First Year Coaching Highschool in the Pandemic Era.
by Andrew Williams
After accepting the position to coach Junior Varsity girls for Legacy Highschool in North Las Vegas I was unsure what to expect. Sure, I had experience with the Freshman squad a few years before but that was a different climate. That was the good ole days. That was B.C. (Before Covid), things were different then. With only two games remaining in my season, I felt I can take some time to reflect on what made this year so different.
This year I was first chair, head coach, the big kahuna. All the good and bad fell on me and I was determined to turn all bad into good. Normally the main issue would be just grades and disciplinary issues but not this year. This year my roster suffered from continuity issues. At one point I had 8 players out due to Covid and this by the fifth game. The main hurdles were faced by my back court I watched possibly one of the more capable ball handlers in my freshman class miss game after game due to academics, and then watched our turnovers almost triple.
One of the things that stood out the most as far playing in a pandemic season was the development of basketball greatly fell off. In this area (Las Vegas) we used to have a great pipeline for girls' basketball. In the before times, we had a league for young ladies from ages 4- 13 called GYBL. This league was focused on developing girls in every age group to be ready for school ball. The beauty of this league was it was never directly associated with any AAU program. This neutrality made a safe place for all teams. Rivals would welcome rivals; every week was the Game of the Year. Every challenge was intense, at any given time you can see an icon in Women’s basketball roaming a sideline or giving an amazing life changing speech. This was our Gauchos; this was our testing ground for all the new moves we learned. This competitive environment created a pool of excellent women basketball players that would go on to be competitive in Highschool and college basketball. Once the Covid shutdown happened the pipeline dried up. Now I see across the Valley, multiple junior varsity teams with novice players.
As for my junior varsity team yes, we had some novice players and some covid absences but with all that we still are sitting 8-5 before our last two games are played. We played, we lost, we fought back, and we won, all in all we grew from this season as a team. I as a coach has grown from this season and as a person. I wish at some point these girls would have had a chance to experience the purity and innocence of the GYBL.
So here we are 3 years after the doors shut on the greatest basketball prep league in Las Vegas area, and we have a disconnect. As I sit at my desk prepping for my last 2 games of the season I sit and wish they could have played more. I wish they had the games they needed to be great at this point. Who knows what girls' basketball will look like in the future in Las Vegas, but one thing that is for sure it will never be what it was B.C (Before Covid)?
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Andrew Williams is a Sports Analyst and Host of BallCourt - The World of Basketball with Coach Drew and Let's Kick It - Courtside.
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