kennedy
Brittany Kennedy prefers to do everything, including setting up her teammates.
TACOMA, Wash. - The trail to history in Washington's highest classification - 4A - has run through a lot of greatness. It has snaked around the likes of Angie Bjorklund, maybe the best player to come out of the state since Joyce Walker's pre-Globetrooter days. It has careened through Courtney Vandersloot, now a prominent freshman at Gonzaga, and Alex Montgomery, an equally prominent frosh at Georgia Tech. And twice it has blown through Ashley Corral, who was in the process this week of renewing her claim as America's best point guard.
In each of those cases, the path was blocked for the aforementioned, and cleared for her Lewis and Clark teammates, by Brittany Kennedy, whose pride in her defense is measured by the number of sneakers is takes to get through a season.
That would be three this season, according to the Oregon State-bound speedster, matching the number of consecutive Washington State 4A titles for her Tigers, an unprecedented feat for any team, girl's or boy's, in any classication.
Lewis and Clark's Kelsey Baker and Brittany
Kennedy swarm Moses Lake's Kelly Sutherland.
"Defense is where it's at," Kennedy said after Lewis and Clark beat upset-minded Moses Lake and its twin-towered Noyes sisters 42-37. "I'm not a scorer."
Kennedy would not be alone in making such a statement on this edition of the Spokane-based Tigers. The first two championships were helped delivered by MVP outbursts from coach Jim Redmon's niece, Katelan, now the leading scorer at the University of Washington. Redmon had help in claiming Lewis and Clark's first golden basketball in 2006 from Heather Bowman, who went on to freshman-of-year status in the West Coast Conference for Gonzaga.
Point is, the first two Tiger titlists had offensive go-to players. This team whips up its offense by committee, junior Jeneva Anderson leading the charge with a modest 13 points on Saturday night against Moses Lake. This season,
Seldom was it more critical than Friday night's semifinal - the "true" state-championship matchup to some, thwarted only by papers slips in a hat that determined bracketing. It was then that Kennedy harrassed Corral into a nightmarish offensive performance as Lewis and Clark roared past Prairie in a rematch of the 2006 championship game.
Afterward, Prairie coach Al Aldridge, who surpassed 600 career victories this season, said of Kennedy: "I don't think I've seen a kid who worked harder at the defensive end. We looked at her on film. She's relentless."
Such insight. Kennedy says, almost as a credo, "it's defense all the time," and it sure seems that way. She had six steals, ending with a tournament-leading 17 in four games, to spearhead a throttling defensive effort that forced Moses Lake to cough up 23 ballhandling errors. Lewis and Clark's go-to player is Kennedy, and the Tigers go to her on defense.
Carly Noyes had 16 points and 14 rebounds for
Moses Lake, but it was never easy.
The ultimate defensive closure, of course, is a rebound, and Lewis and Clark excelled there, too, in spite of the presence of 6-foot-5 Carly Noyes and her 6-3 sister, Ann. The younger, and taller, Noyes had 14 boards to go with her game-high 16 points, but the Tigers won the war on the glass, 43-33. Kennedy proved critical there as well, snaring seven boards, to go with her biggest offensive contribution, five assists.
Defense all the time, indeed.
Redmon, who's now coached arguably the greatest and longest standing defensive stand in state history, says he's never had a player so bought into the stop mentality. After all, the constant throughout his team's run has been Kennedy's fleet-footed defense.
"She's unusual," Redmon said. "She's always been the one, every time the situation called for defense, who has taken responsibility. She's special.
"She just has that mentality. And she had that before she came to me. We just enhanced it."
Presumably, by furnishing a new pair of sneakers every time their defensive-minded point guard ground hers into dust, building Lewis and Clark's trail to a historic three-peat.
Brittany Kennedy signals No. 2, but it's actually three straight titles for Lewis and Clark - and three pairs of sneakers used playing her brand of defense.
