MILL CREEK — Not even three minutes had passed in Snohomish girls basketball’s road matchup against Jackson on Thursday by the time Snohomish coach Ken Roberts realized he needed to make a change.
After a Makena Devine steal led to an Avery Cooke layup at the other end, Jackson extended its lead to 8-2 with 5:12 left in the first quarter. Roberts called a timeout to regroup.
Snohomish went into the game planning their defense around Jackson freshman Camille Phaysith, expecting to have different reserves come in to run a trap defense whenever she was off the court. However, with Phaysith ending up missing the game due to injury, Snohomish deployed the trap defense out of the gate with their starters, who had not practiced it as much as those reserves. It ended up setting them back early.
“We had kids that didn’t quite know what they were doing in it, and that showed,” Roberts said. “We gave up some real easy buckets. It’s something we just put in a few weeks ago. … We weren’t panicked or anything. It was just, ‘Okay, let’s just go back to some other defenses and get reset.’”
When Snohomish came out of the timeout, things instantly clicked.
In addition to slowing down Jackson’s scoring, the Panthers (10-6) hit three straight 3-pointers, including two from senior Kendall Hammer, to pull ahead 11-8 amidst a 13-2 run to close out the first quarter. Taking a 15-10 lead into the second, Snohomish never trailed again, ultimately pulling away for a 55-38 win against the Timberwolves (11-4).
“I think it was our energy,” Hammer said as the key to turning things around in the first quarter. “A lot of it was usually we feed off our offensive game and not as much as our defensive game, which I think we need to start doing more, but once we got on a roll, it just kind of kept stacking up and building up.”
Snohomish’s Kendall Hammer takes a three-point shot during the game against Jackson on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026 in Mill Creek, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
After a 2-6 start to the season, the Panthers have won eight straight, sitting atop Wesco North 3A/2A with a 6-0 league record. Even with at least three players out in each of the first eight games, which came against a tough slate of non-league opponents, Roberts still felt they should have won more games early on.
Often carrying leads into the final minutes, the short-handed Panthers would run out of gas. In its six losses, Snohomish lost by six points or fewer in five of them, and two were by just one point. Now back at full-strength — 10 players received meaningful playing time in Thursday’s win — the Panthers have started to play better and display their depth along this win streak.
“I think this year’s a lot different than most of our years,” said senior Sienna Capelli, who led the Panthers with 20 points and eight rebounds on Thursday. “Because this year we have a lot of depth on our bench, and it’s nice to be able to trust the people that are going in for you. … I know they’re going to go in and give 100 percent of their efforts.”
After Snohomish pulled ahead in the first quarter, Jackson came right back, with Devine hitting a couple shots in the first couple minutes to cut the deficit to 18-16. The Panthers went back up by four following a couple free throws from junior Megan VanDuine before Capelli started to catch a rhythm from the field.
The 5-foot-9 wing sunk a floater following a steal from freshman Terrayia Baisy, then drained a corner 3 a couple minutes later. Capelli extended the lead to 27-17 with a shot from inside the paint off a baseline inbound play, and Rotondo made a couple key rebounds in the final minute before sophomore Grace Gunnerson hit a buzzer-beater jump shot to the end the half 29-19.
Snohomish’s Lola Rotondo steals the ball from Jackson’s Makena Devine during the game on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026 in Mill Creek, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Snohomish got into foul trouble early in the second quarter and sent the Timberwolves to the line a few times, but they only hit 3-of-6 free throws in the frame.
“Our team was just fouling a lot more than we should be,” Capelli said. “Especially giving away shots, (or) me trying to block somebody that probably isn’t going to shoot the ball. … But I think other than that, we were pretty good. We could score well.”
Hammer opened the second half with a 3-pointer to extend the lead to 13, but Jackson capitalized on several turnovers and offensive rebounds to whittle away at the deficit. Devine and junior Hayden Andrina scored on putback layups less than a minute apart midway through the quarter, and junior Alexis Eichhorn splashed a 3 before Andrina scored on a spinning layup to cut it to 36-30 with around 90 seconds left before the fourth. That was as close as it would get, as Snohomish immediately pulled away in the fourth quarter.
“We were down a player (Phaysith), and you just start to run out of gas at some point,” Jackson coach Andrew Grinaker said. “When you have to play a zone and the rotations, you just start to lose some of (those) close-outs. And Snohomish is a good team. If you make mistakes, they’re going to capitalize on them. I was happy that we kept fighting, but I was expecting that they were going to keep punching.”
While Capelli drove the offense and Hammer connected from long-range all game, it was Gunnerson that provided a much-needed spark in the fourth quarter. After junior Lizzie Allyn opened the fourth with a 3 from the top of the key, Gunnerson grabbed a rebound at the defensive end before ultimately feeding Rotondo inside for a layup. The sophomore forward secured a steal on the ensuing Jackson possession, then scored from the paint to make it 43-30 less than 90 seconds into the quarter.
Jackson responded with a pair of layups from Eichhorn and sophomore Abigail Ruiz, respectively, but Gunnerson displayed stellar playmaking yet again, sending a bounce pass down low to Rotondo from outside the arc for another assist.
“(Gunnerson) really understands what we’re doing,” Roberts said. “You could see that she settled our team down and did a great job in the fourth quarter. She probably had four assists and a couple of buckets. She made a huge difference and did a good job defensively in the fourth quarter, too, which is great because there’s games where (Gunnerson) is our ninth or 10th man, and there’s a game like today where, look at the fourth quarter, I should have played her a lot more.”
Snohomish’s Sienna Capelli takes the ball up the court after a steal during the game against Jackson on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026 in Mill Creek, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
The Panthers also attacked the offensive glass at will to maintain possession, with Capelli scoring a putback layup on the fourth offensive rebound of the possession to extend it to 47-34 with less than four minutes remaining. Hammer closed things out by converting an ‘And-1’ with exactly two minutes left and knocking down a final 3 with fewer than 10 seconds remaining to secure the 55-38 final.
Snohomish has positioned itself well for the postseason, digging out of the depths to start the year, but even as the regular season is running out of the runway, the Panthers will continue taking things one game at a time.
“I’m just focusing on ‘the now,’” Hammer said. “I just think that we need to ‘do now well.’ That was our quote our freshman year, and we didn’t ‘do now well’ then (losing three consecutive winner-to-state games to end 2022-23). So I think that’s what I’m focusing on. It’s just day-by-day. We’re going to push ourselves as much as we can today, and then tomorrow we’ll push ourselves even more.”
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