Snohomish girls basketball cruises to District 1 3A title

Published 1:55 am Sunday, February 22, 2026

MILL CREEK — Offense sells tickets, defense wins games, rebounding wins championships.

The saying from legendary Tennessee Volunteers women’s basketball coach Pat Summit had been drilled into the Snohomish girls basketball team’s heads by the time they took on Edmonds-Woodway in the District 1 3A Championship at Jackson High School on Saturday.

After starting the season 2-6, an eight-game span that ended with a 48-47 loss to Napavine on Dec. 30, Snohomish coach Ken Roberts gathered the team for a “heart to heart” about attention to detail and committing on the defensive side of the basketball.

“I think coming out of the Christmas break, we decided as a team to focus more on our defense,” junior Lizzie Allyn said. “Our coach (Roberts) likes to put it, ‘Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships.’ So I think that’s been the backbone of our play recently.”

Roberts did include the part about rebounding, for what it’s worth. Either way, it resonated.

Since that Dec. 30 loss, the No. 1 seed Panthers (18-6) have won 16 straight, culminating in a dominant 58-22 victory against the No. 2 seed Warriors (20-4) to win their second district championship in three years.

Senior Sienna Capelli led the scoring with 25 points, and Allyn scored 10. Rounding out the effort, senior Kendall Hammer (eight points, four rebounds) grabbed four steals, while junior Lola Rotondo (seven points) pulled down 12 rebounds in showing that definitively proved Snohomish is the best team in District 1 3A.

“Defense and rebounding wins you games. Big games,” Roberts said before repeating Summit’s quote. “This was the first game where you would have paid to watch us play offense, but the other two have been consistent.”

A year after missing the state tournament despite entering districts as the top seed, Snohomish climbed back to the mountaintop. Roberts vowed at the team’s banquet last year that their ending to the 2024-25 season would not happen again, and after the team overcame some nervousness in the earlier stages of this year’s tournament, he hoped the team would play looser once they locked up a state berth with their 47-36 win against Meadowdale in the semifinals on Feb. 18.

Looking at Saturday’s performance, it’s safe to say they did.

“I think that we were able to play just freely and not have to worry about, ‘Oh, this could be our last game,’ or this and that,” Capelli said. “But I think we all just played well, and I think whether or not if it was the last game or not, we’d play the same, but I think that we just played hard and worked together.”

Just over two weeks after holding Edmonds-Woodway to 24 points in their 48-24 win in the Wesco Crossover game, the Panthers held the Warriors to 22 points on Saturday. Edmonds-Woodway did not make a field goal in the final five minutes of the first half or the first four minutes of the third quarter, struggling to find looks and missing whenever they did. During that nine-minute field goal drought, Snohomish outscored the Warriors 20-2 to completely pull away.

Freshmen Zaniyah Jones and Madeline Kost each scored six points to share the team high. Edmonds-Woodway coach Quinn Manning put it simply: “We didn’t show up tonight.”

Manning added that the group was physically out-matched, unable to swing back after getting punched in the mouth. It was a disheartening loss for a young team with five freshmen in the rotation, but one they’ll have to get over entering the state tournament.

“We’re walking into this game knowing, ‘Yeah, we’d love to win a district title, but we achieved our goal of getting that state bid,’” Manning said. “But we have to expect this every night now. So I mean, I guess you take the lumps and you get back to work on Monday.”

Snohomish jumped out to a 10-2 lead through the first four minutes of the game in large part because of big 3’s from Capelli and Allyn, and while the Warriors managed to bring it within three on a couple hard drives to the net from Jones and Kost, Allyn pushed it to 12-7 with an underhand layup three seconds before the break, holding for the last shot before driving to the hoop.

The Panthers went right back to work in the second quarter, stretching their lead to 19-7 just two minutes in with a 3-pointer from Hammer and a three-point play from Capelli. Edmonds-Woodway trimmed it to 19-11 on a couple baskets, but did not score from the field again until a driving layup from Jones cut the score to 39-15 with 3:50 left in the third quarter.

Before it got to that point, Capelli closed the first half by scoring eight of Snohomish’s last 10 points, which she capped by hitting a turnaround jumper with a defender in her face in the final 30 seconds before the break.

“Our 2-3 (zone defense) right now is just kind of unbeatable,” Capelli said. “It’s so hard, I mean we just work really hard. We talk a lot, and I think coach put the right defense in for the right game, and I think that we shot well and we executed well.”

While the Panthers dominated the boards all game, Rotondo jumped out to start the third quarter, grabbing practically every loose ball in her vicinity to help stack possessions for Snohomish. The 5-foot-11 forward scored a layup off an offensive rebound to make it 36-13, and also had a couple steals down the stretch which turned into points in transition. The Panthers led 54-16 entering the fourth quarter, allowing just three points in the third and boosting their lead with big shots from Capelli, Allyn and Hammer in the final two minutes.

When Roberts took Capelli off the floor early in the fourth quarter, he turned to urge the Snohomish cheering section to its feet to salute the senior star.

“She’s had such a phenomenal year and career,” Roberts said. “I’m just excited. I told them, ‘You guys played like you were celebrating today.’ And that’s what we need as we go down to state. It’s a celebration. You worked hard to get here. There shouldn’t be nerves at that level. It should be, ‘Just go play.’ So hopefully they will, because that looked pretty good today.”

One by one, the Panthers players and coaches lined up to cut down the net. Capelli was the last to go, removing the remains from the rim and — after being urged to — put it around her neck before joining her teammates in a mosh pit back on the court.

“This is a special group of girls,” Allyn said. “We love each other. We play as a team. So it’s really fun to do something like this.”