Kierra Reese, Ava DePew, Presley Harris and Ellalee Wortham have known each other for several years.
The foursome are not only friends off the basketball court, they’re also courteous rivals on the hardwood during the winter high school season. Reese will be a senior at Arlington High School and DePew a senior and Harris and Wortham juniors at Stanwood High School this fall.
Since the 2021-22 winter season, Arlington is 5-0 against Stanwood. But during the last few days of June in the summers of 2023 and 2024, the single Eagle and trio of Spartans have been teammates in eastern Washington for the Spokane Hoopfest Association’s annual 3-on-3 basketball tournament.
For the past two years, the quartet has represented Wesco well by winning the championship in their division. The group has played at Spokane Hoopfest for many years, even before the pandemic in 2020, but they played for different teams then.
Proclaimed as “the largest 3-on-3 (tournament) in the world,” Spokane Hoopfest features more than 400 courts for more than 6,000 teams across 45 city blocks. This June was the association’s 33rd year hosting the event.
The foursome’s team name? Awesome Mix 12. “Awesome Mix” represents the various array of colors on their jerseys, and “12” reflects the grade most of them would be that upcoming year. Last year, their name was Awesome Mix 11, since two of the four players were juniors that upcoming fall.
In 2023, the group played in the High School Elite division. They walked through their competition, never dropping a game. This year, there weren’t enough teams in the high school division to fill a bracket, so the Awesome Mix 12 were put into the Women’s Competitive bracket, which consisted of teams with players in high school and also adults who were currently in college or recently graduated. This posed a different challenge than what the four Wesco rivals-turned-teammates were used to facing in the winter.
The tournament format for each game was 25 minutes or first team to 20 points. If there was a tie and overtime was needed, the first team to score two points was victorious. Baskets made inside the arc were one point and outside the arc were two points.
The Awesome Mix 12 won their first two games on Saturday, but it was a different story the following day.
They faced a team called the Wrens their first game on Sunday, which beat them by one point in overtime. The two teams were tied 17-17 after 25 minutes, and the Awesome Mix 12 took a one-point lead to make it 18-17 before the Wrens scored the winning basket for the 19-18 victory.
The foursome dropped into the loser’s bracket where they played another three games before facing the Wrens again in the semifinals. But in this outing, the Awesome Mix 12 bested their opponents, resulting in split victories and scheduling a rematch to determine the ultimate champion.
In what was the Awesome Mix 12’s sixth game on Sunday, the 25-minute clock hit zero in the championship game, and the Eagle-Spartan team had 19 points to the Wrens’ 15, wrapping up a long but rewarding weekend.
“We wanted to beat them,” Wortham said. “That first game was so close, and we knew we could beat them. So we climbed our way back up, and we knew we were going to beat them twice.”
The two-day tournament also created a little hiccup on Sunday before the team’s semifinals match. It was sunny, 80-degree weather all of Saturday and most of Sunday until rain clouds filled the sky and released what felt like buckets of hail and rain, flooding the streets and courts. After about a 15-minute pause to let the sun peak back out and dry the courts, play resumed.
“(The Wrens) were really good. Each player was all-around skill,” Reese said. “There wasn’t just one big (player) or one shooter. All of them could do just about everything, which I feel matched up really well with me and my teammates. So it was kind of just us going back and forth like all three games.”
Indoor basketball and outdoor basketball have a similar concept: Use your teammates to score a basket. But playing outdoors still posed challenges for the Wesco veterans.
“In the gym, I’m able to get the ball and push down the court and see the court very well, which is really nice. But then in three-on-three, you have a smaller court, so it’s less to work with,” DePew said. “My defense is great in both. I got a lot of steals this weekend. And being able to make reads, I feel like I made really good passes the whole weekend, which also translate(s) to my high school season.”
Wortham said in a gymnasium, the floor is flat, so footing is level when shooting. Outside, the court could have potholes or cracks, or even be slanted uphill or downhill, creating an uneven playing surface. Harris added that the atmosphere of outdoor three-on-three ball is also “scrappy” and somewhat more individualized with three players on attack and defense compared to five in high school.
Reese said three-on-three was similar to high school ball in that the tempo was “go, go, go,” and there’s an intensity when setting up plays and making pass-and-cut moves to gain space from the defender. The main difference, she said, was not having to run full court, allowing for more stamina. But also with only three people, DePew said the length of the court didn’t feel shorter because of the constant movements.
“In high school, it’s definitely more like ‘execute your plays, know what you’re doing.’ It’s pretty strict. But I like three-on-three a lot because it’s a lot more free,” Reese said. “You can play basketball however you like to play basketball. There’s no like set plays you need to know. You can literally just go out and be yourself, and I think that’s one of the best things about three-on-three.”
Reese and DePew will already be graduated when the tournament returns next June, so the group will have to compete in the women’s division. But before next summer, they’ll see each other again one last time as high school rivals in the winter.
“I’ve grown to know each and every one of them, and they’re great players and people,” Harris said. “We’re all really good friends, and that helps the chemistry while we’re playing. It has a big impact on the encouragement that we have for each other.”
DePew said: “It’s all love. I think even when we see (Arlington) in the winter, we still love to be able to compete against them. But we also want that win even more so we can hold it over them (until June).”
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