Like last year, the Sehome girls basketball team opened the 2025-26 season by defeating Ferndale in their non-conference game Tuesday night, Dec. 2. But the Mariners’ 55-46 victory over the visiting Golden Eagles wasn’t the same this time around.
That’s because last year, both teams were young, inexperienced, and felt no pressure. But this season, both squads return almost their entire lineups and have much higher expectations.
“If we can continue to match the energy … we’re creating a recipe for how we can be successful,” said Sehome coach Kim Stensgar, whose squad finished 8-14 last season mainly due to a half-dozen close losses.
The recipe for success was simple and, ironically, the same for both teams: Get others involved on offense besides their all-stars.
For Sehome, that meant getting scoring from someone or several someones besides junior forward Kate Schroeder and sophomore point guard Taylor Turrell. And on Tuesday, the Mariners did just that.
Gwen Gates came off the bench to lift Sehome with 10 points, and Lily Jude, a senior transfer from Bellingham, added 8 points. And despite being the focus of Ferndale’s pressure defense, Schroeder still led both teams with 15 points, and Turrell managed 11 points.
“They’re a tough team and super physical,” said Stensgar. “We knew they’d try to take away two of our people (Schroeder and Turrell), so their teammates had to step up.”
Gates, a senior captain who was sidelined almost all of last season with injuries, stepped up the most.
When the Mariners fell behind by 10 points in the first quarter after going without a field goal for the first seven minutes, the 5-foot-8 guard hit two buckets, including a 3-pointer, to help Sehome take a 23-19 halftime lead, a lead it would never relinquish.
“It’s been a long road for her,” said Stensgar. “She is so selfless. It was nice to see her have that success (Tuesday).”
Schroeder, whose 3-pointer gave Sehome its first lead with one minute left in the second quarter, said, “We started off slow and were a little frantic because things weren’t going our way. But the second quarter, we really pushed it. It’s great to start on a win.”
For Ferndale, getting offensive help for its three all-league seniors — Abbey White, Kayla Washington, and Jilly Fox — is still a work in progress. White finished with 14 points and Washington had 12, but Fox was held to 5 points thanks in part to the defense of Sehome’s 6-foot-1 Aspen Barge.
Junior Kayla Lee picked up some of the slack with 7 points, but no other Golden Eagle had more than four points, and Ferndale got only four points from its bench.
“They battled and worked really hard,” said Ferndale coach Terri Yost, especially praising the Golden Eagles’ defensive effort. “But we’re still learning how to come together. That’s what happens in first games.”
White agreed. “We were excited and pumped,” she said of the Golden Eagles’ 14-4, first-quarter blitz. “But it’s important to get the feeling of playing together. We’re lucky this was a non-conference game.”
Very true. Despite being a great test for both teams, the game did not count in the Northwest Conference standings. The two will square off again in a NWC game on Jan. 20 at Ferndale.
And the Ferndale faithful only need to look to last season for hope. That’s when the Mariners won the early non-league game, 49-39, but the Golden Eagles won the league counter later in the year, 45-32, on the way to finishing 10-10.
The two teams are in action again on Friday, when Ferndale is at Jackson and Sehome is at Squalicum in another non-conference contest.
Sehome 55, Ferndale 46
Ferndale 14 5 16 11—46
Sehome 4 19 18 14—55
Ferndale: Larrabee 4, Gilday 2, Fox 5, Dawson 2, Washington 12, Jefferson, Tom, Collins, White 14, Lee 7.
Sehome: Gates 10, Gustafson 2, Turrell 11, Panagos, Barge 5, Schroeder 15, Jude 8, Ke. Reeves 4.
