Brawley JV squad starts season on tear
BRAWLEY — Junior varsity sports, as a rule, do not occupy the inner circle of even the most tuned-in sports fan’s imagination.
There’s too much competition for attention-span bandwidth.
Sometimes, however, a JV squad will go out and do something that demand’s notice.
Such is the case in Brawley, where the boys’ JV basketball team has had quite a run these past couple of weeks.
In that span, the junior Wildcats have won two tournaments.
The first was the Nate Mata Memorial Tournament, held in Calipatria from Nov. 30 – Dec. 1.
The tournament featured eight teams, but none were equal to the Wildcats, who picked their way through the competition until they reached the championship game, where they defeated the Holtville Vikings 46-37, thanks in part to the efforts of tournament MVP Frankie Lopez and Rayvon Johnson.
The win had some emotional resonance for Brawley coach James Haley, who was acquainted with Mata, being involved in the former Hornet basketball standout’s officiating training at the time of the latter’s untimely death in 1994.
“It meant a lot to me,” Haley said of the win.
Not content to rest on their laurels, the Wildcats went out last weekend and ran the whole thing back at the annual JV Tournament held in Imperial.
Once again, Brawley navigated the field — beating Calipatria on Thursday and Central on Friday — all the way to the championship game against Imperial on Saturday, in which they overcame an early deficit to walk away winners by a score of 56-37.
But that wasn’t the end of the Wildcats’ evening. They still had a regular season home game against Yuma Catholic to attend to.
Riding the high of their recent success — and seemingly unbothered by fatigue — the team rushed north to take care of the sudden Shamrock infestation and did so with aplomb, beating the Yuma school 59-44 to cap their weekend in style.
Coach Haley expressed pride in the team’s efforts over the past two weeks, saying they “have worked very hard” and are exemplars of their school.