They first were the product of their soccer moms, already playing at the highest level in their sport and well on their way to becoming elite-level athletes. Knowing the latter better than anyone, the basketball dads stepped in, looking to take advantage of all that wonderful conditioning, sense of spacing and burgeoning athleticism. They all compromised and did both, soccer and basketball, and that's how the Mill Creek Wolfpack was born.

In its hey day, the Wolfpack was a small but aggressive, savvy, and technically advanced select girls basketball team. And that was back when the girls were sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

Today, they are high-school sophomores, and three offspring of that Wolfpack team - Ashley Corral of Prairie, Eryn Jones of Meadowdale and Kristi Kingma of Jackson - not only helped guide their schools into the Washington State 4A girl's basketball tournament, they are the leaders of an extraordinary Class of 2008 crop of young point guards. Ashley Andrews of Tumwater, Keri Arendse of Burlington-Edison and Brittany Janz of Anacortes were all-tournament selections last week during the 3A event. Tabitha Tomlinson is the starting point guard for 4A qualifier Puyallup and only Monica Nevi of Hazen has been sidelined during the postseason.

"I just knew we'd play Corral," Kingma said. And, sure enough, Jackson and Prairie were drawn to be first-round opponents on Wednesday. Which means Kingma will be going head to head for the first time in high-school play against Corral, depending on the condition of the Prairie super-soph's chronically injured left ankle, which Corral turned near the beginning of the Falcon's loss on Saturday to Lincoln.

"I'm really excited to face Ashley again," Kristi Kingma said of their first-round date. "After being teammates for four years, we really became close friends and stay very close in touch today. Our style of play is so similiar - we both love to push the ball and create easy looks for our teammates. Playing with Ashley was one of the best experiences of my career; we complemented each other very well and caused other teams a lot of chaos."

Corral said, "When they made officially made it to the state tournament this year, Todd's dad sent me a picture of the two of them with a caption saying 'We'll see you in Tacoma!' I was excited for them to get to state because I know how hard each of them have worked to get there. I thought it would be really neat if we would get the chance to play them, but I really didn't think it would happen.

"Kristi's dad called right after the draw and told me that we would be playing each other in the first round. I was very happy that I would get the chance to be on the court with them again. If they were playing any other team I would be cheering them on just as I know they would be doing the same for me. Getting the chance to play against good friends and such great athletes in a big game like this is special. "

If the basketball Gods maintain their sense of irony, either Corral or Kingma could run into their old buddy, Jones, in the semifinals. Because they play in the WesCo South, Jones and Kingma face each other at least twice a year and, because of the familiarity as well as their competitive nature, the matchups are donnybrooks. This season, they split a pair of games, each winning on the other's home floor.

That much is guaranteed when Jackson plays Prairie or Meadowdale because three other Jackson sophomores - Ashly Bruns, Sara O'Neal and Ashley Todd - also are Wolfpack alums. Todd and Bruns are starters and the second- and third-leading scorers on the team, after Kingma.

Ashley Naylor, the second-leading scorer at Cascade, also played for the Wolfpack. For those keeping score, that makes four Ashleys on the team at the same time. So they all took to calling them all by their last names. They're still Bruns, Corral, Naylor and Todd to each other and their former Wolfpack mates.

The three point guards each have their unique style. Corral is cocksure, fiesty and flashy. Jones is a great shooter who twice has beaten Garfield with late or buzzer-beating jumpers. And Kingma is a long and freakishly athletic penetrator.

Most of the old Wolfpack stay true to their soccer roots. Corral this season was the Greater St. Helens League's Offensive Player of the Year, while Kingma was a first-team, WesCo all-league forward. They played since the fourth grade for Snohomish United, a select soccer team so successful (they won the state Premier Cup as seventh graders), it forced the whole group to scramble between athletic commitments.

The biggest scramble occurred during Snohomish United's run to the state title. On a single Saturday, five girls played a State Cup game in Vancouver, then chucked their cleats for their sneakers and played two games in the Great Eight, an elite, invitational basketball tournament. They went three-for-three.

