By: Maria Rios Lopez and Karen Rios Lopez
The girls basketball at Eisenhower has been around for many years and is always changing. Our team is filled with dedicated and hardworking young women. The girls on the team along with the coaches work hard and have fun playing the sport they love.
The current coaches of the girls varsity team are Coach Bernard and Coach Allese who are Eisenhower alumni, and assistant coach David Flores is a current math teacher at Eisenhower.
This past year the Girls Basketball team won CIF championships and now they are preparing for the new season to come. It is more work and training because they don’t know what they will be up against, now that others expect more from them since they’ve won the CIF championships. The girls who played last year feel like they got recognition for winning but not personal recognition, so this is their year to show talent and hard work.
The team is like a family, all the girls care for each other and they all have a special and important role on the team. Kiera Harris, a player on the team says “We all have our own unique way of doing what we like to do”. They all have their techniques and ways to play the positions they love on the court. The coaches and the team alike give a lot of their time to practicing and training.
The girls have practice every day after school in the gym from 4-6 pm. They all get out of class, get dressed to play and go into the gym to practice, both JV and varsity teams practice together. The coaches are usually all at the gym by four ready to coach the girls. The coaches expect the girls to be ready by four so that practice can start right away.. Coaches expect things outside the court as well. In order to be on the team the girls must have at least a 3.0 gpa. Fun fact: last year the girls basketball had the highest grade gpa than all the other sports. It is also expected that the girls are nice and well behaved people. There aren't any new expectations since the girls’ past championship win, the coaches just want them to have fun and become better players.
Winning the CIF championship was a great achievement for the girls, the coaches, and the school. It had been a while since IKE had a win like that, and these girls did it! It was an amazing feeling to win for the girls and the coaches too. As a coach winning is different, coach Bernard says “It felt better to win as a coach then as a player, when I was a player we didn’t really have much instruction on how to win, we kind of had to figure it out on our own versus as a coach I have like a blueprint of things to do so that we could win and it felt good to know that those girls actually got into my blueprint and followed each and every step and it reached its benefit. It was an amazing feeling.” It was definitely a great accomplishment and the girls and the coaches did an excellent job.
With the new season right around the corner, the Covid-19 virus is a worry. No one can really know how it will affect the girls but they are hoping for the best and to stay safe. Luckily they haven’t had any outbreaks or scares and they hope it stays that way. For the coaches it is very hard because they know that games will definitely be putting the girls at risk, but they are all hoping everything will be okay and they can all stay safe and healthy.
It has been very interesting to see all these girls bond together through a sport, they have built a family where they are all welcome and feel comfortable. The coaches and the girls all put in a great amount of work, time, and effort to practice. It is definitely possible for these girls to win the CIF championships again and even state championships. They can work as the great family they are and overcome whatever obstacles come their way.