With three Oregon women’s basketball players hailing from the state of Washington, games against the Cougars and Huskies on Thursday and Saturday, respectively, loom large.
After all, they’d like nothing better to beat them, and besides, wins would go a long way toward a better seeding at the Pacific-10 Conference Tournament in March.
But for Shoreline native Amy Taylor, it is a chance to see a friend.
Traveling with Washington on Saturday will be Kayla Burt. The sophomore, from Arlington, Wash., is lucky to be alive after teammates helped resuscitate her on New Year’s Eve when she suffered from a life-threatening heart ailment. She was later diagnosed with Long Q-T Syndrome, an inherited condition that affects the electrical conduction system in the heart.
Needless to say, her career was over from that point. And while Taylor has already seen Burt this season — when the Ducks visited Washington on Jan. 23 — it will be a special meeting for the two.
“She was really becoming a great player and it was just taken away from her in a day,” Taylor said. “It just puts things in perspective and helps me look at life differently. I appreciate everything I have and I love her to death. It makes me have a new view on our rivalry with Washington. It makes me look more fondly at it, and just not as much as ‘We have to beat them.’
“That’s not the most important thing, you know.”
The two met, Taylor said, when they were attending a basketball camp sponsored by Adidas. After spending five days together, the two became good friends, even though they lived 45 minutes apart.
In Washington’s 79-60 win over Oregon earlier this season, Taylor helped make the game respectable by pitching in five points on 2-of-5 shooting in 25 minutes of play.
“It was amazing to go up there,” Taylor said. “For one, just to be around my family and then just to see her. It almost brought tears to my eyes just to see how happy she is. How she is still there for her teammates. After the game, even though we lost, I just wanted to let her know I loved her and I was supporting her no matter what.”
Taylor said the Huskies have made Burt a student-coach on head coach June Daugherty’s staff. In addition, she will be on scholarship for the duration of her time with the program.

Back in the

swing of things
Junior Cathrine Kraayeveld returned to the Ducks on Saturday, and proved to the Pac-10 that Oregon may not be a team to meddle with the rest of the season.
In 23 minutes of play, the forward pitched in seven points and grabbed nine rebounds.
“I don’t think any of us expected her to play that much,” sophomore Kedzie Gunderson said. “Coming in to play 23 minutes and nine rebounds is awesome. It was nice to have her come in and be such a part of the team.”
It was Kraayeveld’s first game action since Dec. 22, and afterwards, she predicted she would probably be sore.
So, after a day off Sunday and practice on Monday, how does she feel?
“I feel pretty good,” she said. “I didn’t really get sore. That was really big for me to have that confidence that it’s going to be OK even after I play a game.”
The true test for Kraayeveld comes this week. The contest against Oregon State was tough — Kraayeveld hit the floor a couple of times — but two games within three days can test the body. And to make matters even more interesting, she is from Kirkland, Wash.
“I think I’ll be all right,” she said. “It’s just every day it gets better with practicing and pushing myself. My body has done really well — better than I thought — with getting back into shape.”

It’s a mixed-up

conference
You’ve got two dominant teams at the top of the Pac-10, and two more not-so-dominant teams in the cellar of the conference. That’s a pretty good recipe for balance.
The Ducks are right in the middle of things, tied for sixth place with Oregon State at 6-8 in Pac-10 play. Arizona State is a half-game back, while the Ducks and Beavers are just one game behind fifth-place USC.
Before last season, finishing sixth or seventh in a conference wouldn’t matter much, especially because the NCAA Tournament wouldn’t touch one of those teams. But with the Pac-10 Tournament, seeding is vital. That is, the sixth-place team plays one less game to reach the final than the seventh-place squad.
“Right now, that is a definite goal,” Gunderson said. “We want to stay in the top six so that we don’t have to play that game and that will give us a better run for the tournament.”