Lynnwood’s Pivec is The Herald’s Girls Basketball Player of the Year

Published 5:34 pm Saturday, March 12, 2016

BOTHELL — Mikayla Pivec walks down a hallway at Lynnwood High School hours after school has been let out.

Basketball season has ended for the two-time Gatorade Washington Player of the Year and now it’s on to track. Practice, in the pouring rain, has just concluded and as Pivec walks past the gym where she’s excelled for the past four years there’s a Lynnwood student sitting in the hallway.

The student looks up, sees Pivec and flashes the senior a smile.

“Oh my gosh!” exclaims the student. “It’s Mikayla Pivec!”

Pivec, who has been sought by autograph seekers after games, is essentially a celebrity in the Lynnwood community. The senior has dominated Wesco hoops for four seasons and is committed to play at Oregon State University next year. Pivec helped lead Lynnwood to its first state championship last season, and finished her senior campaign averaging 21.7 points, 14.1 rebounds, 4.4 steals and 4.1 assists per game while helping lead the Royals to a third-place finish at the 3A state tournament — their third top-three finish of Pivec’s career.

For her incredible talent that has kept opposing coaches up at night for four years, Pivec is The Herald’s All-Area Player of the Year.

“Mikayla impacts a game in more ways than any player we have played against in the 16 years I have been coaching at Snohomish High School,” Panthers head coach Ken Roberts said. “She is honestly the most dominant high school player we have played against since I have been coaching girls basketball. She has a bigger impact on a basketball game than any girl that I can remember in this state.”

Glacier Peak head coach Brian Hill sums it up best.

“You can’t stop her,” Hill said. “You can only hope to contain her.”

Pivec’s own coach, Everett Edwards, has gotten to see that first hand. He’s looked on as Pivec — and fellow senior Jordyn Edwards — helped lead the Royals to a 98-7 record over the past four seasons. Pivec finished her career with 1,799 points and 1,429 rebounds — both school records that are unlikely to ever be matched.

“She’s a sweetheart,” Everett Edwards said. “That being said, she’s very competitive. … She has a competitiveness and will to win, whether it’s in practice or playing charades in the classroom. Mikayla competes hard and wants to win.

“We had our banquet the other night and I’d bet that Mikayla would give all the individual awards away for another championship this year.”

Pivec’s favorite memories from her time at Lynnwood take her back to last season, after the Royals 3A state championship. She can still picture hugging her teammates and crying after fellow Royal Monty Cooper made the final shot of the game in a 54-42 win over Cleveland.

Then there was the celebration at Lynnwood High School to honor the Royals. Being a state champion comes with a lot of benefits, including a few less-known perks.

Like good parking.

“It was a great feeling,” Pivec said. “They even had a special parking lot closer to the front door for us. They had an assembly with a red carpet laid out. … Just the community support behind that and how excited everybody was for the Lynnwood sports program was pretty amazing.”

Everett Edwards remembers that state championship game against Cleveland “where (Pivec) was literally unstoppable.” And while he admires Pivec’s effort and will to win, something else about the senior stands out to the Lynnwood coach.

“Her humor. Some of the practical jokes that she has done,” Edwards said. “I still have rolls of toilet paper that, when the wind blows, are coming out into my yard now. I’m sure Mikayla, as did the rest of our team, had a major part, in teepeeing our house. She’s just been a funny kid that wants to have fun and just happens to be a tremendous athlete.”

Pivec, who is about as humble as they come, doesn’t particularly enjoy bragging about herself.

But her teammates — and opponents — have no problem doing so.

“Mikayla is a unique kid who is deserving of all the accolades that come her way,” Arlington head coach Joe Marsh said. “She has a rare combination of talent, drive and competitive excellence, along with a dose of genuine humility that makes her as likeable as she is great on the court. I hate to lose, and for four years I have not been able to beat Mik and her team, and yet outside of the girls on my team, she is by far my favorite player to watch, and yes, compete against.

“She’s the best player in the state without a doubt in my mind, and an even better person. That is saying something!”

It isn’t just the Lynnwood community that has felt Pivec’s presence. Her abilities have made impressions on players and fans around Snohomish County.

Hill, whose Glacier Peak team has gone up against Pivec and the Royals several times the past four seasons, has a younger daughter who grew up watching the Grizzlies and former Glacier Peak star Sadie Mensing. She would watch the Grizzlies’ games and afterwards would ask Hill if she played like the high school players she idolized.

“After a game she would pick someone from my team and say, ‘Did I play like Sadie today,’” Hill said. “Of course, being the encouraging father I am, I would tell her, ‘You sure did, keep up the good work and keep playing hard.’ After the district championship game against Arlington a couple weeks ago, she asked me, ‘Do I play like Pivec?’ All I could come up with was, ‘No one plays like Pivec.’”

Pivec has put a lot of work in to get to this point. There’s been countless AAU games, and shootarounds with her father, Mike. The pair also worked hard in the gym this year, doing pull-ups, push-ups and the bench press.

The Pivecs hard work culminated in a scholarship offer that Mikayla Pivec accepted from Oregon State.

“It’s very weird,” Pivec said. “I remember freshman year and thinking, ‘I’m never going to be a senior. It’s not going to come.’ Now it’s here.”

Before she heads off, Pivec has one more state title to defend. The senior is a defending state champion in the 4 x 400-meter relay at the 3A state track and field meet — along with her basketball teammate Jordyn Edwards, Rita Sakharov and her sister, Malia Pivec. Mikayla hopes to defend that title — and maybe earn another in the javelin, 1,600 or 800 — before she heads to Corvallis in July.

And while her basketball career didn’t quite have the fairytale ending she’d hoped for, Pivec is still pretty satisfied with how things have gone for the Royals the past four years.

“It’s been a great experience to be able to represent Lynnwood and have a lot of success,” Pivec said. “Obviously, this year, we were hoping for more. But I think that, as a freshman, if I had been told that we’d win one state championship and take third twice, I would’ve been really happy with that.”