Edmonds-Woodway girls basketball program reaches new heights

Published 9:00 am Wednesday, January 14, 2026

EDMONDS — Just listening to the Edmonds-Woodway girls basketball team practice evokes memories of the notorious ‘bag skate’ scene in the 2004 film Miracle, about the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team.

Not in the sense that coach Quinn Manning ran her team to exhaustion, but simply that the word, ‘Again,’ was spoken more than all the other words combined. It didn’t matter if it came after a mistake or a perfectly executed rep. Manning punctuated every drill with a variation of “Do it again,” or “Roll it again,” until everyone on the court was satisfied. Before moving on to the next phase of practice, Manning asked the players if they felt ready to do so.

“I’m a little bit of a perfectionist,” Manning said. “So my mantra is, ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing well.’ … I think I have a philosophy of having a high standard, but earning the respect and delivering it gently.”

The players are accustomed to it, particularly the starting five, each of whom has played in Manning’s system for years. However, this isn’t a senior-laden rotation that’s competed at the high school level for three-plus seasons. In fact, quite the opposite.

Remarkably, the Warriors start four freshmen alongside senior co-captain Finley Wicher. Even more remarkably, they boast the best record across all three Wesco leagues at 13-1 as of Wednesday.

How is it possible that such a young group is getting results at the varsity level right out of the gate? Herb Brooks comparison aside, it’s no miracle, but rather the fruits of nearly five years of labor from Manning and her husband/assistant coach, Matt Manning.

A New Feeder System

The origins of the Mannings’ impact on Edmonds-Woodway girls basketball date back to 2021, when their daughter, Charlee, was entering fifth grade. Upon realizing the Warriors had no youth feeder system for girls in fifth through eighth grade, they took it upon themselves to build it from the ground up.

Quinn Manning — then Quinn Brewe — had a prolific high school career at Meadowdale, which ended with a state championship in 2004 before she continued her career in college at Seattle Pacific and Seattle University. After her playing days ended, Manning worked as a basketball trainer and coached at various levels before ultimately stepping back to focus on her family.

Matt Manning, meanwhile, was a three-sport athlete at Edmonds-Woodway, who played a year of football and baseball at Denison University in 1999-2000 before returning to Edmonds-Woodway at 19 years old, serving in various coaching roles at the school in the years since.

Quinn kept tabs on her alma mater and could see the benefit that the Mavericks’ youth feeder program provided for the varsity team, which has not finished a season with a losing record since 2017-18. With their daughter approaching those crucial grade school development years on the path to attending Edmonds-Woodway, both Quinn and Matt took on the challenge.

It started with Quinn coaching a single fifth-grade team, Charlee’s age group at the time. To ensure they had enough players to start, they made it an “Edmonds School District Feeder Team,” taking in players from Lynnwood as well. As much as the Mannings wanted to set up the future of Edmonds-Woodway girls basketball, the mission was about helping as many local athletes as they could.

“My husband and I are both advocates for girls in sport,” Quinn said. “… We just wanted to formulate a place where as many girls could get inside the gym as possible.”

After the initial fifth-grade team advanced to its sixth-grade season, the Mannings created a team for the incoming fifth-graders, and continued to do so for the new classes each year until filling out a full youth system from fifth-to-eighth grade. While starting with one team was easier than all four classes at once, and joining an established Wesco feeder league made the competition schedule clear-cut, the rebuilding process was anything but easy.

Scouting proper gyms and reserving them for practice times, finding coaches that aligned philosophically with the Mannings’ program and raising funds to make it all happen were just the tip of the iceberg. The most common delivery to the Manning household is boxes of uniforms for every player. It was a labor of love, but it was still labor.

“Over the last few years, working with the district, we kind of learn better ways to work together and coordinate,” said Matt, who handles most of the administrative tasks. “So they realize that we’re doing things that are very important to serve all these students across all grades.”

Taking Over the Program

Just two years into the revamped feeder system, the Edmonds-Woodway varsity coaching job opened up. It was earlier than the Mannings expected, and as much as they dreamed of one day taking over the varsity program, they also wanted to finish what they started. After a family discussion, they decided to do both: Quinn would take the varsity job while Matt stayed behind to focus on the feeder system. For Matt, there was never a doubt about which one of them would become the head coach.

Of the 20 teams across all three Wesco leagues this season, just five have female head coaches. Matt called the lack of female leadership and coaching in girls basketball “one of the biggest gaps” in the sport.

“I told Quinn, ‘It can’t be me. It needs to be you,’” Matt said. “‘These girls need you. They need a female leader. I will help you get there,’ because she’s a great player and a great trainer and all those things, and I’m a coach. And I said, ‘Hey, I’ll support you however you need it.’”

Quinn inherited a Warriors program that went 5-15 in 2022-23 and led the team to a combined 16-26 record over her first two seasons, going from seven wins to nine. The 2025-26 season coincided with the original fifth-grade feeder team entering ninth grade. Charlee is not playing while recovering from an injury — and ironically, she is more focused on volleyball anyway, according to Matt — but her peers who have been playing together in the Mannings’ system since fifth grade are making immediate contributions and taking the program to new heights.

The Fab Four

As of Jan. 12, Zaniyah Jones leads the team in points (16.7, shooting a team-high 56.4% from the field), rebounds (9.5) and steals (2.7) per game, and is second in assists (3.4). Amara Leckie starts at point guard, facilitating the offense with a team-high 4.3 assists per game and a 3.11 assist-to-turnover ratio. Sloane Franks is third on the team with 9.3 points per game, and is developing as an outside scoring threat, while Amelia Faber rounds out the four starting freshmen with 6.9 points and 4.5 rebounds per game. Even a fifth freshman, Madeline Kost, is fourth on the team in rebounding (3.6) despite averaging just seven minutes per game.

