On Tuesday night the Bears took on their toughest opponent, the Puyallup Vikings. Olympia would pull away in the 4th quarter with a 62-53 win. 

Creighton Court was packed out as both the home Olympia Bears and the away Puyallup Vikings fans traveled for the game and created an electric environment.  Olympia would take an early lead as senior Julian Zapata would start the game hot going two for two on 3s and hit two free throws.  The second quarter was slow as only a combined 17 points were scored by both Olympia and Puyallup. Olympia would take a 27-18 lead heading into the second half. 

Puyallup started off hot in the third quarter and felt like they could not miss. They outscored the Bears 24-11 in the third quarter and took the lead heading into the fourth. All the momentum was with Puyallup heading into the fourth. The Bears would grab all that momentum and pull away with the game as senior Matt Lindblom would score his 1000th point for the Bears.  Olympia outscored Puyallup 23-11 in the fourth quarter and won the game by a score of 62-53.

Senior Julian Zapata was an important piece for the win, remarking, “It felt great, I got hot early in the game, but I couldn’t have done it without my teammates setting me up every time.”  Zapata credits his teammates for his amazing performance and shows that basketball is not just a “one man” performance, but takes a whole team to win.  The team came back in the fourth quarter, Zapata said, “After the third, we knew we had to execute the game plan, which was one defense to stop #23 from scoring, and on offense to get to the rim, we did just that.” The team executed their game plan flawlessly in the 4th quarter, which led the team to win the game by 9 points.

The game’s atmosphere felt electric, which helped Olympia gain all the momentum in the 4th quarter.  The Bears win another game to improve their record to 12-3 and continue to lead the SPSL conference. Olympia has plans set for the Washington State tournament in the in March.