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Health & Fitness

WHS Boys Basketball: It's a New Year, Let's Go.

New year, new season, new faces, but the same goal in mind – to win.

New year, new season, new faces, but the same goal in mind – to win.

For the Woodinville High School Boys basketball team, the 2012-2013 season will be an interesting one to say the least. In 4A KingCo, they will have the challenge of facing teams like Bothell, Skyline, Garfield, Issaquah, Newport, and Redmond.

Suffering a loss to a Mariner High School team that was on a 32-game losing streak last Tuesday, it seems like the Falcons could be facing a tough season ahead. Add that onto a close home loss Thursday night to Snohomish, the team definitely has room for improvement.

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However, the Woodinville community has a continuous hope for the team this year. Those were only the first two games of the season; there are plenty of other opportunities for the Falcons to show what they’re made of.

With Coach Rowe taking the head coaching job at Lake Washington High School over the summer, a new face has stepped up to fill the big shoes left wide open from Rowe’s departure. Mark Folsom, a 1992 Woodinville High School graduate has came back to Woodinville for a job that he says he always wanted to have.

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After graduating Woodinville High School, Folsom went to Seattle Pacific and his senior year, he became the graduate assistant to the boys basketball team. He then went to Boise State where he took a Director of Basketball Associations job for a year and after, he went to Portland State, where he was an assistant coach. After a 1-year stint there, he went back to Boise State where he was an assistant coach for three years. After all that experience, he decided, in a Lebron James fashion, to “take his talents to Woodinville.”

In an interview before practice, Folsom stated: “I always wanted to come back here [to Woodinville] because I have history here and I wanted to come back to make an impact because I put so much time and effort in here.”

Folsom commented that he wanted to “create a bigger and better opportunity than I ever had.”

Though, one of Folsom’s main goals was not directly related to the many aspects of playing basketball on the court. He wants to get the basketball team involved in more community service activities in the local community like reading to kids in the elementary schools or speaking to junior high kids.

He wants his players to be role models.

In relation to the actual basketball team itself and the strategies he wants to employ, Folsom wants to focus a lot on defense. He wants his players to take pride in their defense and to limit their turnovers on offense.

Offense shouldn’t be an issue with a fair amount of good shooters on the team like junior Tommy Wick, senior Jake Miller and new freshman, Tony Miller.

This year is the first year for Woodinville that freshmen could jump up straight to varsity and having such a talented freshman like Miller has served well for the Falcons so far this year. Miller is a talented shooter who can shoot the three and knock it down. However, against the bigger teams in KingCo, it will be interesting to see how Miller, as well as many of the younger players, react and perform.

Folsom said he wants the kids in the program to feel like they are a part of something special and to create something. He wants to mirror the program to that of Coach Maxwell’s football program at Woodinville High School. He basically will “use his blueprint to some degree.”

While observing practice, Folsom commented on how he sees that the players want to win and they want to compete and show off to their maximum potential. He says they are a great group of kids and they are all hungry to learn. Though, 4A KingCo will be a tough division to compete in so there will be no easy wins for the Falcons.

Despite this fact, Folsom said he believed Woodinville would surprise a lot of people this year.

Woodinville Boys Basketball 2012-2013. Let’s go.

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