EVERSON — Nooksack Valley girls basketball coach Shane Wichers hadn’t missed a tip-off in 637 games.
But few of those came during a global pandemic, which caught up to Wichers Wednesday night when his top-ranked team hosted Burlington-Edison in a Northwest Conference showdown.
With Wichers sidelined with a COVID-19 diagnosis, assistant coach Erika Van Dyken stepped in and coached the Pioneers to a 50-38 victory.
Van Dyken said she was mostly at ease filling in as head coach.
“Those are pretty big shoes to fill, but I felt really confident,” she said. “I’ve coached under him for eight years now. He’s done a really good job mentoring me and the girls trust all of us as coaches.”
The Pioneers 12-point win over the Tigers wasn’t completely without problems.
On an overall down night for the normally potent Pioneers offense, it was the defense’s time to shine.
Trailing 28-24 at halftime, Nooksack Valley turned a corner in the third quarter, holding Burlington-Edison to a single basket, surrendering only two points.
The Pioneers scored 11 points in the frame, taking the lead back for good on a putback from sophomore Devin Coppinger with about two minutes left in the third quarter.
“We were losing to ourselves in the first half,” Coppinger said. “It was all our own mistakes, [Burlington wasn’t] doing anything special.”
Coppinger said even when the offense isn’t hitting, the team knows they can always count on the defense to come up big.
The Pioneers outscored the Tigers 26-10 in the second half.
Coppinger put together another outstanding scoring performance, accounting for more than half of the Pioneers’ points with a game-high 26. Senior Tehya Moore added seven while seniors McKenna Wichers and Ellie VanBerkum each scored five.
As the No. 1 ranked team in Class 1A, Nooksack Valley hasn’t played in many close games this season.
The Pioneers’ last loss came in December to top-ranked Class 2A Tumwater. Their last close call was a victory a week before that against Lynden Christian.
Being put on their heels against the Class 2A No. 7 Tigers with the postseason right around the corner gave Nooksack Valley a scare it might have needed.
“It’s so nice to play such a high-caliber team,” Van Dyken said. “It was good for us to get down because that’s something that can happen and we had to find a way to crawl back. It was a great opportunity for us to get better today.”
Nooksack Valley improved to 13-2 overall and 11-0 in the Northwest Conference.
The Pioneers won’t have any time off before their next game as they travel to Bellingham Thursday, looking to keep their undefeated conference record going.
