It’s never too early to learn, even in the Camp Verde Grasshopper basketball leagues, to never underestimate the girls.
Even when they are down 13 points at halftime under a first-year head coach.
“I finished the game with all three of my girls out there just to prove a point — that girls can play,” said Ryan Morris, first-year head coach of the Badgers, after his 37-32 double overtime victory Feb. 25 for the fifth- and sixth-grade spring Grasshopper league title. “We had the most girls out of any team, which is [a] cool challenge.”
Tori Black’s free throw set up the game-tying three-point shot in regulation, “which is all I really needed her to make,” Morris said.
After each team scored just two points in the first overtime, Black and fellow Camp Verde Elementary School fifth-grader Madison Morris, along with sixth-grader Samuel Willis, helped shut down top seed Lil TCB on defense in a “packed” Camp Verde Community Center Gym.
“I swear, it looked like people were surrounding the court,” Morris said. “Those three came up so big.”
Sixth-grader Devon James scored the final 10 points for the Badgers, including the three-point shot that sent the championship game into overtime.
“Devon just turned into a robot from 27 to 37,” Morris said. “I told him, ‘Buddy keep it up and you’ll go all the way to college.’”
After having split two regular-season games with past champion Lil TCB and head coach Jamie Valles, the Badgers had to rally from a 22-9 halftime deficit.
“We were getting hammered,” Morris recalled. “It was hard not for them to say, ‘Man, this game’s over.’
“But we huddled up, and in the second half just came out on fire and came back, basket by basket.”
But they were playing without sixth-grader Alan Keller, lost to a knee injury Feb. 22 in a 30-22 semifinal win over head coach Toni Fitzgerald’s fourth-seeded Bulls.
“I told the kids [how] the badger happens to be the most fearsome ferocious animal there is,” Morris said. “They kind of took that identity on.
“They just never played scared. Down or up, we kept our foot on the pedal and kept attacking.”
Also providing a “heavy-duty defensive presence,” Morris said, was the third girl on the team, McKinlee Brewer, along with Black’s brother, Tristan, fellow fifth-grader Chandler Plante and sixth-graders Davon Beauty and Phillip Begay.
But Lil TCB was also worn out a bit by head coach Darren Gagnon’s third-seeded Dragons, who lost to Valles’ team, 24-22, in the other semifinal Feb. 22.
“I had parents, even a referee, come up to me afterwards and say, ‘That was the greatest basketball game I’ve ever seen,’” Morris said. “It was probably one of the funnest times I’ve had in my life.”
Following a half-hour break, the seventh- and eighth-grade championship game turned out to be as close, but no overtime, as the top-ranked Hustle Gang used a semifinal bye to its advantage.
Head coach Dave Kinsey’s team would take home the trophy in regulation, 33-32, over head coach Joshua Loveall’s Warriors. Hustle Gang had beaten both the Warriors and head coach Joe Decker’s Venom by three points Feb. 20, but the Warriors upended the Venom, 42-36, in their Feb. 24 semifinal.
