Heat it up for the Inside Sports

To finish out July, there will be a series of articles about what we can look forward to in the coming school sports year. With the 2021-22 season reviewed and put to bed, now we can look forward to what our sports teams have before them. While some things have changed in people graduating, old coaches leaving and new coaches coming in and UIL realignment – other things have not changed. There will be plenty of familiar faces coming back – both players and coaches. Some teams will be rebuilding and others will be reloading.

For this series, we will start with spring sports and work backward until the final stories will be about the sports just getting ready to kick off in August. So yes, as Tri Danley asked me last summer, I will be talking about basketball in July. Of course, no look at spring sports and winter sports can truly be done completely and without some eventual error. There are too many unknowns – even for fall sports. Life happens, students move, coaches move, athletes get injured (I pray not) and some decide for whatever reason not to play a particular sport. But we can get a general picture and for the most part, get a feeling of what to expect in the months to come.

Winter Teams

Part 1

Swimming

The Aqua Tribe will be back in the water this winter and will bring back a host of swimmers both for the girls and the boys. There were only a handful of seniors last season and so with a year or more of high school competition under their belts, the times will hopefully come down and the medal count will go up.

As with all sports, team or individual, the amount of success really depends on the work ethic of the individuals that make up the team and of course, natural talent. Swimming is no different.

Like any team sport where team scoring is involved there must be enough students who come out in order to enter each event. With a small turnout, decisions must be made as to which events to enter. A team may have some very talented individuals, who, can “carry” a team in both individual and team relay events. Yet, they can’t possibly compete in every event and team scores are all about accumulation of points from all of the events.

If the swim team can attract enough athletes (some in the past have gone on to compete at regionals in the same year they learned to swim!) they will be able to compete both in the individual and team categories. The young ones from last year need to get back in the pool this year and bring some friends with them.

Knowing how to swim is recommended of course but apparently not mandatory – Aqua Tribe head coach Danielle Sims has turned non-swimmers into regional qualifiers before.

Indian Basketball

The Indian basketball team had to rebuild last year, both in a new coach in Tanner Moore and in personnel that included only two players that saw any appreciable varsity playing time from the year before.

With that year and the learning curve it brought with it over, the Tribe will be a team that their opponents will have to recon with.

“Of course, things change from year to year and I’ve learned not to take anything for granted,” Moore said at the end of last season. “If we can get everyone back and healthy, we will be able to hit the ground running with an experienced squad of talented young men who have varsity experience and were getting better with every game.”

In basketball, there are benefits and drawbacks to being in the “middle season.” If your basketball players choose to play football in the fall, they will come to the basketball season in reasonable shape and that is a plus, however the deeper the football team goes into the playoffs, the later such athletes will be in reporting in to the basketball team.

The obvious drawbacks keep basketball coaches up at night. Your vital basketball player might sustain an injury that not only puts them out of football but basketball as well. Even what might be a “minor” injury in football that can be treated with a little tape and pain tolerance can be a “major” in basketball. A couple of years ago, a player broke a finger in football. He just taped it up and kept on playing. He admitted it took a while adjusting to shooting and dribbling a basketball and the pain of doing so never really went away.

Barring injury or players moving away – the Indians will bring back ALL of their starters and most of their reserves. Both point guards will be back in Channing Carter (district newcomer of the year last year) and Hudson Harper.

The Indians will have a host of outside shooters including Joshua Lopez, Guillermo Cruz, Hector Contreras and Jydo Portillo.

On the inside, they will be anchored by John Cottrell and Kalvin Petty. Both can step out and hit three pointers and both can be ferocious inside scorers and rebounders.

Then there are senior leaders in Rylan McCormick and Blake Flowers. Both played significant minutes two years ago when the Indian went deep into the regionals and both were named all-district last year along with Carter, Cottrell, Harper and Petty.

McCormick can score from the outside and inside while Flowers is what comes to mind when the term “power forward” is mentioned.

As one might discern so far, 10 players have been mentioned and only five can be on the floor at the same time. With that kind of talent, team cohesion and depth, Moore will have the freedom to choose how he wants to play any given team. He can wear a team down by running them – making frequent substitutions without any degradation of floor strength or he can slow things down and grind teams up from the inside out.

Task number one will require healthy players and so Tanner Moore – hold your breath and pray. November can seem like it will never get here when you are watching a Friday night football game.