Kingma, a former star at Anacortes High School and Seattle Pacific, was the assistant on the basketball team, but credits the head coach, Rich Bruns, who had a successful run at Lynnwood High as a head coach and assisted at Simon Fraser before helping found the Wolfpack. He had seven "so-called point guards" and molded them into a dominant team by assigning roles, having rules for each position on offense, playing all-out pressure on defense and uptempo but organized on offense.

Every so often, the Jackson girls will execute a backdoor cut or make a defensive rotation that makes their parents look at each other and say, "There's the Wolfpack coming out in them."

Kristi Kingma mostly ran the point back in those days, with Jones primarily a shooting guard. Bruns' daughter, one of the Ashlys, was a forward type, as was another Ashley, Todd. Rich Bruns and Gregg Kingma scouted the other teams and devised game plans, which they say the girls executed well.

"It was a coach's dream," Bruns said. "We had smart kids, kids who wanted to be there and work hard. We had kids who could run and go for a long time at the pace we played. They also respected what we knew as coaches and went out and did it. Then they would ask for more."

One of the Wolfpack's main rivals, the Island Rage, made up the sophomore foundation, including star guard Brittany Janz, for the Anacortes High School team that pushed Chief Sealth to the brink in the 3A semifinals last week. Select basketball not being as organized as soccer, the Wolfpack could not claim state titles, as the Snohomish United did, but they clearly were the most dominant and organized team of their era.

One of the Wolfpack's biggest wins came in the 2004 version of the HoopGurlz Challenge, which has become a winter showcase of elite, middle-school-aged select teams held at the Furtado Center, the practice facility for the Seattle SuperSonics and Storm. The field that year included a veritable who's who of what is now the top young high-school talent from Puget Sound down to Portland - among them, Daidra Brown of Kennedy, Candace Chambers, Lindsay Gummersal and Brittany Roland of upstart Seattle Prep, Brittany Gray of Bainbridge, Nichole Jackson of Auburn Riverside, Amanda Juarez of Lake Washington, Nevi of Hazen, Mandy Saintz of Bothell, Tomlinson of Puyallup, Alyssa Shoji of Issaquah and Madison Yakaboski, the freshman at Mount Si who made first team all-KingCo 3A. Alex Earl and Michelle Jenkins, two sophomore starters from Southridge of Beaverton, Ore., that started the season as the nation's No. 1 high-school team, also played on a team from Oregon called the Xtreme.

"She had her headband, wristbands, Nike Shox, her And1 gear and always played hard," Ashley Todd said of Corral. "On the Wolfpack, Corral, Kristi, Bruns and I would fly around and cause problems for teams that were taller than us. We pressed and caused turnovers, passed and moved the ball around for easy buckets and threes. We played together, which I think is why we were so successful. We had so much fun in our weekend tournaments and, even though we're now at different high schools, I still cheer her on."

The cheering will be put on hold at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday, when Jackson and Prairie square off at the Tacoma Dome. Rich Bruns remembers Corral as being a little less offensively developed than the other Wolfpack girls. "But she was powerful and dominating," he said. "She was intimidating. Now she has put the intimidation and domination with a way better offensive game. She's a great player."

With the exception of its 6-foot-2 junior post, Brittany Eskridge, Jackson is a team very much like the Wolfpack - guard-oriented and fiesty, led by Kingma's athleticism and aggressiveness with the basketball.

The Timber Wolves are in sharp contrast to Prairie, which may be the biggest team in the tournament. The Falcons' primary exception, of course, is their little, magical point guard who still plays with a chip on her shoulder. With her, the spirit of the Wolfpack lives on in Southwest Washington.

"I loved walking into gyms being the short, little guard-filled team that nobody respected, and then coming out on top at the end," Corral said. "We would run most teams into the ground with our speed. Playing each other in one of the biggest games in our careers will definitely be a highlight and one of the most memorable games I have played."

Ashley Todd of Jackson

Ashly Bruns of Jackson