Pasco’s Sierra Perez has CBC women’s basketball team in the thick of things

Sierra Perez’s comfort zone is 20 feet, 9 inches from the basket.

A 5-foot-4 sophomore point guard for the Columbia Basin College women’s basketball team, Perez is one of the deadliest 3-point shooters in the Northwest Athletic Conference.

She has made 46.7 percent of her 3-pointers (56 of 120), which leads the NWAC, and is averaging 26.4 points per game. Her efforts have the Hawks sitting at 9-4 overall and 1-1 in NWAC East play.

“She can shoot it, that’s for sure,” CBC coach Daron Santo said. “With a shooter like her, it opens everything up for our offense. She is getting face-guarded, they box-and-1 her and double-team her. More impressive is how she can put up the points, being heavily guarded and still hitting a high percentage.

“Everyone recognizes her as a good shooter. Trust me, if she wasn’t shooting that percentage, she wouldn’t have the green light.”

A 2015 graduate of Pasco High School, where she was valedictorian, Perez was recruited by other schools, but she chose to remain in the Tri-Cities for her first two years of college.

“I had an offer from Lewis-Clark State (College), but I turned it down to stay close to my family,” said Perez, who also ranks fourth in the NWAC in free-throw percentage at 83.3 percent (30 of 36). “I am very family-oriented. I like playing in front of my family.”

In her first year with the Hawks, Perez averaged 11.5 points per game, and she hit 40.7 percent (72 of 177) of her 3-pointers. She put in the work during the offseason to improve her numbers.

“In the offseason, I worked out with my older brothers (Marcus and Josh, who also played basketball at Pasco), and we put up a lot of shots and lifted together,” Perez said. “Even playing P-I-G helped. It’s family time, and basketball is what we do. They really don’t like to play (P-I-G) with me. My younger brother Xavier (an eighth-grader at McLoughlin Middle School) tried a couple of weeks ago and went home mad. He couldn’t hang. Josh roughs me up a bit, and my brothers help me with my shot during games. They let me know if I am leaning right or left. I am grateful for them.”

Her support group goes beyond her brothers. Her dad, Martin, coached her during her AAU days, and her mom, Victoria, and grandma Isabel are two of her biggest fans.

“My grandma is 87, and she makes it to most of my home games,” Perez said.

The Hawks have come to rely on Perez, and the wins and losses bear that out. She missed three games at the Pierce Holiday Invitational in Lakewood because of a strained hamstring, and the Hawks went 1-2 without her services. In the team’s other two losses, she had 23 and 21 points.

While Perez seems too good to be true on paper, Santo said she still has work to do.

“She is a well-rounded player,” Santo said. “But all of our kids collectively need to get better on defense, including Sierra.”

The Hawks’ offense is a work in progress, but CBC averages the second-highest points per game in the NWAC at 82.9. On defense, CBC allows 75.8 points a game — third highest among the NWAC’s 34 teams.

“This is a huge jump from high school,” Santo said. “You have to be a pretty gifted player to play college ball. We are the second-highest-scoring team in the NWAC because we have good players. We are still working to get our defense together. That is one of our weak points. We emphasize defense in practice a lot.”

While the Hawks are off to a good start, they are in the middle of the pack in the NWAC East. Spokane (11-2 overall), Yakima Valley (11-3) and Big Bend (10-5) have better records, and the teams behind CBC are in the thick of things.

“The South is pretty competitive, but the East is most consistent,” Santo said. “With (North) Idaho coming in, we have nine really good teams fighting for four spots (to the NWAC tournament). It was bad enough with eight.”

Perez said the team’s goal is to make it to the NWAC tournament and bring home a championship. Whether that happens or not, Perez is ready for the next step. She finished her A.A. requirements last quarter and still carries a 4.0 grade-point average while pursuing a psychology degree.

“If an opportunity presents itself to play, I will think about it,” she said of continuing her basketball career. “If not, I will go to WSU (Pullman) and continue working toward my degree.”

This story was originally published January 10, 2017 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Pasco’s Sierra Perez has CBC women’s basketball team in the thick of things."