It was evident this past summer that the Summit girls basketball team had plenty of talent and commitment.

First-year coach Austin Crook challenged the returning Storm players that if they wanted to become a good team in a short period of time, which he believed they could, a culture needed to be established early.

“To their credit, not mine, they flipped the switch right away,” Crook said. “Every day is from the freshman up to the seniors. We went into a tournament in the first weekend of June and we were just rocking and having a good time.”

“We would do our workouts, we would do our running and it was just full of energy,” said Summit junior Kalyn Christ. “It’s helped us because we can slow down the game because the speed we play at practice is at 110%.”

Through four games this season, the Storm have been racking up wins. On Tuesday, Summit picked up its third victory of the season with a 47-29 win over Crook County.

The clash between the two Central Oregon teams was less about winning and more about surviving. The Cowgirls (2-2 overall), a team with state tournament aspirations, were without their talented guard Anna Bales. While the Storm (3-1) couldn’t hold a practice the day before because so many players were sick.

“Big picture, I told the girls it is a lot like a playoff game,” Crook said. “Crook County is really well coached and they play really hard. They throw defenses at you that you don’t see very often. I was proud that we stayed calm and confident in the second half.”

The final score might suggest it was a lopsided performance, but Summit had to dig out of a first-half hole and grind its way past a scrappy Crook County squad to secure the victory.

The Cowgirls, led by freshman guard Hayden Decker’s 13 points, had leads after the first and second quarters. It wasn’t until the second half when the Storm began to make their move. Sophomore guard Jade Durfee scored 11 of her team-high 16 points in the second half. Her three 3-pointers in the third quarter helped the Storm take the lead.

“In the end we started to hit our shots,” Durfee said. “We just started sharing the ball really well. We felt like if we could get out and run, we could put this one away.”

A 30-25 Summit lead heading into the fourth quarter ballooned to an 18-point win. Junior Kalyn Christ scored eight of her 14 points in the final quarter to help the Storm pull away from the Cowgirls.

“Our coach just told us that we had to get our energy up,” Christ said. “In the first half we were kind of in the dumps, but in the second half we worked as a team and it showed. It was teamwork that brought all of our energy up and uplifted ourselves.”

This is Crook’s first head coaching job, but he is no stranger to coaching in the area. Crook was a star soccer player at Bend High and was the 2009 5A Player of the Year. He went on to play soccer collegiately at Oregon State and Bushnell. In recent years, he has been an assistant coach for both the Redmond and Crook County girls basketball teams.

He takes over a young Summit team with only three seniors on its roster. The Storm have finished with winning records and reached the postseason each of the past two seasons. But this year, despite the youth on the team, the Storm have bigger goals.

“We have the right pieces to be really good,” Crook said. “I keep telling them all the time that I am going to be hard on them, because I truly believe that if they maximize their athleticism and potential, that we can be a team that hangs around in the top 10 of the state. But we have to work on some things to be able to do that.”

The Storm will travel to Milwaukie to take on Putnam on Thursday, while Crook County will host Caldera.