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The 2022-2023 basketball season is one that Daniel Bishop won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

The Washburn girls’ basketball coach, Bishop knew that the season had the makings of being a special one.

And did it ever live up to those expectations.

The Pirates went 22-11 on the season, defeated Cosby for the first time in school history and won the District 2-1A Tournament Championship. For that, Bishop has been named the Citizen Tribune Lakeway Girls Basketball Coach of the Year.

“It was a fun ride for us,” Bishop said. “It was a lot of memories and experiences that I will remember for a lifetime. Our 22 wins were the most in school history. We were co-district regular season champions and then won the district tournament. To be able to do that on our home floor and being able to experience that with our community, that is something I will remember for a long time.”

Going into the season, Washburn was coming off a year that had potential but fizzled out in a way that the Pirates were all too familiar with. While Washburn won 16 games last year, they lost three times to Cosby. One of those came in the district championship.

However, despite a loss in the region quarterfinals to end their season, Bishop knew that with a lot of players returning from that team, this season could be special.

“The loss in the championship the previous year kind of propelled us to do what we did this year,” Bishop said. “In that game last year, I really felt like if it had a couple minutes more in it we really would have had a chance to win it. We talked about it during the offseason and talked about wanting to get back to that game.”

While the potential was there, the season didn’t start out how Bishop expected it to. Battling injuries, the Pirates lost seven games in November and December. However, despite the struggles, those first two months proved beneficial down the road in February.

“It was frustrating to start just because we were plagued with injuries,” Bishop said. “We didn’t have our full roster until January. We lost some games early while we didn’t have everyone healthy and it was frustrating. But I think it really gave some players some opportunities to play that ended up really stepping up for us late in the season. It really helped give us depth at the end of the year.”

While the season was starting to turn in a positive direction, Washburn still struggled to get over the hump against Cosby. At Cosby in early January, the Lady Eagles stormed out early and won by 19 points.

However, in that game the Pirates tried some things in the second half that seemed to work. Using those things the next time the two teams played, Washburn was finally able to get over that hump later in the season at home with a 53-52 win. It was the first time in school history that Washburn had defeated the Lady Eagles.

“Cosby has dominated the conference and we hear that all the time. But this team responded,” Bishop said. “We have taken a lot of big losses at Cosby, and they have had the upper hand on us for forever. But we had a lot of confidence this year. However, we go over there for our first district game and were confident and they jump out on us 20-3. We kind of felt like here we go again. I was standing there in the hallway with Coach Clay and I told him that I think we found some things in the second half that we could use. We took that and it prevailed in those last two games. It’s been hard to get over that hump, so it was good to check that box.”

One of the reasons Washburn was able to check that box was due to senior Braelyn Coffey. The co-district player of the year, Coffey averaged around 18 points and six rebounds per game. During the season, she became the all-time leading scorer in school history.

Despite the stats though, it was her leadership that Washburn really needed and could count on down the stretch in close contests.

“Braelyn is one of the fiercest competitors I have ever coached,” Bishop said. “She’s not going to back down from anybody. We fed off her at times. She just had an unbelievable year and career. She’s the all-time leading scorer. She scored over 500 points and was our lead rebounder and played really good defense. She was the leader that we needed and helped us get over the hump and win that district championship.”

The district championship win over Cosby was the culmination of all the hard work Bishop and his team put in during the offseason to prepare. And, while the season didn’t end the way they wanted it to, falling in the region quarterfinals, the Pirates return the majority of their roster as they look to make another run next season.

“Obviously, you don’t replace someone like Braelyn and she will be missed,” Bishop said. “But the good thing about it is that she is the only player we lose. We have a lot of talent and players that have played significant minutes returning. Like the previous season when we took that district loss to Cosby hard, we kind of feel that same way about the region tournament game against Unaka this year. Hopefully, we can take all this and get back to this point and see how far we can go.”