OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
OUR VIEW
Be savvy to
signs of abuse
E
arly intervention
and education play a
crucial role in curb-
ing abusive patterns among
young people, behaviors
that can permanently
damage lives if permitted to
continue.
Our interview last week
with The Harbor’s teen
outreach coordinator Erin
Hofseth was an illuminat-
ing glimpse at the ugly
underside of too many
youthful relationships. The
staff at The Harbor, our
region’s nonprofit advocacy
group for victims of domes-
tic and sexual violence, wit-
ness how these patterns
reverberate through society.
There are no lower or
Erin Hofseth
upper boundaries in the
age range of people who
There are no
suffer and perpetuate vio-
lence within intimate part- lower or upper
nerships. Awareness has
grown in recent years about boundaries in
how vulnerable older adults the age range
sometimes are victim-
of people who
ized by those who should
love, respect and care for
suffer and
them. But when it comes to
perpetuate
teens — beyond well-pub-
violence
licized bullying problems
— many of us remain bliss- within intimate
fully ignorant of the ways
in which early relationships partnerships.
can morph into something
destructive.
We should all be deeply concerned by the estimate that “1.5
million teenagers are abused by a dating partner nationwide in a
year. … One in three girls will be purposely hit, slapped, punched,
abused in some way.” Beyond this, many parents will be shocked
to learn that “digital abuse … Pressuring for nudes and sexting is
a really big thing.” This digital abuse can rip up reputations and
leave long-term psychological scars.
Beyond obvious warnings about sexting, parents and others
with leadership roles in young lives can clearly help young people
of any gender learn to identify warning signs about abusive rela-
tionships, both in their own lives and those of their friends.
“Once a person is enmeshed in an abusive relationship, it’s
really hard to get out of it. It’s really hard to kind of see it when
you’re in the cycle,” Hofseth said. Being savvy to the signs can
help people of any age from becoming snared in situations from
which it’s hard to get out.
Some of the things to watch for:
• One partner asserting control over the other partner, and using
things like isolation, controlling what they wear and what they do,
who they’re friends with, using social status to control them.
• Taking manipulative or coercive steps to sever a partner’s
connections with friends who might provide a lifeline.
• Obvious physical signs, like bruising.
• “If a parent has a child who is usually confident and secure,
decisive, compassionate about things at school, and they start to
see kind of abnormal insecurity … that’s part of that cycle of tear-
ing them down to make them feel dependent on the abuser.”
If you see these signs, either in your own relationship or in that
of someone you love, reach out to The Harbor at 1361 Duane St.
in Astoria for additional help and advice: 503-325-3426 office,
503-325-5735 hotline.
LETTERS WELCOME
Letters should be exclusive to
The Daily Astorian.
Letters should be fewer than
350 words and must include the
writer’s name, address and phone
numbers. You will be contacted
to confirm authorship.
All letters are subject to edit-
ing for space, grammar and, on
occasion, factual accuracy. Only
two letters per writer are printed
each month.
Letters written in response to
other letter writers should address
the issue at hand and, rather than
mentioning the writer by name,
should refer to the headline and
date the letter was published.
Discourse should be civil and
people should be referred to in a
respectful manner.
Submissions may be sent in
any of these ways:
E-mail to editor@dailyasto-
rian.com; online at www.dailyas-
torian.com; delivered to the Asto-
rian offices at 949 Exchange St.
and 1555 N. Roosevelt in Seaside
or by mail to Letters to the Editor,
P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
The championship that got away
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
S
EASIDE — The basketball
Gulls have yet to win a state
championship. But they’ve sure
come close. As they look ahead to
the tournament this week, players
past, present and future are watching
a team with a long legacy of success.
Mark Wickman’s name comes up
almost immediately in every conver-
sation of Seaside’s basketball stars.
“I had a great player, Mark Wick-
man,” Coach Larry Elliott, who led
the team from 1971-96, said. “He
went on to Linfield, was a little
All-American academically, as well
as basketball.”
Seaside has
never won a state
title, but Wick-
man’s scoring dom-
inance — abetted
by the play of his
teammates — in the 1973-74 season
brought them close.
Seaside alum and 1973-74 bas-
ketball team member Scott Maltman
recalled “some good athletes those
years: Mark Wickman, Lee Wilson,
my younger brother Michael, Frank
Sheppard was our center. Mike Hart-
man was the other guard my senior
year.”
Others in a team photo include
Mitch Mooney, Tom Bates, Josh
Gizdavich, Fritz Beckford and Jim
Norling.
Catching up
Wickman is not easy to catch up
with today — he’s frequently on the
road as a financial planner — but we
did manage to catch him for a phone
conversation on one of his drives in
southern Oregon.
Wickman transferred to Sea-
side High School from a small reli-
gious school on Washington’s Olym-
pic Peninsula for the 1972-73 school
year.
“The two prior years, the Gulls
hadn’t won many games,” Wick-
man said.
The team finished 6-4 in the very
tough Cowapa League in 1972-73,
beating two league powerhouses,
Scappoose and Tillamook, during the
regular season. Wickman was picked
for first-team All-League. Dave
Allen, Dave Butler and Tom Malt-
man gained second-team honors, set-
ting the next season’s stage.
“I knew that going into the ’73-
74 season we could be a very good
team,” Wickman said. “We were big,
we had guards, shooters, we started
6-6, 6-5, 6-4 and we had 6-5, 6-4
coming off the bench as well.”
