Inside The Huskies

State's Top Basketball Player Down To 4 Schools -- UW Included

Ethan Harris from Camas brings 6-foot-8 size and a textbook jump shot.
Dan Raley|
Ethan Harris from Camas has a UW offer.
Ethan Harris from Camas has a UW offer. | Harris

Camas used to be a sleepy little town on the Washington side of the Columbia River that was known for a paper mill and not much else.

However, the suburban sprawl coming out of the Vancouver-Portland hub in recent decades suddenly turned Camas High into one of the biggest schools across the state, with football becoming an immediate beneficiary by using the expanding enrollment to capture a pair of 4A state championships with a number of players receiving scholarships.

Basketball seemed to lag behind, though, with the team once turning to a player named Ezzy Buckets and in recent years graduating the school's all-time leading scorer, Beckett Currie, who's now at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.

Buckets and Beckett.

Well, Camas basketball has joined the big boys with 6-foot-8, 220-pound Ethan Harris now considered the state's top player and commanding a lot of recruiting attention.

This week, the power forward announced he has narrowed his college pursuers to four schools: Boise State, Gonzaga, Iowa and Washington.

For a 23-7 Camas team this past winer, Harris showed off a well-rounded game by averaging 18.1 points, 8.1 rebounds and 3 assists per outing, while shooting 58 percent from the floor. 

He brings a textbook jumper from around the perimeter and is willing to go hard to the basket and dunk on someone.

Harris helped the Papermakers finish sixth in the 4A state basketball tournament, their highest tourney showing in school annals.

As a junior, he was named both Greater Helens League MVP and its Defensive Player of the Year. 

In a 75-55 win over Portland's Roosevelt High, he had 25 points, 7 blocks, 6 rebounds, 5 assists and 5 steals to join what people were calling The 5x5 Club, hitting that number as a minimum in all of those categories.

Harris was never better than this past winner when he came up with 32 points, 12 rebounds, 9 steals, 7 blocks and 4 assists in a 82-68 victory over Skyview.

The Papermakers basketball teams are making progress similar to football. now From the girls side, Keirra Thompson was named the state's top player for 2025 and is headed to Boise State with a scholarship in hand.

Harris has Boise State among his options, too, but could wind up in the Big Ten or in Spokane.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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