The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“From last year to this year their basketball IQ increased greatly and I’m excited for it to continue to grow and prosper”
by Than Acuff
There’s no question the Crested Butte Titans girls basketball team made some strides over the course of the season and there’s no questioning their heart. But progress and grit take a while to turn into wins and on Tuesday, February 19 their season came to an end without a single win all season.
“Obviously it was not what we wanted but despite the losses every girl showed up and played hard and that’s all you can ask for,” says coach Vaden Holmes.
The Titans wrapped up the regular season with a quality effort against the South Park Burros but as the game wore on, the Titans wore out and they fell to the Burros. They closed the season against one of the top teams in their league, falling to the Sargent Farmers and were left to face the number one seeded Del Norte Tigers in the first round of districts.
“They just have a great program and all of those girls have been playing together since they were young,” says Holmes. “It’s cool to see.”
While a win was out of the question, Holmes and the players did have some goals in mind heading in and Holmes feels they reached those goals despite the 76-14 loss.
“We’ve played them a couple of times so the goal is always to play them better than we did the last time and we definitely did that,” says Holmes. “I told the seniors this is the last show, so do whatever you can to play the best you can, and I think they did a great job of that.”
While it’s true Crested Butte finished without a win all year, Holmes saw some things toward the end that proved encouraging.
“My biggest thing has not been about winning or losing,” says Holmes. “A lot of these girls have proven to me that they’re going to go out and do really good things, whether it’s in basketball or something else. There was a lot of growth in their confidence from last year.”
The fact remains, though, that while other programs have robust off-season plans for their basketball teams, the Titan players tend to be centered on basketball only during the months of the basketball season. Holmes hopes to remedy that in the coming year.
“We have plans for some stuff in the off-season and over the summer,” says Holmes. “That was the difference in our season. If we had put in some work over the summer or other times it would have been a totally different season. We can’t come into every season starting from scratch. I am excited about the big numbers we had this year and hopefully that carries over. From last year to this year, their basketball IQ increased greatly and I’m excited for it to continue to grow and prosper.”
