Freshman orientation with Carmen Gfeller

Corey Baerlocher begins each day at the tiny school in Steptoe, a blip on the map 10 miles north of Colfax, itself a dot that sits 10 miles northwest of Pullman on Washington's Palouse.

The school in Steptoe serves kids ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade, most of them being raised on area farms that produce wheat, barley and, more recently, garbanzo beans.

The school in Steptoe has three classrooms and this year has 50 kids. Ten of them are in sixth, seventh and eighth grades and call Baerlocher -- Mr. Baerlocher, please -- their teacher.

When the students finish eighth grade, they shift their schooling down the road to Colfax High, where Baerlocher is the girls' basketball coach. He also coaches the school's junior high team.

If you haven't heard of Colfax's girls' basketball program, everything about it will sound familiar. It's the prep version of the Montana Lady Griz program, in miniature.

The Bulldogs have won nine state titles, at the Class 1A and 2B levels, since the turn of the century, and the players enjoy celebrity-level status in a town that is a few households shy of 3,000 people.

Players are stopped at the grocery store to be told how well they've been doing. People have been known to pull into a gas station, talk about the previous night's game with one of the Bulldogs, then drive off, not having needed gas but always up for some basketball discussion.

Colfax is the team that everyone wants to beat, meaning every game on the schedule each winter is one that's been circled by every opponent. It's been like that for decades.

"We have an incredible tradition," says Baerlocher, who began coaching at Colfax in 2002-03. "Sometimes I worry about the weight our kids have to bear, because they're not just playing for each other. It's for the community. It's for past teams." Sound familiar?

A few years back, Baerlocher made photocopies of the girls' basketball page from the school yearbook, one piece of office paper for each team that advanced to the state tournament, many predating his arrival.

It's a thick file, and he carries it with him in his bag. It's courtside at practices, not far off during games. It's a reminder, mostly for him, that he's only a link in the chain that helps bind and unite Colfax as a town.

"It's a reminder that this was here way before I got here," he says. "This tradition isn't about me. You're a part of it, but you're not it.

"Wearing a uniform that says Colfax on it in the state of Washington is pretty special."

The symmetry with Montana -- long the dominant power in the Big Sky Conference, the program every other team in the league has measured itself against and aspired to be, the loyal following, the annual expectations and the burden they can be -- is nearly seamless.

It's no surprise, then, that Carmen Gfeller found a home in the Lady Griz program, the Colfax of Montana.

It was actually her brother that discovered it first. Brandon played his final season with the Grizzlies in 2016-17 and helped pave the way for his younger sister.

"I remember coming for some of his games. Everyone cares so much and everyone comes to the games, which is fun, because your hard work is being appreciated," she says. "It reminded me of my home town."

The commonalities extend further. It was a dark month for both programs, the Lady Griz and the Bulldogs, was March 2017. Things just weren't quite right for either, not like people had come to expect over the years.

Montana, which set a standard of 20 wins every winter and competing for Big Sky titles, wrapped up a seven-win campaign by losing in the opening round of the league tournament in Reno. The Lady Griz were out before the tournament had even been pared down to eight teams.

It was just days earlier, at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, that Colfax had gone through the motions. First came a loss to Davenport, then another to Saint George's.

"It was the first time at the state tournament that we didn't play on Saturday for a trophy. It was a sick feeling," says Baerlocher, who had tweaked his approach to coaching that year.

The team didn't run as much in practice. The demands for perfection weren't quite there. Other things slipped. It was still Colfax, but it didn't feel like the program's heart was there or everything else that had made the Bulldogs special over the years.

Baerlocher was coaching the players how he thought they wanted to be coached, even if it was different from the way that had proved to be so successful in the past. "I was a fairly subdued coach that year," he said. "We didn't do anything we had in the past."

He walked out of the locker room following the team's 0-2 finish at state after delivering a message. "This is where we're at because of how we do things. You've got to figure out what you want."

There was crying. And Josie Riebold, a junior on that team, along with Gfeller, wasn't having it. Tears are for hurt, for disappointment. This was neither. The Bulldogs had brought this upon themselves. They hadn't earned anything more than what they'd accomplished.

"Are you f***ing serious?" Riebold yelled at her teammates. "We were the ones who decided whether or not we were going to play well, so this is all our own fault. Stop crying."

Baerlocher, who was getting exactly what he wanted in response, was almost out the door.

"Screw it. Let's go back to the old ways," she yelled to her coach. "The old way was pushing ourselves every single day in practice. If we messed up, we redid it. We ran lines every practice. I loved my teammates to death, but we needed to get tougher."

It's what comes naturally for so many around Colfax, their collars as blue as the Bulldogs' uniforms, when trying times arrive. They just need to be pushed from time to time, says Riebold, who was raised on a ranch just outside of town.

The Gfeller place, with 300 acres of wheat, barley and garbanzos surrounding it, with more land scattered elsewhere, was 20 minutes outside of Colfax. Stan and Lori had three sons before a daughter came along.

Her first memories are of work. "We'd cut the grass on my brother's land and turn it into hay bales, and those would have to be loaded. It was usually us kids. The boys would laugh and say I didn't do anything, but I did," she says.

"You always had your set of chores to do. First thing when you woke up every morning, you went out and fed the cows and the rest of the animals. Then you get ready for school, have breakfast, then you go."

Gfeller started at the school in Steptoe before transitioning to Colfax. There she met Riebold, two girls at opposite ends of any measurable spectrum but best friends anyway.

"Looking at the two of us, we're two completely different people. She's totally caring and loving. I'm not," says Riebold, a freshman at Wyoming, the only one of Colfax's five seniors from last season who isn't playing college sports this year. She tells it like it is, no feelings spared.

