HS girls hoops teams take precautions
After Gov. Doug Ducey reopened youth sports on May 28, high school girls basketball coaches have added defensive schemes per medical guidelines in their team training as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in Arizona.
Multiple districts green-lit teams having summer workouts and individualized practices in their school gyms starting June 1. This includes 5A and 6A conference state champions Goodyear Millennium and Surprise Valley Vista, and 6A runnerup Chandler Hamilton.
But they’re staying alert amid speculation another stay-at-home order might be on its way.
“We just got cleared to be back in the gym this week. But there are guidelines we have to follow,” Hamilton coach Trevor Neider said via text message. “It’s been great to be back in the gym and interact with them. Most important thing is to be safe, so we can move forward not backwards. All this individual work gives them plenty to do when they are at home.”
Many of these teams have used Twitter to invite rising freshman to senior students to participate in the workouts. They are not tryouts; those will be held in October per the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s set date.
Hamilton, Valley Vista and Millennium’s practices hold up to 30 kids, focusing on only individual drills to adhere to preventive guidelines from based on the Centers For Disease Control and the National Federation of High Schools Associations to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Hamilton and Millennium has been conducting their workouts doing groups of six for five one-hour intervals.
Many of the coaches and players are required to use personal protective equipment (PPEs) including masks.
Players must bring their own water bottle to the workout and shoot with their own ball for the entire session.
Passing the ball, one-on-one games and rebounding other people’s shots are prohibited.
Plus, Millennium has been documenting the progress of the player’s health. That’s become the new normal in sports at all levels of competition, along with tracking how much off rust they need to work off from several months in quarantine mode.
“We’ve been following district policy which entails essentially every kid wears a mask in, we take their temperature, we have a check-in process, we document it through an Excel spreadsheet,” Millennium coach Kevin Thomas said. “Every kid has their own basketball and really it’s just focusing on fundamentals and skill development. Honestly, I’ve found it to be a blessing in disguise to talk about COVID-19 even though there are so many negatives to it.
“One of the things that has worked out for us basketball-wise is that we’ve been able to spend a lot of energy to working on things such as footwork, ball-handling and a lot of shots up. It’s really been a great chance to focus on that while keeping the kids safe. The girls have been so hard-working and really taking ownership of their opportunities.”
Thomas has big shoes to fill and a handling these unexpected circumstances as he transitioned into Millennium’s
head coaching role in April.
Several of the two-time defending state champion Millennium’s core players, including Alexandra Zelaya and Jasmine Singleton, graduated last month, and Trayanna Crisp transferred to Phoenix PHH Prep in April.
Thomas credits Millennium’s returnees such as rising senior Kassidy Dixon, junior guards Mia Amundsen and Reagan Grimsley and her senior forward sister Reese Grimsley, for giving the team a sense of camaraderie amid the social distancing enforced in practice.
“They’ve made it easy on me,” Thomas said. “You worry with the regulations that we’re not going to get as much done as we want but I feel like this is a lot of focus on things that we need to, building that attacking mindset now . ...
“All these girls have embraced me as the new coach. By them taking on that challenge under the current rules, they’ve kind of set a tone. That’s exciting to me and that’s all I can ask for.”
At the PHHacility complex in Phoenix, Milee Karre is in a similar scenario undertaking his first season as the PHH Prep girls basketball team head coach.
The difference between Thomas and Karre is Millennium has time to wait to train if another state-regulated order is imposed. PHH Prep will begin its summer tournament schedule on July 1.
Plus, the PHH Prep Fire is a brand new team with several top transfers who will be playing through the summer, fall and winter.
“We’ve been as safe as possible. A lot of skill work, conditioning,” Karre said. “I know there’s tournaments going on now, so people are scrimmaging and playing now but we try to minimize that as much as possible while hitting our skills and putting our offense in.”
“It’s a little flip-switch or whatnot. Just pushing yourself to get better and better every day for the days that you have missed,” Crisp said. “It’s definitely a blessing to be back in the gym.”