Kayla DeWitt

[wbtfg]

From today's missoulian...

COLUMBIA FALLS - Kayla DeWit started garnering attention from Division I basketball coaches as a 10th-grader; Nick Emerson had to wait a while longer.

Together, they're 12-and-a-half feet of silky basketball moves, leading their respective Columbia Falls teams into the postseason. This is nothing new for the boys, who won three State A titles from 2003-06, finished second at state in 2009 and took third last March.

For the girls - the WildKats, as the distaff Wildcats are called - this is fairly new territory. The school's lone state girls' basketball title came in 1983, and in coach Dan Fairbank's first season back at the helm in 2007-08, the WildKats went 3-17.

Daunted, Fairbank looked up his old Hellgate High School coach, Eric Hays, and reworked his offense. Then he added Kayla and Kelsey DeWit to the formula and came up with three straight Northwestern A crowns.

****

Kelsey DeWit is now playing for Montana Tech in Butte, leaving Kayla as a centerpiece instead of half of Columbia Falls' twin towers.

Heading into this week's divisional tournament in Ronan - both the Wildcats and WildKats have byes into Friday's semifinals - the 6-foot-2 DeWit leads the league in scoring at 19.9 points a game, and rebounding at 11.2.

She's done all this, plus earned a scholarship to play at Montana State in Bozeman, while being less than 100 percent.

"What a lot of people don't know is she's playing on two bad feet," said Fairbank. "She broke a foot a couple weeks before the end of the season last year, and kept playing. She has plantar fasciitis.

"Then last week we're playing Polson for the conference championship, and she has 29 points and 14 rebounds. The next night we're playing a good Frenchtown team, and she goes for 20 and 17."

DeWit remembers the Polson game, which Columbia Falls won 73-64, in particular.

"Running down the court the first time, they had three girls on me," she said. "And I was like, ‘Man. How can I do this?' But that was also probably my best game this year."

She wasn't the only WildKat having a big night. Jonna Werner, Danielle Gilley and Hope Burlage also hit double figures. That balance has lessened the burden on Columbia Falls' big gun and helped the WildKats bounce back from an oh-and-4 start.

DeWit was getting her points against a tough schedule that included Stevensville, which has a talented post player in Alycia Sims, and AA foes Kalispell Flathead and Missoula Sentinel.

"I knew it wasn't going to be like we were going to be undefeated all season," said DeWit. "But I was ready for conference to start."

The WildKats are 8-0 against their league foes this season, and in fact have lost just two conference games since the younger DeWit joined the varsity.

But the recent run of seven wins in eight games has just as much to do with the rest of the WildKats.

Gilley had 13 points in a win over Libby, and Werner had eight points in the first win over Polson, by a 45-40 score on Feb. 5. Burlage broke out with 21 points against Thompson Falls - DeWit missed that game with illness - and has averaged 10 points over the last eight games.

"She's been way awesome," DeWit said of Burlage, a sophomore. "She really stepped up and it's been really cool."

[bpcats]

Kayla sounds like just the type of player that will help us immediately, but it may be better to allow her to redshirt and fully heal. That type of injury can be a recurring one if you don't take care of it.

[c.falls cat]

for those wbb fans in the bozeman area wanting to watch Kayla play, c-falls will be at the state tournament in belgrade this weekend. i believe their first game is thurs. at 8pm

[Gidal Kaiser]

DeWit will be playing Belgrade in the first round. I will have blog tidbits on her and Jackie Elliot by Sunday in a "scouting report" blog. I will be entrenched in Belgrade all weekend. Elliot and Billings Central play at 1 p.m. on Thursday.