"People ask all the time how we became best friends. It's because we're so different. We pull the best out of each other. She knows too much about me. We could never not be best friends."

The best friends were on the bench in March, once again in Spokane, this time in the Class 2B state title game. The Bulldogs had gone 22-4 thus far that winter in response to Riebold calling out her teammates 12 months prior and the program going back to its roots.

But facing Davenport, the defending state champion, Colfax was down 46-39 with less than four minutes to play.

It wasn't about coaching at that point. For most teams, that would have been it, the end of the game, the end of the season. Not this group, not after what they'd gone through and dedicated themselves to the previous 12 months.

"All year they held each other accountable and called each other out. They decided they were going to compete in everything they did, and you need to have that, people who can be a little nasty once in a while," said Baerlocher.

"If I was going to be walking down a dark alley, those are the kids I'd want with me. If anything comes up, there is going to be a beatdown."

Those were the players, the fighters, the protectors of friends and teammates, who sat on the bench that day, looking up at a clock that read 3:43. The deficit was seven points. The Bulldogs had only scored 39 to that point. The math wasn't in their favor, but there was more to it in that moment.

"The only thing Corey said was, 'We still have three minutes.' That was it," says Riebold. That opened the door for Gfeller, who kept it simple as well. "Let's go!" she yelled, loud enough that it should have sent shivers up and down the opposite bench. Colfax wasn't done.

"At that point we knew there was no way we weren't winning that game." Final: Colfax 53, Davenport 47, the Bulldogs' first state title since 2014 courtesy of a game-closing 14-1 run.

Gfeller's three-game averages: 24.7 points on 70 percent shooting and eight rebounds. It came just months after she'd led Colfax to the state volleyball title. She was named tournament MVP at both.

For the season she averaged 20.3 points on 58 percent shooting and 9.4 rebounds. She was named the Associated Press Washington Player of the Year.

Of course that's why Montana coach Shannon Schweyen wanted Gfeller on her team. Gfeller is a winner. There are other winners out there, but not all have the background that Gfeller has. Or the priorities.

"She really appreciates where she comes from. Family is important to her, and we're lucky, because that played a part in her decision to come to Montana," said Schweyen.

Schweyen means Gfeller's older brother, Brandon, who's still in town, preparing to start a job next month as a CPA, but Gfeller herself found family elsewhere in Missoula as well.

"When I came for my visit, I loved how close the team was. They made me feel right at home right away, and that's not easy to do," she says.

A week after Colfax's state championship in March, Gfeller and Riebold heard about a third-grade team that was going to a tournament of its own and was holding a practice later that day.

It didn't feel like that long ago that they had been that age, looking up to Colfax players who seemed to win a state title every year.

"You'd see these high school girls and be like, Oh my god, I want to be like them," says Riebold. "I want to be as good as them. I need to push myself to get better so I can be like them."

Now Gfeller and Riebold were the ones who were being looked at in awe. They got permission from its coaches and made a surprise appearance at the team's practice that afternoon.

"It was pretty cool to go in and talk to them," says Riebold. "We practiced with them and showed them some moves, and the look in these little girls' eyes. To them we were stars because we'd gone out and done something.

"To be able to give back to them was amazing. It's not just doing it for yourself. It's about doing it for the legacy."

It's what Gfeller is now doing at Montana, and it all feels so familiar, the move from Colfax to Missoula. New city, same basketball vibe.

The Lady Griz didn't go from an early out at their 2017 tournament appearance to champions last March, one year later, like Colfax did. It's what Gfeller and her fellow freshmen have been challenged to do, to reclaim the glory during their time in Missoula and to make it repeatable, just it's been at Colfax.

She was a redshirt candidate when the semester began, but that didn't last. Gfeller and Schweyen met the day before the season opener at Gonzaga to talk it over. It was left unresolved, with Schweyen wanting to get 10 more practices out of Gfeller before making up her mind.

"I was okay with either," says Gfeller, who was stretching before a morning practice last month when Schweyen told her she was going to pull the redshirt. Gfeller was going to play. She was just showing the coaches too much in practice. They needed her on the court this winter.

Within all the commotion surrounding Montana's School Day Game against Providence on Nov. 20, this was lost on most of the 6,610 in attendance: When the team broke from its huddle to start the second quarter, out walked Gfeller for the first time.

"I was ready. It was exciting. The atmosphere was something else," she says. "It was pretty fun to have my first game be in front of all those kids who were so excited to be there."

She was a revelation in her debut: 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting, with two rebounds, two assists and three steals. In just 20 minutes. She followed that up with seven points on 3-of-4 shooting against South Dakota four days later.

"She's played very confidently for a freshman. She doesn't look intimidated. When she steps on the floor, she thinks she belongs," said Schweyen.

With Kylie Frohlich making her debut last weekend at the Lady Griz Classic, all four true freshmen are locked into playing this year.

They had a Venn diagram of a connection before they'd even arrived on campus in August. Frohlich and Jordyn Schweyen were teammates at Sentinel High in Missoula and had played summer ball with Katie Mayhue back when she lived in Wyoming.

After Mayhue moved to Oregon, after her sophomore year, she would become travel-ball teammates with Gfeller.

"That made it a little more comfortable and easier to spark up a friendship," says Gfeller. "They've been great. It's a tight-knit group. I hope we're together for a long time."

But Colfax, you get the sense, will always be her home base. "It was a fantastic place to grow up. I was very lucky to be born and raised there," she says.

For now, though, as she told Baerlocher on the team's trip to Spokane to face Gonzaga last month, "I'm in the right place." Seems it's always been that way.

University of Montana Athletics

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Kylie Frohlich

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Katie Mayhue

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