Mikayla Pivec started almost every game in her Lynnwood High School basketball career, and at the outset she contributed mostly with rebounding and defense. It was only later that Pivec took on a primary scoring role for the Royals.
And what a scorer she became.
In 2015, which included parts of her junior and senior seasons, Pivec scored at a prolific pace for Lynnwood, averaging 20.4 points as a junior and 21.7 points as a senior. She led the Royals to the 2014-15 Class 3A state championship — including scoring 31 points to go with 17 rebounds in a 54-42 victory over Cleveland in the title game — and this past season to a third-place state finish.
The 18-year-old Pivec, who is headed to Oregon State University on a basketball scholarship, is one of the top girls basketball players ever to come out of Snohomish County, and for her many accomplishments she is The Herald’s 2015 Woman of the Year in Sports.
Among other awards that have come Pivec’s way, she is the Gatorade Washington Girls Basketball Player of the Year, which she won recently for the second consecutive season.
In a press release accompanying the prestigious Gatorade award, Shorecrest coach Dori Monson had this to say about Pivec: “After our final game against Mikayla’s Lynnwood team this season, I went up to her and told her that in all my years of coaching she is the finest player I’ve ever coached against. … Pivec is one of the best players to ever come out of Washington.”
Her own coach agrees.
“I think Mikayla is one those special players that has a motor that does not slow down regarding her effort and her want to impact the game in whatever way possible,” said her coach, Everett Edwards. “Whether by rebounding, whether by blocking shots, whether by making passes or by scoring, what’s really special to me is that she gives great effort regardless of the situation.”
On April 6, Pivec was honored in Sports Illustrated magazine’s “Faces in the Crowd” feature, highlighting her effort in the state championship win vs. Cleveland.
And if her basketball achievements are not enough, Pivec is also a standout member of the Lynnwood track and field team. In May she was part of the school’s winning 1600-meter relay team at the Class 3A state meet.
When Pivec looks back on her Lynnwood years, and particularly everything that has happened in basketball, nothing surpasses the thrill of winning the 2014-15 championship.
“It was such a great feeling to celebrate after all the hard work we’d put in and how it’d all paid off,” she said. “Just being able to celebrate a state championship with my teammates and with our community that had supported us all along the way.”
This season the Royals lost to eventual state champion Bellevue in the semifinals, an outcome that Pivec said she is “still mourning. … It was very disappointing. (Winning a repeat title) was my biggest goal for this year.
“(Individual awards) are nice recognition of what others think of me as a player and as a person, but what I’ll remember most time is the time I spent with my teammates and the championship we won. … This year was still a good season, but I feel like we left something on the table. I’m disappointed with how it ended up, but everything happens for a reason and I’m excited for the future.”
For Pivec, that future will continue at Oregon State, which won this year’s regular-season and Pac-12 Conference tournament championships.
“I’m looking forward to (playing in college) a lot,” she said. “There are a lot of talented players there and I’m looking forward to seeing how I compare with players in the Pac-12. Track season (at Lynnwood) is going to be a lot of fun, but I’m really looking forward to basketball at Oregon State.
“I’ve been very blessed to be in the situation I am now and I’m very grateful for that. As a freshman I didn’t know if I’d be able to play sports in college. I never knew where I could go with sports and with basketball. But I think my sophomore year is when I got my first offer for basketball and that’s when it hit me that I could play college basketball.
The journey ever since, she added, “has been very magical.”
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