The winding down of the high school winter sports season can mean only one thing.
Playoffs and postseason tournaments.
North Olympic Peninsula teams enter playoffs this weekend with an eye on state tournaments.
Boys and girls basketball teams try to stay alive or to get better seeding for district tournaments while the four schools with wrestling programs enter regional tournament action, just one step from state.
Boys swimming and diving, and gymnastics teams also have district events this weekend, just a single step from state.
Boys Basketball
2A subdistricts
Sequim and Port Angeles find themselves in subdistrict mini-tourneys, which are for seeding into the West Central District championships and the springboard for state.
The Sequim Wolves (15-5), the Olympic League runners-up, get the booby prize as they open subdistrict play against 2A state No. 2-ranked Clover Park (16-4) at Klahowya High School in Silverdale tonight at 7:30 (the time was changed from an original 8 p.m. slot.)
The winner will play the winner between Kingston and Evergreen on Saturday while the two losers meet the same day at Klahowya.
The four teams are playing for the top four district seed.
Two wins and Sequim is NO. 1 seed, two losses and the Wolves are No. 4 to districts.
The Port Angeles Roughriders (16-4), the Olympic League’s No. 3 team, is in a similar situation as Sequim but playing for lower district seeds.
The Riders open against state ranked No. 6 Sumner (16-4) at 8 p.m. today at Foster High School in Tukwila.
The winner plays the White River-Lindbergh winner Saturday at Foster while the two losers meet.
White River is ranked No. 8 in state.
The four teams are playing for district seeds five through eight.
Forks in tourney
CENTRALIA — While Port Angeles and Sequim are in seeding games, the Forks Spartans are fighting for their playoff lives in a double-elimination tourney starting at Centralia High School tonight.
The Spartans (14-6), second place in SWL-Evergreen Division, will take on Kalama (11-9) — third place in the Trico League — at 6:30 p.m.
Win or lose, the two teams will advance to play Tuesday in the second round.
While the Chinooks’ final record may not knock your socks off, they could give the Spartans fits.
The Chinooks are fast and they like to run other teams into the ground with fastbreak after fastbreak.
“They will have one player back when we take shots,” Forks coach Scott Justus said.
“We will have four players to board and one will sit back.”
The Kalama player takes off when the shot is attempted and looks for a quick pass.
“They are very fast, athletic and they have pretty good size,” Justus said.
The smallest starting player is 6-foot while there is one at 6-5, two at 6-2 and one at 6-1.
Offensively, the Chinooks are well balanced with two averaging 11 points a game, two average nine, one averages seven and there’s another at six.
“That’s the scary part, that they have such good balance,” Justus said.
The Chinooks average 57 points a game and give up just 46.
“That concerns me because we average only 45 points a game,” Justus said.
The Chinooks could have won the SWL-Evergreen Division this year, Justus said.
The key is to slow Kalama down, Justus said.
“If we can make them play a half-court game, we have a chance,” Justus said.
“We’ll see what our matchup zone will do to them.”
On the injury front, there is good news and bad news for the Spartans.
The good news is that star player Braden Decker will be back and close to full force after missing a couple of games last week because of an injured big toe.
“Braden has looked good in practice and I think he’s ready to go,” Justus said.
Decker is the top defender on the team and is a third of the offense.
Justus tried to rest Decker at times this week in practice.
“He got angry about that, and so I let him go [run in practice],” Justus said.
Decker played 3.5 minutes of a must-win game against Rainier on Saturday and he responded with five points, two rebounds and two steals.
The Spartans won that game 47-30.
‘We played a really, really good game at Rainier,” Justus said. “We probably had our best defensive effort of the year.”
Just as Decker’s news gets better, the news gets worse for point guard Jonah Penn, who has a bad shoulder.
A few games ago, Penn went diving for a looser ball and skidded into the bleachers, hurting his left shoulder.
“He has trouble reaching up with his left arm,” Justus said.
“That could hurt us because he runs the show for us.”
Chimacum Cowboys
The Cowboys (12-8 and fourth in Nisqually League) play their first playoff game in five years at Cedar Park Christian in Bothell (12-7 and third in Emerald City League) at 7 p.m. Saturday night.
It’s a loser-out contest with the winner advancing to the double-elimination tri-district tournament Tueday at either King’s or Lynden Christian.
Lynden Christian is ranked No. 5 in state while King’s is rated No. 6.
Girls Basketball
Port Angeles
The Roughriders played in a seeding game Thursday night (results not available by press time) against White River at Clover Park High School in Lakewood.
Like the boys games, the Riders are playing in two seeding games, the second Saturday.
The Port Angeles-White River winner will play the winner between Kingston and Renton at Clover Park and the two losers will meet the same day at the same site.
Port Townsend
The Redskins also played in a playoffs game Thursday night (results not available by press time).
Port Townsend played a loser-out game at Vashon Island for the Nisqually League’s fourth seed.
Thursday’s winner advances to play at Seattle Academy on Saturday in another loser-out game.
Saturday’s winner advances to the double-elimination tri-district tourney that starts Tuesday.
B playoffs
Both Crescent boys and girls basketball teams and Neah Bay boys and girls hoops squads play in North Olympic League playoff games early next week.
The Loggers play both their games Monday night at home while the Red Devils will have a doubleheader Tuesday night at Crescent High School.
The Crescent girls will battle Quilcene in a loser-out contest.
Wrestling
All the area wrestlers who made it through the subregionals last weekend will compete in the regional championships Saturday for the right to secure a state berth.
Port Angeles and Sequim will wrestle at the 2A regionals at Olympic High School in Silverdale all-day Saturday.
The Forks Spartans will compete at the 1A regional at Castle Rock High School while the Port Townsend Redskins will wrestle at the 1A regional at Bellevue Christian Academy.
Swimming, gymnastics
Port Angeles and Sequim boys swimmers and divers will compete at the 2A district championships at Hazen High School in Renton today and Saturday.
The Port Angeles gymnastics team will compete at districts set for Mount Rainier High School on Saturday starting at 8:15 p.m.
Top swimmers, divers and gymnasts advance to the state championships.