Cardinals girls team off to a great start with a loaded lineup
For those who may not have noticed, the Robertson High School girls basketball team is good. Very good. And the Cardinals are just going to get better.
Playing the first half of the season without injured 3-point sharpshooting senior Brianna Roybal, Robertson is still off to a 5-1 start going into tonight’s game at Portales. The Rams handed the Cards their only loss in the semifinals of the Capital City Tournament last weekend.
After a 22-7 finish and an overtime loss in the 4A semifinals to eventual champion Shiprock last season, Robertson was set to roll for 2017-18, said coach Leroy Barela.
“The way we ended last year, we ended on a good note,” he said. “That built into the summer program when we had one of the bigger turnouts, as far as girls coming to try out.”
The Cardinals went to team camps at San Diego State University and UNM, faring well at both, which helped set the tone for the team’s start, despite Roybal’s absence.
First hurt in the state tournament last season, Roybal missed the summer workouts, but was ready by the time school started.
“Then, one day, she came to practice with cast on her arm,” Barela said, adding she had broken her hand in a fall.
“I think the girls are excited about getting her back,” he said. “She stretches the court for us. The one thing for us, because we average so many assists a game, we know the scoring is going to go up. She’ll pull up well behind the 3-point line and it will be a good shot to the offense. And she’ll bring some leadership since she is a senior. It’s all positives.”
Roybal is expected to return numbers of the stars, the team is all about winning.
“We share the ball really well,” Barela said. “Nobody cares how many points or assists or rebounds anybody gets. The only stats that they really care about are wins or losses. It’s really the truth with this team. It’s not a cliché.”
This season, Barela’s fourth with Robertson, was one he in which he saw the program reaching full maturation.
“When I first took the position, I knew some of the girls who had played with my daughter,” he said. “Talking with the other coaches, we knew that it was going to take three or four years to where the program could sustain something. Going into last year, we thought we could do pretty good. But year four was when we sat down and said, ‘Year four is going to be pretty good.’ ”
And, thus far, that’s exactly how it has worked out.