By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
Repeating as champions is one of the most challenging feats in sports. The Garfield Lady Bulldogs basketball team, the defending state champions, is embarking on that mission yet again as they try to win their fifth consecutive state 3A title.
This season, the Bulldogs are led by senior Jayda Lewis, whose experience and connection to her teammates make her an essential part of the team’s effort to repeat their success. Despite starting the season at .500, Lewis remains confident.
“My thoughts about my senior year, I’d say, are sad because it’s like my last time playing with this group of girls at Garfield, but also happy because I can feel and see the potential of us winning again, and I believe in this team,” said Lewis. “All my four years throughout Garfield, I would say there hasn’t been one time that the team hasn’t had team chemistry. This year is so good, and I feel like we click, like even with newcomers, we click right away. We hang out outside of school, which also builds on our chemistry, and I just feel like we’re sisters.”
Head coach Roy Smiley shares Lewis’s optimism, emphasizing the team’s cohesiveness and grit. He acknowledges the challenges of transitioning after graduating key players but is quick to assert that this year’s squad is not in rebuilding mode.
“My team is gritty,” says Smiley. “They’re young, they’re learning, but they’re also champions. There’s a lot of returning pieces, there’s leadership pieces, there’s new pieces, but they’re together, and it’s a fun unit.”
“It’s not the early successes some of the past teams, some of the former teams, but the goals, the mission, the end goals are still the same, and they’re still intact,” added Smiley. “I think once we get fully healthy, once we get all the pieces, and I think we’re at that point to move forward and put this first half of the season behind us, we’ll be ready to go.”
As it relates to Lewis, Smiley says that having her on the court makes his job much easier.
“Jayda Lewis is a coach’s favorite, man. You love going to battle with her. She’s a fighter, she’s a winner, a leader,” said Smiley. “She leaves it all out on the court every time she steps on the court. She plays both sides of the ball. She plays multiple positions for you. The main thing I like about her is she takes the challenges of wanting to lock people down and guard on opposing teams’ best players and really making that her focus and doing that for the team.”
When the season begins, basketball teams, through practice and game experience, begin to define their character. Success and adversity chip away at the raw talents assembled, revealing and refining players as they discover who they are and what they are capable of. The Lady Bulldogs, like all teams, possess strengths and weaknesses that shape their journey toward becoming champions.
Lewis firmly believes in her teammates’ capabilities but knows that achieving a repeat will require hard work and development as a unit.
“I’d probably say staying together for sure,” says Lewis, describing areas for improvement. “I feel like once one person breaks down, then the whole team breaks down. And then another thing is our defense for sure. I feel like with our speed and talent that we have this year, we need to use that more on defense and frustrate people and make them uncomfortable. Throughout all four quarters, we have to give all we’ve got.”
Her confidence and trust in her teammates are evident when discussing the team’s strengths.
“I would probably say our communication with each other is our greatest strength,” says Lewis. “I would say our hustle on offense for sure. Our willingness to do whatever it takes, no matter what type of adversity it is, and always having each other’s back.”
Lewis’s leadership, empathy, and ability to uplift her teammates are key aspects of her role on the team.
“My strengths are being a leader. I feel like me as a person, once I see one of my teammates down, I always like to go help them, uplift them, and be like, ‘It’s OK to make a mistake. Everyone’s not perfect.’ So, I like to keep their heads up,” says Lewis. “Being a leader on the team includes handling the ball through pressure, running plays, getting everyone in the right spot, and making sure they’re in the right spot and just helping them out.”
Coach Smiley acknowledges that injuries and shooting consistency are challenges this team must overcome. However, he is confident in their “experience, size, and toughness.”
“Our strengths—we lost really good players that have played in the last championship game and the last three years. But with players like Jayda and Sarah, with their experience, size, toughness, ball handling, I would say those are our strengths,” says Smiley. “We’ve got two people out with knee injuries, ACLs, and they’re returners from last year. They are two ball handlers, two shooters, that would help us out a lot. I would say right now behind the arc will be our main weakness, but other than that, we run our sets, we play our defense, we do pretty much everything the same.”
Despite who is on the court with her this season, Lewis is ready for the challenge, determined to make her senior year memorable. Though she dreams of playing collegiate basketball, possibly at the University of Oregon—her focus remains on the present and trying to help bring another state championship to Garfield High School.
“I hope to play in college, but I’m still learning as a person too, but also still having that thought in my mind that yeah, I want to go to college and play,” says Lewis. “I really like Oregon because Coach Tre—he’s like a close person to me ever since he was my coach here at Garfield. Then he went on to be an assistant coach for Oregon, so Oregon’s always been my school.”
