Matt Harris, the new Camp Verde High School girls basketball head coach, said he’s pretty confident the varsity team will perform better this year than previous years.
Last season, the Cowboys went 9-9 and ended ranked 28th out of 49 ranked 2A teams in the state.
Harris, a U.S. history teacher at CVHS, was the assistant coach to coach and CVHS Principal Mark Showers before his retirement earlier this year. Harris said he’s got big shoes to fill.
Senior Brayden Sapp said she’s glad to have him as the new coach.
“He loves the game and he tries to make it fun, but he’s still super hard on us,” she said.
Harris has been working with the team on increasing their cardio and finding the strengths the athletes have.
“We have some speed, and so we’re going to focus a lot on defense this year,” he said.
The Cowboys have been practicing since the beginning of November. Most of the members played in some scrimmages and off-season practices over the summer and many played in volleyball as well.
“We did some tournaments — or scrimmages I guess you could say — and they went pretty well,” senior Wa’siiva Lewis said.
“We usually don’t have that many girls [over the summer],” senior Kenlee Shanks said. “This year we had a lot of members, which is exciting.”
Lewis has been playing basketball since she was 5 or 6, she said, and Shanks’ dad was the coach at the middle school, so she’s been around basketball most of her life as well. Shanks said she has high hopes the season will go well. She played nearly all the teams last year, and is hoping for to have a good time, although she is competitive and wants as many wins as possible.
Last year, the team played two invitationals. going 1-1 at one and 2-2 at the other.
While there are good returning players this year, some of the athletes are a bit newer to the sport, Lewis said.
“I don’t think it’s going to be bad, but this is going to be one of our, probably, toughest years,” she said, “just because we have girls who are … I guess you could say sat out a year or two and came back.”
Senior Ani Pugh said she’s been playing for only the past two years. Before starting basketball, she played volleyball and knew Showers.
Pugh said learned a lot since last year, and has liked what she’s seen of the team so far this season.
Sapp, who’s been playing since middle school, said she also plays club softball and hopes to use the good attitudes and energy she has used to find success in softball through the basketball season.
The Cowboys’ first game was Nov. 25 at Horizon Honors High School in Phoenix, which it lost 66-21.
The team’s first home game was Tuesday, Dec. 2, against the Phoenix Country Day Eagles at 5:30 p.m., which it lost 53-34 After this home game, the Cowboys are on the road until January, where the team will play the North Valley Christian Lions on Thursday, Jan. 8, at 5:30 p.m.
