Medina leaves West Las Vegas for rival Robertson
The pressure cooker that is the high school basketball coaching situation in Las Vegas took a bizarre turn Wednesday night when word leaked that Jose “Majic” Medina was leaving one girls program for its archrival across town.
Medina spent the last 16 years as the head coach at West Las Vegas, but he quickly emerged as one of three candidates to fill the vacancy at Robertson. Leroy Barela resigned suddenly as the Lady Cardinals’ head coach last week after turning them into a state power during his four years there.
With former players from both schools gathering in Albuquerque on Wednesday for the start of the annual North-South All-Star events, word got out that Medina was picked over fellow finalists Cindy Roybal and April Ortiz.
Roybal is no stranger to Las Vegas. She is the winningest coach in the history of the New Mexico Highlands University women’s basketball program, having spent time pulling double duty as the school’s athletic director. She most recently ended a two-year stint as head coach at Santa Fe High.
Ortiz is a former player at NMHU and a Roybal assistant with the Cowgirls. She has been a coaching fixture in Las Vegas for more than two decades and is the mother of one of the top returning players at Robertson, junior Tessa Ortiz.
The news that it was Medina who landed the job was confirmed Thursday when West Las Vegas athletic director Richard Tripp said the deal was already done.
“Coach Majic put WLV girls basketball on the map,” Tripp wrote via text in a prepared statement Thursday night. “Lady Dons basketball is now considered
one of the best and respected programs in the state and it is thanks to coach Medina and his staff. We totally respect his decision and we wish him nothing but the best. We are grateful for everything he did for our school.”
Medina did not respond to repeated requests for comment, nor did Robertson athletic director Juan Carlos Fulgenzi. A source familiar with the situation said an official announcement from the school was supposed to come Monday after the NorthSouth games were done.
Barela’s teams posted better records than the previous year in each of his four seasons. He won 10 games in his first year and led the Lady Cardinals to a 25-4 mark and a district championship this past season.
He resigned unexpectedly, taking with him one of the team’s top players in point guard Maria Barela. He suggested on social media in the days after his resignation that he and his family were looking to move.
Medina was the architect of a well-respected program at West Las Vegas. His teams have won at least 20 games in eight of the last 12 years, averaging 21 wins the last five seasons. He led his 2010 team to the Class 3A state championship game where it was beaten by a Santa Fe Indian School team coached by Roybal.
He was the target of a post on Facebook’s Las Vegas Area Sports page, one that showed a picture of Lord of the Rings character Gollum holding up a ring with the caption, “What a shame!! Jose Medina leaves WLV for RHS. Ring chaser!!”
As of Thursday night, all of the attached comments were positive in Medina’s favor, but it still underscores the passion fans in Las Vegas have. That’s especially true when one of their best and brightest leaves one city team for another.