by By Michael Swisher, coachesaid.com
STATE FAIR ARENA – There may be no instant fix for broken bones, but it turns out there’s something that can certainly dull the pain.
Gold.
Icing a broken pinkie after her Anadarko team had just dethroned top-ranked and defending champ Fort Gibson 46-37 in the Class 4A girls’ championship game, Kylie Parker was living proof.
With time winding down in the third quarter, Parker went up for a rebound and the ball smashed into her left pinkie.
“It stung really bad,” said the junior. “I’ve never broken anything before and I kind of panicked because it hurt really bad.”
Parker got her pinkie and ring finger taped together between quarters and then sent the Warrior fans into a frenzy as she scored eight points in a game-deciding 11-3 run to start the fourth quarter.
“I thought she just had a cut, so I told her to get back out there,” Zinn said about Parker. “I had no idea it was broken. I’ll cut her some slack on her toughness now.”
Parker buried two 3-pointers in the first 1:20 of the first as the run turned a three-point Anadarko edge into a 38-27 cushion with three minutes to play.
“It was an amazing feeling,” she said of the hot start to the fourth quarter. “I knew they were going in as soon as they left my hand.”
The title was Anadarko’s second to go along with the 2005 crown it won. Fort Gibson finishes as runner-up for the fifth time overall and fourth since 2006.
The victory was Anadarko’s 25th straight to end the season and it snapped a 20-game Fort Gibson win streak. Anadarko’s lone loss was to 5A No. 1 Shawnee in the finals of the Mid-America Classic in late December.
That run shocks Zinn, the first-year coach who was implementing a new style of play, especially on defense.
“I thought it would take a year or two for them to get a feel for what we were trying to do,” he said. “The effort and conditioning it was going to take, I just thought it would take a while.
“For them to grasp it within the year is amazing.”
Anadarko held Fort Gibson to just four field goals in the middle two quarters, forced nine turnovers in the fourth and didn’t allow a Fort Gibson player to score in double figures.
The second-ranked Lady Warriors led by as many as 13 points when Ashley Beatty scored a layup with 2:03 to play. However, poor free throw shooting and a couple of Fort Gibson 3-pointers later and it was still a game.
The Lady Tigers pulled to within seven with 1:16 to play as Taylor London buried a 3-pointer.
She was one of three Lady Tigers to make one in the quarter. Jodi Glover did as well and led the team with eight points.
However, Fort Gibson never got closer than seven points in the final 3:46.
“I knew it when I woke up this morning; I felt we were going to win,” Parker said. “Even when they came back, I knew we were going to win it.”
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