The Manitou Spring High School’s girls and boys varsity basketball teams had a very successful season, with both teams making it to regionals. The first round of regionals this year took place on Saturday, March 7. The girls basketball team lost in the first round to TCA with a final score of 31-60. The boy basketball team also lost in the first round to TCA with a score of 40-47.
Gabby Santos has been a coach for multiple sports at MSHS for the past five years. “This is my fifth year coaching basketball and my second year as head coach for it,” Santos said. “I’ve not coached any other school, but I did Coach volleyball for four years, two years of high school soccer and a third year of middle school soccer as well.”
Santos sees very similar teams every year because MSHS is a small school, she finds it very hard to compare the teams from year to year. “Teams show up differently each year so you have to do different things which makes it hard to compare them overall but I do think that this group this year had a lot of success,” Santos said. “Some of it built off of everything that we did last year, but I think some of it really came from how this group showed up and played together as a unit, and we found a lot of success in that.”
Aylin Gomez, a senior at MSHS, has played multiple school sports since middle school, including varsity basketball. “I have played both basketball and soccer for the last five years but I have played on the varsity basketball team for the last three years,” Gomez said.
Santos has coached most of these seniors for all four years of high school being their junior varsity coach for their freshman and sophomore years and then becoming their head varsity coach for each of their junior and senior years as well. “Really seeing them all the way through has been really fun and I think that the leadership that the seniors had this year and the way that they showed up and were committed really set the tone for everybody else,” Santos said.
Although the seniors this year do not plan on continuing to play basketball in college, Santos can see them in the future involving themselves with basketball in some way again. “Madison’s gonna go play softball and Aly and Brooklyn have already decided on schools. I’m sure that the four of them will probably find ways to stay connected to basketball moving forward in different capacities,” Santos said.
Gomez has enjoyed making memories with her team throughout all of high school and not only enjoyed playing the sport with them, but she loved getting to spend time with them during the overnight tournaments and team bonding events as well. “I just really like spending time with them and I feel like we did a lot better this year and we all improved together,” Gomez said.
Santos’s goal for this season was to make it to regionals this year since they missed out on it last year by the tiniest amount, so it was a huge accomplishment just to qualify for them this year as the number 24 placing seed for regionals compared to being the 33 seed last season. “I was excited about our opportunity to play TCA and I think that that was a good matchup for us. We knew that TCA was going to be a good shooting team, but I think that the fact that we showed up against an 11 seed and decided that we really wanted to play basketball from the beginning to the end, everyone fought all the way through the game, and that’s a huge thing to step into regionals with a year that we didn’t see it and perform at that level,” Santos said. “I think that walking out of that game I was feeling good about the effort that we put into it.”
Nick Nunley, the boys basketball head varsity coach, has never coached at any other school but has been a coach for multiple other sports over the years. “This will be my twelfth year coaching basketball and I also used to coach baseball and football for 11 years,” Nunley said. “This is my second year being the varsity basketball coach.”
Cohen Barrett is a senior at MSHS who has played basketball since he was five years old, but he has also played three other sports throughout high school and his childhood. “I have played soccer on and off since elementary school, track since sophomore year and football for 1 year in high school but basketball is my main sport,” Barrett said.
Nunley feels that this season has gone very well and she has seen very significant growth in the athletes since the beginning of the season. “There are obviously some games we would have liked to win that we lost like CSCS, Lamar and Peyton that come to mind, but we’re still getting better and looking forward to regionals,” Nunley said.
Barrett has had many accomplishments and moments of growth throughout high school with basketball while being on the MSHS team,the 7070 and the Rising Stars club teams. “Compared to other years, my season this year was definitely my best, but it could have been even better,” Barrett said.
Both the girls and boys varsity teams have shared so many memories with each other, especially with the seniors looking back at tournaments like league, university and regionals. “My favorite memory was going to university my sophomore year, being younger and having people to look up to and follow behind instead of leading the team was fun at the time, even though we didn’t have a good season that year,” Barrett said.
Nunley expresses how there has been so much growth of not only the seniors throughout their years of high school, but also in many of next year’s incoming seniors. “A lot of these guys have grown tremendously. I mean, I’ve been around Cohen and Gaige for most of their lives at this point, and both of them have become great players, as well as some of the younger guys that we’ve had in our junior class right now,” Nunley said. “I had them when I was the C team coach when they were freshman, so it’s nice to see them growing as well.”
The boys varsity team was very optimistic this season for regionals and had hopes to make it to state this year as well. “My goal for regionals was to hit 1000 career points, but I did end up missing it by 10 points,” Barrett said.
Nunley and the other coaches had positive expectations for regionals this year. “We are playing The Classical Academy first on Friday and I think that we can go to Montezuma Cortez and win both of those games and play in the Coliseum next week,” Nunley said.
Although the boys and girls basketball team did not make it past the first round in regionals, Cohen Barrett made First Team All Conference, Michael Reed and Aylin Gomez made Second Team All Conference and Madison Anderson and Sebastian Steger both made All Conference Honorable Mention.
