St. Mike’s Reynolds won’t let broken teeth stop him
Think you’re tough? Meet Berkeley Reynolds, a junior on the St. Michael’s boys basketball team. He takes the definition of tough and launches it into the stratosphere.
First, a little background. Berkeley is what you call a floater; a player who regularly spends time on the junior varsity and varsity rosters but isn’t necessarily a full-time member of either. Where you’ll spot him most nights is on the JV, sometimes getting a cup of coffee with the big team toward the end of games.
For the most part, he’s best known as a soccer player. He scored a dozen goals for the Horsemen in the fall, making him one of the better midfielders in the area. He also happens to play a little hoops, and, before his career is over, he’ll be a permanent fixture on varsity.
When the Horsemen visited Albuquerque Academy last Tuesday, he suffered a horrible injury. As one fan who was there described it, Reynolds fell face-first to the floor and was landed on by another player. The impact snapped off
parts of two of his front teeth.
Yet when the Horsemen Shootout commenced two days later, Reynolds wanted to play. Horsemen head coach David Rodriguez said Reynolds underwent a corrective procedure Friday, and Saturday night, there he was on the varsity bench in his No. 44 jersey.
As St. Michael’s was putting the finishing touches on a blowout win over Moriarty, Reynolds got into the game in the fourth quarter and, with less than a minute remaining, scored on a hoop and harm as his teammates jumped off the bench to cheer him on. He missed the free throw, but so what?
Not many people could endure that kind of trauma and return to the thing that caused it so soon.
Hats off to Berkeley Reynolds.
Looking for a team under the radar that might surprise the state come March? Look no further than the Mora Rangers (Yes, we’re going there again). After winning the Northern Rio Grande Tournament title in impressive fashion over two-time defending state champion Pecos on Jan. 5, Mora padded its résumé by beating Las Vegas Robertson 58-55 for its fourth straight win under new head coach Marco Sanchez. The Rangers also avenged a 58-57 loss to the Cardinals in the Stu Clark Tournament in December, which just so happens to be their last loss.
In beating the Cardinals, Mora did against current Robertson head coach and former Rangers head man Manuel Romero, who guided the program to its last state title in 2005.
Apparently, the Pecos boys and girls basketball teams are using their current slate of road trips as a warmup for what is to come when they hit the road for 12 days in District 7-2A play. Starting with Saturday’s boys/girls doubleheader at Hagermen, a round-trip of 441 miles, the teams will travel to Tucumcari (312) on Friday and Peñasco (154) on Jan. 22. That’s a total of 907 miles in that stretch.
When the Panthers make their three-team, 12-day roadie to Clayton, Texico and Santa Rosa from Feb. 2-12, the activities bus will accrue 997 miles. That’s 1,904 miles of road covered by Pecos in those trips. That’s the equivalent of driving — one way, that is — from Pecos to Princeton, N.J. with nine miles to spare.
McCurdy senior forward Ubaldo Barela broke the 1,000-point barrier during this weekend’s Bean Valley Tournament thanks to his 18-point performance in a 68-54 semifinal win over Monte del Sol.
Barela has been a varsity starter since his sophomore year and the team’s leading scorer each season, to boot.
Trivia time. No cheating. What in-state men’s college basketball team currently owns the highest winning percentage?
Nope, not New Mexico State. Not JUCO power New Mexico Junior College. Certainly not the Lobos or Eastern or Northern.
It’s New Mexico Highlands, a team that warrants plenty of praise after sweeping its home games this past weekend against Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference rivals Colorado Mesa and Western Colorado. The Cowboys (12-3 overall and 7-2 in league play) are tied for second in the RMAC and rank 15th out of more than 300 NCAA Division II teams in scoring with an average of 89.1 points per game.
Coached by former UNM assistant Craig Snow with 2005 Capital graduate Mike Dominguez as his top assistant, Highlands has all the makings of an NCAA D-II tournament team. The top eight teams in each of the country’s eight regions get bids, with automatic qualifiers getting the call by winning their respective conference tournaments.
The Pokes have two players, Raquan Mitchell and Gerad Davis, averaging more than 20 points and big man Nmamdi Okoro leads the RMAC in rebounding while converting 63 percent of his shots.
That said, the work has just begun. The Cowboys have a brutal four-game road swing in front of them with games this week at Chadron (Neb.) State and Metro State in Denver. After that it’s the taxing trip to South Dakota for games against Black Hills State and South Dakota School of Mines.