Despite controversy, Bonnarens leads Cache to state
CACHE — Jamie Bonnarens stood near the freethrow line and tapped her finger to her nose.
She had no way of knowing that moment in a southwest Oklahoma high school gym would be seen all across the country. As would the sequence of events that followed. Bonnarens’ Cache teammate threw an inbounds pass off an Elgin player’s face, snapping her head back as the gym fell silent.
Sitting in the stands after the game, Bonnarens’ dad had to know what had happened. He played college basketball and he knew something was off. Why had one of Jamie’s teammates, Nautica Butler, thrown the ball off Jentry Holt’s face?
Jamie looked her dad straight in the eye.
“She was coached to do that,” she said.
The story Bonnarens told her dad on Feb. 10, 2015, would be the same one she told local law enforcement officials, Cache administrators, OSSAA representatives and ESPN reporters. Ultimately, her teammates would echo her story, and their coach, Kenny White, would take a voluntary leave of absence.
But in the beginning, Bonnarens blew the whistle without knowing what anyone else from Cache was saying — and she did so as White remained the coach with her senior year at Cache still in front of her.
“I didn’t even think twice about it,” Bonnarens said. “I said what I knew, and everything blew up. Now the stars are aligning.”
Thirteen months after White allegedly instructed his players to throw an inbounds pass off Holt’s face,
Bonnarens, Butler and Cache are state bound. They clinched an unlikely spot in the Class 4A tournament beginning Thursday at Southern Nazarene University with a 2 p.m. matchup against Newcastle.
“It is a great reward for every distraction that could have been,” Jim Bonnarens said.
The Bonnarens moved to Cache in 2001 with the plan of raising three girls in a strong school system. Their oldest daughter, Morgan, played on the 2011 team that won a state championship, while Jamie served as a water girl.
“I loved the experience, I loved the atmosphere and through middle school our team was good,” said Jamie Bonnarens, whose younger sister hopes to follow in her footsteps. “I was just so excited to get to high school to finally go to state.”
She had little idea how hard that path would be. Cache struggled her first two seasons and fell one game shy of the state tournament last season, losing 48-43 in overtime to Elgin in the area consolation championship game.
Then in the offseason, details of the incident against Elgin emerged after Holt’s father, Gary, launched his own investigation and used state open records laws to obtain game video and emails from both schools. Bonnarens signed an affidavit re-telling the events. After The Oklahoman reported details of the incident in October, the OSSAA requested that Cache conduct a third investigation, and White took a leave of absence.
Last month, Bonnarens appeared on ESPN’s Outside the Lines, which had a camera crew at the team’s first meeting against Elgin. She also spoke with an OSSAA attorney as part of a third investigation.
Somehow, that never became a distraction for her or the team.
“We all understand that it’s over,” Bonnarens said. “We have to focus on us and our season, and everyone’s doing, obviously, a great job. No one has expected us to get this far.”
Bonnarens has signed to play Division II basketball at Cameron University in nearby Lawton. She’s averaging 18.5 points and 9.3 rebounds as the unquestioned leader for Cache.
“When we get in a bind we go to her,” Cache interim coach Jason Heidebrecht said. “She’s just an even-keel. There’s really no ups and downs. It’s been amazing.”
She had the most to lose the past year, and yet she still gained so much.
“This sets up the rest of her life,” Jim Bonnarens said. “This isn’t something that you look away from. Wrong is wrong. You don’t cover for people that have done something wrong.”