The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
New coach at the helm
Every year is a treat, don’t get me wrong. But this year the Lady Titans basketball season has a couple of interesting twists that could bode well for the team with six seniors and a new head coach.
Mike Moran is taking over the high school girls’ team this season. Moran may be new to the program in Crested Butte but is certainly not new to coaching basketball.
He cut his teeth on coaching in 1975 in Arizona and spent a good part of 30 years at all levels of the game, from middle school and eventually spending 13 years coaching high school in Flagstaff, Arizona.
“I’ve been working my way up and paid my dues,” says Moran.
Moran gave up coaching to put in six years at the administrative level as an athletics director, dean of students and principal but admits, “I couldn’t get the coaching bug out of me.”
Meanwhile, he had his sights set on Colorado and Crested Butte specifically and this past summer when he saw the high school girls coaching job available in Crested Butte, he jumped at it.
“I’ve been coming here for 12 years and looking for a job up here,” says Moran. “It worked out great.”
Moran did his research following the team’s progress in the 2A Southern Peaks league the past five years as well as the progress of other programs in the league. Then, he decided it was time to find out what kind of girls he would be working with by watching how they played volleyball.
“The first thing I did was watch them during the volleyball season, see how they behaved and see how they worked together,” explains Moran.
An epiphany came during the Titans volleyball match against the top ranked Sangre de Cristo team.
“They still lost but they never gave up,” says Moran. “It gave me a lot of confidence seeing how much character they had. These girls have heart. I know they’ll never quit.”
Fortunately, Moran also has assistant Lis Collins to help out. Collins has been working with the team for the past several years as an assistant and has some insight into the team and their opponents that can’t be found on a stat sheet.
“She has been an amazing help to me,” says Moran.
Furthermore, Moran has the benefit of six seniors returning, most of who all just got finished with their best volleyball season to date.
“I’m obviously very thrilled about that,” says Moran. “They’re hungry and their leadership has been fantastic.”
After some open gym sessions focusing on fundamentals such as footwork, passing and dribbling, Moran and the team hit the court for the official start of practice on November 13.
While fundamentals are still the name of the game during workouts, Moran has been working on defense as well to utilize his teams’ intensity.
“We’ve started putting in all of our defensive stuff, man-to-man and cutting off passing lanes much like Indiana,” explains Moran. “I’m excited about the chemistry.”
He’s also determined to get the team shooting more and feels that between their pace, hustle and grit, they could make some waves this year in the league.
The Lady Titans head to Cotopaxi on Friday, November 22 for preseason scrimmages against Salida and Cotopaxi and then head to South Park for a tournament on Friday, December 6.
“I think you’ll see a difference from last year’s team,” says Moran. “We’re gonna get after people. Hopefully we’ll be able to challenge some of these tougher teams. I’m really looking forward to the challenge.”
