When Mercedes Wetmore is on the court, she knows the crowd is talking.

The 5-foot-8 senior guard has been one of the state’s premier basketball players, a driving force in helping the Auburn Riverside Ravens to three state titles in the past four years, including the season’s 4A state title.

So it’s only natural when she comes to the free throw line late in the game that opposing fans will start chanting, trying to throw her off her game.

“Overrated, overrated,” they would shout.

Although she admits the harsh words sometimes filter in from sheer volume, Wetmore doesn’t really hear them.

“The person I hear the most is my dad,” said Wetmore, who will play for the University of Washington next season. “I can hear him, I can sense him giving me that look of ‘are you kidding me?’ To be honest, my dad is the only one I really care about what he thinks. He’s my best friend.”

To prepare his daughter, Dave Wetmore poured a concrete court in their back yard. As much of a gift as the outdoor court was for a young athlete in training, Wetmore said her dad gave her an even greater gift – competitive fire.

“My dad was really good at wrestling, but he is great at training athletes,” Wetmore said. “Not just the physical part but the mental part, like how you have to be so tough and so willing to have that fire in your belly all the time. That’s what he gave me, a lot of fire and a lot of competitiveness.”

When she was 9, Wetmore actually competed on her dad’s youth wrestling club.

“I won a few tournaments,” she said of her brief career. “I wasn’t the best, but I was on varsity for the little kids team. It was fun.”

Although she didn’t stick with wrestling for long, she said the mental discipline and intense training carried over to her basketball career.

Her father might have sparked her competitive fire, but Wetmore said her mother, Channelle, and grandparents, Ken and Marilyn Arneberg, lessened the intensity with a hearty helping of support and unconditional love.

“My mom will tell me I play good all the time,” she said. “She just tells me to go out and have fun. They haven’t missed very many of my games, under 10 in my whole career.”

Pushed to greater heights

As good as she was as a youth player – she began to play as early as age 5 – it wasn’t until she began attending Auburn Riverside that she found the person who would drive her to greater heights. Behind coach Adam Barrett, Wetmore and the Ravens won back-to-back 3A titles in 2007 and 2008.

“He knew how to break us down,” Wetmore said of the fiery coach. “He knocked us down and brought us back up his way. A lot of it became us against him … that’s why we (the team) were so close.”

But after the 2008 season, Barrett left the program to coach in Utah.

Wetmore admitted she was a little resentful about his departure. She developed a love-hate relationship with her coach.

“I knew it was going to be rough without him. It was hard,” Wetmore added. “I never pictured him leaving, and once he did, it was pretty surreal. He was there every step of my freshman and sophomore years. Once he was gone, there was a piece missing.”

Under interim coach Ed Rosin, the Ravens qualified for the state tournament, but finished a disappointing fourth.

But this season was different under new coach Terry Johnson.

“Coach Johnson handled things differently than I’d been a part of before,” Wetmore said. “He’s an amazing guy. He knows the game very well. He kept us composed the whole season.”

That composure proved to be the difference as the Ravens, led by Wetmore’s 17.3 points-per-game average, went 29-0 and captured the title.

“Not only is she talented, but her experience playing at a high level was vital to our success,” Johnson said. “Mercedes is as competitive as any athlete that I have coached. Her will to win is incredible. There is no circumstance in which Mercedes will let anything stand in her way of success. Her fight helped us win games as much as her talent did.”

“It’s definitely been a lot of hard work,” Wetmore said. “There haven’t been too many days that you take off from basketball, especially when you’re trying to get a team ready to compete for a state title. A lot of it is just mental toughness. You just have to know how to win. And I learned that coming in as a freshman. You have to know how to win, and you have to sacrifice everything so you can do it.”

Now that the season is over, Wetmore said she’s going to relax and enjoy the rest of her high school experience.

But that doesn’t mean she’ll be completely laying off basketball.

At this point, she can’t.

“I’m going to keep working out,” she said. “It’s just going to be the same thing up there (at the UW), just more intense.”