YAKIMA — No high school girl had ever scored more than 40 points in a 2A state tournament game.
No two 2A girls teams had ever combined to score more than 140 points in a 2A state tournament game.
No 2A girls team had ever scored 70 points in a loss.
And the Nathan Hale High School girls basketball had never been to a state tournament.
W.F. West, the heavy favorite to win an 6-vs-11 matchup against the Raiders in the 2A Round of 12 Wednesday morning, was on the wrong side of a historic game to open up the 2A state tournament.
Nathan Hale senior guard Zia-Daye Anderson, the state’s leading scorer and a Boise State signee, broke a 2A state tournament record with 52 points to fuel the upstart Raiders past the Bearcats 83-71 in overtime and end W.F. West’s season. The Bearcats leave Yakima winless for the first time since 2023.
In the second half and overtime, W.F. West scored a total of 33 points and shot 21.7% from the field. Anderson also scored 33 points in the same span, including 24 points in the fourth quarter and overtime. Nathan Hale outscored W.F. West 17-5 in the overtime period after trailing by as many as nine in the fourth quarter.
“She’s going to Boise State for a reason. She’s really good. She made tough shots,” W.F. West head coach Kyle Karnofski said of Anderson. “She’s a heck of a player. She had 52, which is unreal. She makes plays, but she also makes her teammates better.”
It was the Anderson and Joy Cushman show early in the game, as Anderson tallied 15 points in the first quarter, including the first 12 for Nathan Hale off of four 3-pointers, and Cushman scored 11. After a tight first quarter, the score was tied at 19 entering the second.
The first half saw a total of eight ties and two lead changes. W.F. West’s Dilyn Boeck took control midway through the second, leading the Bearcats to a 7-0 run to pull ahead by seven. The EvCo MVP scored 12 of her 14 first-half points in the second quarter as W.F. West led 38-33 at halftime.
W.F. West shot 44.4% from the field in the first half and hit five 3-pointers while forcing a dozen Raiders turnovers and converting them into 14 points. The Bearcats took their biggest lead of the day midway through the third at nine points. To get there, Mallory Gaskill provided the first Bearcats bucket not scored by Cushman, Boeck or Kaitlyn Chloupek.
But Anderson decided to take matters into her own hands, driving into the paint and drawing contact for two free throws before drawing a foul on a 3-point attempt and knocking down all three shots. She cut to the hoop for a layup to slice the margin to two, and Dominique Barker tied the game at 46 with a layup to cap off a 9-0 run.
Cushman halted the Raiders’ spurt with a 3-pointer late in the third, and the Bearcats held a slim 49-47 advantage heading to the fourth.
Anderson connected on her fifth 3-pointer to make it a one-point game two minutes into the final stanza before W.F. West, led by another Cushman triple, ripped off a 9-2 run to take an eight-point lead with four minutes left. The Bearcats got back its nine-point lead with 2:53 remaining, but the Raiders, new to the bright lights of the Yakima Valley SunDome, wouldn’t topple over.
Nathan Hale chipped away by virtue of Anderson continuing to draw fouls and make shots at the charity stripe, and she found a path to the paint for a layup to make it 64-60 with 1:27 left. Chloupek picked up her fifth foul with 65 seconds left, and Anderson knocked down two more foul shots to pierce further into the margin, which was now at two.
Boeck had the ball poked away from her on the ensuing possession, but Hadley Hoffman saved the day by running back in transition and blocking the tying shot. Boeck drew a foul on the next time down and hit both free throws to extend the W.F. West lead to four with 52.6 seconds left.
Anderson’s layup brought the game back to one possession with just under 41 seconds to go, and the Bearcats couldn’t seal the game as Drees Cushman missed a jumper with 25 seconds left. With nine seconds left, Anderson breezed her way to the basket for the game-tying layup.
W.F. West raced down the floor looking for the final shot, which it got from an open Joy Cushman, who couldn’t connect from the right wing, sending the game to overtime. The Bearcats shot just 8 of 35 in the second half, including 2 of 12 from 3-point range.
“I think we just got a little stagnant at times. Sometimes, that’s how basketball works. Shots go in and out and roll around,” Karnofski said. “There’s a few things that we probably could’ve done to help our cause there, but it comes down to making shots.”
Nathan Hale stormed out of the gate in overtime with an Anderson layup and a huge Aubrey Barker triple in the first 30 seconds of the period. Boeck calmed the storm with a 3-pointer. After the two teams exchanged layups, the Raiders blew a 73-71 game open by scoring the final 10 points, sparked by a dagger 3-pointer by Anderson to give her 49 points and a layup to give her 51.
The Round of 12 game set a multitude of records. Anderson broke the 2A girls state individual game scoring record with 52 points, shattering the previous mark of 40 set by Pullman’s Christa Brossman in 2000. She also broke the single-game records for most field goals made with 16, most field goals attempted with 38, most 3-point field goals attempted with 18, and tied the record for most 3-point field goals made with six.
It was also the highest-scoring 2A girls state game ever with 154 combined points to break the previous record of 139 set by Nooksack Valley and Castle Rock in 2002. W.F. West set the record for most points scored in a loss with 71, four above the previous record of 67 set by Sehome in 2008. The Bearcats also broke the record of most field goals attempted by a team with 82, six more than the previous record.
W.F. West could only muster up five points in overtime, shooting 2 of 11. The Bearcats (20-5) season ended with a two-game losing streak, first to Prosser in the opening round and then in the Round of 12 to Nathan Hale.
“It’s not what we planned. That’s not the experience we hoped to get while we were over,” Karnofski said. “But the message was that we got a lot done that I think some people probably didn’t think we could accomplish. That’s a testament to who these girls are as people. I’m really happy for our team for what we’ve accomplished.”
Boeck finished with 30 points, eight rebounds and six assists, while Joy Cushman contributed 22 points and six rebounds. Chloupek added 12 points.
Next season, the Bearcats return Boeck, the Cushman sisters and Chloupek, as well as contributors like Izzy Teeter, Gaskill and Madi McManus. W.F. West graduates four seniors: Hadley Hoffman, Caroline Buzzard, Amanda Linwood, Madi Baine and Dayani Ojeda.
“They’re probably some of the best kids I’ve ever been around. They’re gonna go and do great things in life,” Karnofski said of the senior group. “They’re phenomenal people. They work hard and they help out. They’ve been the heartbeat of our group for the last four or five years, counting some middle school stuff. It’ll be sad to see them go. They are truly amazing young ladies.”