The Gulls reeled off a 9-1 record
by early January, the only loss com-
ing to Portland’s Class 3A Jackson.
Seaside was ranked No. 1 in the
Class 2A Associated Press poll.
“Oh my goodness, it was crazy,”
Wickman said. “Just crazy. We won
our tournament and another tourna-
ment. The gym was packed through-
out the year. The No. 1 ranking was
something people really got behind.”
You think “Go Gulls” fever is big
this year?
“We had a very good following
on the road,” Wickman said. “This
was the event, every Tuesday, Friday
and Saturday night in town to go to,
and people went.”
Big games
The season had its share of big
games.
Wickman set a school scoring
record against Clatskanie, pouring in
38 points, 24 in the second half. He
also hauled down 24 rebounds and
had eight steals.
Cascade was dominant, as
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
The Seaside marching band raises their instruments during a free
throw as Seaside faced off against Cascade in round one of the 4A
State Championship Friday in Seaside.
were the highly ranked Rainier
Columbians.
“I had a game where I was 15-15
from the field and they still beat us,”
Wickman said. “They just had our
number. They had an All-State guy
that was about my size, and another
guy, second team All-State.”
Looking back at the record, Wick-
man’s memory holds true. In a Feb-
ruary 1974 game, the Columbians
shot 80 percent in the first half and
90 percent in the second half to trip
up Seaside.
The level of play remained high
all year, as did the excitement. A Jan-
uary contest brought what the Sea-
side Signal’s sportswriter called “car-
diac basketball.”
Scott Maltman was the hero of
a showdown with Neah-Kah-Nie,
making a layup in the final second of
the game to win 48-46.
In another buzzer-beater, senior
forward Beckford gave the Gulls an
50-48 overtime win against Scap-
poose with a reverse layup with 14
seconds on the clock. That win put
the Gulls into the State 2A Tourna-
ment in Eugene.
Their first matchup was against
No. 2 Cascade. The game pitted two
All-State centers — Jeff Koenig
played the position for Cascade —
and though it was the first game of
the tournament, it was considered the
jewel in the crown.
State play
Wickman still regrets the trophy
that might have been.
Seaside played 3 1/2 quarters of
some of its best ball of the year, the
Signal reported, “manhandling the
Cougars and almost breaking the
game open at several points.”
With a little more than 2 minutes
remaining, Seaside led 57-53 and
had a one-and-one bonus situation at
the foul line.
The Gulls missed the opportu-
nity and in the next 120 seconds Cas-
cade reeled off points as the Gulls
lost the ball repeatedly on the full-
court press.
Cascade capitalized on an
11-point burst for a 74-61 victory.
Wickman scored 33 points in that
game, 14 rebounds and “completely
handled” Koenig for the first three
quarters, but he and the team ran out
of gas as Cascade’s Koenig and All-
State guard Dennis Federico led the
Cougars’ comeback.
“I’d had a real good game,”
Wickman recalled. “They came back,
they had a couple of guys who kept
plugging away, we made a few bad
decisions and they took advantage.”
Wickman was “absolutely
crushed.”
“I felt we were the better team,”
he said. “It sounds selfish, but know-
ing what I know now, I would have
said, ‘Give me the ball.’”
After the loss, the Gulls regained
their composure, rolling off three vic-
tories in a row, winning the conso-
lation trophy and finishing fifth in
the state. In one of those tournament
games, Wickman set a record tying
the individual field goal mark in a
tournament, 15. He was named to
the all-tournament team and was the
Class 2A rebounding leader.
Cascade went on to beat the
Gulls’ nemesis, Rainier, for the title,
56-50.
The next year, the Gulls earned
a repeat trip to the tournament, win-
ning their first two games before
being stymied.
College and pros
Wickman followed his Gulls
career with even greater glory, play-
ing ball at Linfield College — the
alma mater of Coach Elliott.
At Linfield, Wickman was a
three-time All-American and four-
time All-Northwest Conference and
All-District basketball player. He was
a nearly straight-A student.
Wickman’s bid at a major college
tournament came in his sophomore
year at Linfield, when they faced a
team from South Carolina. “That
was one and done, as well,” Wick-
man said. “Their starting lineup was
6-11, 6-10, 6-6, 6-6 and 6-2. We gave
up about 4 inches at every position,
another one where we’re leading with
2 minutes to go and I fouled out.”
Wickman’s career total of 2,357
points has never been equaled at Lin-
field. Nor his career rebound total of
1,109, he said.
Wickman came oh-so-close to
a career in the National Basketball
Association, drafted by the Portland
Trail Blazers the season after they
won the title. “They won the title in
’77, my year was ’78,” Wickman
said. “I went to rookie camp, played
a little bit in the summer league and
then got cut. I played four years in
Europe. I coached and taught for a
little while, then went into financial
services.”
Today he and his family split
their time between McMinnville and
Bend.
Wickman has encouraging words
for this year’s Gulls as they take
to the court once again with hoop
dreams.
“I just know they were there last
year in that championship game and
they have to realize how great an
advantage having been there last year
in that championship game was and
how they can use that to their advan-
tage this year,” Wickman said. “It’s a
confidence issue. Absolutely a confi-
dence issue. Believing in themselves,
they can win.”
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori-
an’s South County reporter and edi-
tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon
Beach Gazette.