While it may be surprising that a team so young would be successful right away, the players themselves are unfazed.

“I think I did (expect it) because the feeder program is really good,” Jones said. “They’re a good team, and we all know how to work together, so it was just like, me coming in, I feel like I just instantly snapped and picked up what they started.”

Jones cites the program for making her a better teammate and gaining more composure on the court, while the others echoed the sentiment that all their years together learning how to function in Manning’s system, as well as how to play alongside each other, paved the way for instant success once they reached varsity.

“In practices, everyone makes everyone better,” Franks said. “So I feel like that’s definitely helped with how much we’ve been winning, and just like, the whole team is so supportive in this whole program.”

As is the case with most feeder systems across the region, many of the drills and systems taught at the varsity level are the same all the way down to fifth-grade, just simplified. While the freshmen class has developed together well in Manning’s system, it takes more than that to achieve success at the varsity level out of the gate. For that, Quinn gives full credit back to the players themselves.

“I think that there’s a maturity level in these freshmen that’s pretty unique,” Quinn said. “They just play a lot of basketball. They play a lot of basketball, and they’ve been working towards this since fifth grade. We’ve said, ‘We’re going to be together. This can be something special if we all commit and make it so.’ And they trust each other. Like, I don’t think I’ve seen such a selfless group of players.”

In addition to having familiarity with each other, the freshmen are familiar with their older teammates. In order to create even more cohesion from the varsity team down to fifth grade, the Mannings have enlisted varsity players to assist on the coaching staff of each feeder teams, especially after Matt joined Quinn on the varsity coaching staff and had to delegate the feeder system responsibilities.

Wichers, the senior captain who is second on the team in scoring (11.1) and rebounding (4.8), served as an assistant coach for last year’s eighth-grade team. Now she’s starting alongside four of her former players. Wichers complimented their ability to “handle themselves” on the court, and how they’ve remained humble despite taking over large roles on the team so early, but she acknowledged her own need to step up as a leader, given how unique the situation is.

“I have definitely had to become more of a leader than I ever have been,” Wichers said. “Because these girls need someone to kind of push them in the right direction. I mean, Quinn’s on the sideline, she’s not on the court with us, so we need someone out there to help them, and I think that’s been my role a lot. Just making sure that everyone knows what’s going on. We’re aligned. If mistakes happen, we just raise our heads and keep going.”

For the freshmen, Wichers’ presence has been integral.

“She knows who we are (before this season), and she also knew how we played and how we worked together,” Leckie said. “Now we get to play with her, and we get to see what kind of things she does, and then how to all come together.”

The Upperclassmen

As much excitement as the Edmonds-Woodway freshmen are generating for both the present and future of the girls basketball program, it comes at a cost for the upperclassmen. Most kids envision playing major roles on varsity as juniors and seniors, but now even those who played major minutes last season have seen their roles reduced significantly this year.

It’s a dynamic Quinn said she “lost sleep over,” when putting together this year’s team. After tryouts, she was direct in laying out the expectations for roles and playing time for each player this season, so no one would be blindsided with a diminished role.

“It does give me some heartache to think that kids that were starting last year aren’t really hardly even seeing playing time this year,” Quinn said. “But I remind them that they have inherent value regardless of how they perform on the basketball court, and that they do contribute to wins in practice. You can’t have a winning program with seven kids, even if your rotation is tight. … The (upperclassmen) have been nothing but mature, gracious, hard-working, and they’re really meaningful.”

Senior co-captain Janie Hanson maintained a key role as the ‘sixth man’ this season, averaging 19 minutes per game. She acknowledged it can be difficult for seniors to watch freshmen receive playing time ahead of them, but this freshman class has earned their teammates’ respect through their intensity, humility and the success they’ve brought to the program.

“I never respected 14-year-old girls more,” Hanson said. “They’re so good, and it’s really inspiring to see how good they are to each other. … As upperclassmen, it’s hard to not get to be heavily involved, but then these freshmen, it’s not their fault. They’re just nice people who are also great basketball players. So there’s no negative feelings towards each other, and I think that’s what keeps us all happy.”

From the other side, the freshmen have felt that support from their older teammates, and attribute it as a big part of their success early on.

“They’re always there for us and making sure we’re okay,” Faber said. “Like (if) we know the play and all that stuff. They’re super encouraging and welcoming, and it just makes me feel kind of like, really supported to know that I’m not out there by myself.”

Just the Beginning

Since Quinn Manning started revitalizing the Edmonds-Woodway girls basketball feeder program, the Meadowdale girls varsity coaching spot opened twice — prior to 2022-23 and again prior to 2024-25 — but the former Mavs star insists she never had any desire to apply for the role at her alma mater and ditch what she started with the Warriors. Now in her third season leading Edmonds-Woodway varsity, she’s reaping the benefit of the work she and Matt started back in 2021.

Right now, the focus is on this season and making something out of their 13-1 start, but the knowledge that these freshmen are going to bring valuable experience into next year, when even more talent will come up the feeder system pipeline, is an exciting idea for the Warriors. And scary for everyone else in Wesco South 3A/2A.

“You don’t want to count your chickens before they hatch,” Manning said. “In order to have championship seasons, a lot of things have to go well. But I’m trusting that we’re just going to keep on this upward trend, and Edmonds-Woodway will become a prolific program in the future.”