Suquamish trainer hired as Kingston’s girls bball coach

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Jimmy King has been hired as Kingston High School’s new girls basketball coach, replacing Charles Deam, who resigned June 1.

King has been helping train the Kingston boys’ team at the Suquamish Fitness Center alongside current Buccaneer boys’ head coach George Hill III.

“I’ve been training them for the last two years [since] I work at Suquamish as a skills trainer,” King said. “So I have a real close tie with Kingston.”

In his first year with the team, King is looking to implement a “Seattle style” of play. “Seattle style” incorporates a “faster, free-flowing” scheme as well as an aggressive defensive mentality, all in an attempt to help the Bucs perform better in the playoffs.

However, Kingston is the smallest 2A school in the state, and when King attended his first practice, there were only six girls in the entire program, including a few freshmen. The low turnout for basketball stems from “competition” with the flag football program, he said.

Last year alone, Kingston didn’t have enough players to field a JV or C-team, which is something King wants to change. The Kingston Youth Sports Association manages youth basketball programs, and King says there are a lot of girls coming from that pipeline that will help the Bucs increase their turnout in the future.

“I think that there’s a lot of kids coming out of that gym, the younger kids that are going to be very successful in the future,” King said. “We just gotta keep building the [youth] programs and getting the timing back.”

King feels his strong suit lies in skill-building. With that in mind, King wants to “pour everything he has” into bolstering the Bucs’ skills on the court in order to help compete with some of the top dogs in the Olympic League, such as Bainbridge and Port Angeles.

Kingston lost roughly 42% of their team last year with five seniors graduating, including some of their top scorers like Taizah Franklin and Tati Fontes-Lawrence.