By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News
After last year’s exhilarating (15-1) regular season, 2nd place finish at District’s, 3rd place finish at Tri-District’s, and history-making 4th place finish at State, the Tulalip Heritage boys basketball program made their much anticipated 2025-2026 debut.
Prior to their opening game, head coach Shawn Sanchey shared, “We’ve been striving to get back that edge we had last year, where the desire was to play our brand of basketball better than anyone. This requires getting back to our discipline and continuing to work hard at each and every practice. We know we have a bunch of talented basketball players, but to win the biggest games when it matters most comes down to doing all the little things at a high level. That’s where our focus is right now to start this new season.”
That focus was on full display in front of a raucous home crowd who packed Francy J. Sheldon gymnasium. From the opening tip, the boys showed why championship aspirations abound. Tulalip jumped out to a 10-0 lead that ballooned all the way to 37-0 before Cedar Park finally got on the board with a made free-throw.
After one quarter of play, the boys led 44-3. Every Hawk starter made at least two buckets in the 1st quarter as the ball was swung from corner to corner and outside-in to find one offensive player after another who was in prime scoring position. The offensive barrage didn’t hinder the boys’ defense either. They were constantly pressing and trapping, which forced too many to count turnovers, many of them resulted in easy Tulalip buckets.
The onslaught continued in the 2nd quarter, where the boys held a 55-5 lead at one point. In the 2nd half, the boys were determined to hit the century mark, which they ultimately did as they came away with an emphatic 106-21 drubbing of Cedar Park on opening night.
Senior guard Davien Parks scored a game-high 33 points, forward Davis Bachand added 18 points, and Tayari Archibald chipped in 14 points. In total ten Hawks players scored a bucket in the blowout.
“Being down a couple starters tonight, I knew I had to be aggressive getting to my spots early,” said Davien post-game. “And as a team, we responded by playing extremely hard and picking up for the guys were missing. We know what the expectations are for this season. Every game we got to play with this level of effort. If we do, then I think we can score 100 points every game.”
For Tayari, the much-heralded little brother of RaeQuan Battle, the game marked his Heritage Hawks debut on the home floor. Asked how nervous he was for this game, he said, “I just tried to stay confident, to be confident, and to be patient knowing the opportunities would come. It feels good to have gotten the W.”
Hawks humbled by Kings one day later
Close to 24-hours later, the Heritage boys traveled south to play an out-of-league game against King’s Senior High School in Shoreline. Tulalip being 1B and King’s 1A, the expectation was the competition would be much bigger and better than what the boys got versus Cedar Park Christan the day before.
As it turns out, King’s would trot out four players taller than the tallest Hawk, and, more importantly, play to that advantage effectively. It didn’t help either that Tulalip was missing two starters, including their center Ziggy Myles-Gilford. Making matters worse, in the early going and the Hawks only trailing by one point, 12-13, point guard J.J. Gray went down with an apparent ankle injury that sidelined him the remainder of the game.
Down three starters and playing undermanned and undersized was quite the undertaking. The boys did their best to keep the game close and continued to execute their sets in the 2nd quarter. With (2:30) to go until halftime, the score was 25-29.
King’s kept playing to their size advantage in the low post and made the most of their decisive rebounding edge. That wore on the smaller Hawks players and eventually led to foul trouble for those unaccustomed to guarding post-players with patience and good footwork. King’s also did a good job of doubling any Hawk ballhandler who made a decisive move to the basket, and forced several offensive foul turnovers.
Late in the 3rd quarter and with Tulalip trailing 31-48, sophomore guard Peyton Hatch provided his team with a much-needed spark. He splashed a 3-pointer setup beautifully by a Davien drive and dish, and then hit the deck to corral a loose ball that led to a Tayari 3-pointer. That mini run forced King’s to call timeout.
The closest the boys would get in the 4th quarter was to within 12 points, 45-57. King’s was just too much on this day given how short-handed the Hawks were. Tulalip ultimately lost 58-74. Davien and Peyton each scored a team-high 13 points, while Tayari added 10 points.
After the game, Peyton, who hit three 3-pointers down the stretch and never let the score of the game diminish his effort nor energy, said, “I just knew I needed have high spirits and keeping playing hard because we were getting a bunch of charge calls against us and that’s tough to play through. I did what I could to help grab rebounds and even got us going a little bit on the offense end. I airballed my first three-point shot, so it definitely felt good to catch fire and make three 3-pointers late in the game.”
Remaining humble in a loss and learning what you could do better to impact the game is something a championship contender does best. That’s not lost on the Hawks coaching staff, especially assistant coach Alec Jones-Smith who played his high school ball at Marysville-Pilchuck, which is divisions above Heritage’s 1B.
“We knew coming into this game that we were the underdog and they were the favorite. They were gonna play that much harder because as the bigger school they don’t want to lose to a smaller one,” explained coach Alec. “The important thing now for us coaches is to instill what we learned from this game into our players. Because we know that later in the season and especially come playoff time, we are going to see bigger and faster players. That’s just basketball. There’s always someone bigger and faster.
“I think being humbled like this early in the season could be the best thing for us,” he continued. “It shows how important it is practice with intention and remain locked-in from game to game. We can’t let a loss like this stay with us all season. We have to accept it, learn from it, and use it as motivation going forward.”