Everyone Is Learning: On The Girls Basketball Team
“Can this team live up to what the team was before? Or will they fall short? Stay along for the ride as we interview the players and coach to gain their insight…”
Women’s basketball has been on the rise in recent years, especially with last year’s exhilarating Women's March Madness and the WNBA expanding its viewership. The stigma of women’s basketball being boring or less exciting than men’s basketball has slowly decreased. With players like Caitlyn Clark breaking these stigmas around the nation, this leads to young girls to aspire to be like Caitlyn Clark and become even better than her.
And without a doubt that goes for our girls, too. What aspirations do they have, and do they have what it takes to become the new stars of Comp Sci High’s Girls Basketball team? But first, what does it mean to be a Lady Python? What challenges have they overcome last season to achieve such an identity, if they do have an identity? The Lady Python’s season has begun, and they have a lot to prove considering how well last season went for them. An undefeated CSAA league season is the pinnacle of what a team can achieve throughout the regular season, not to mention that they won their league’s championship. Can this team live up to what the team was before? Or will they fall short? Stay along for the ride as we interview the players and coach to gain their insight on the struggles of being a team and the emotions between coach and player.
After asking Yineiri Reyes Cepeda and Salma Faisal how they feel about Ayala's coaching towards them and the team, Yineiri said, “Ayala is one the best coaches, lifting me up as a player when I struggled. He built me up since I never had middle school experience and started ball late into highschool.”
But Ayala gives chances to players who may not have had the talent to begin with, searching within each child to see their potential.
With how grueling it is to be seen in New York, you can be overlooked by people all the time in your life. I know I’ve been overlooked by my coaches multiple times, and Yineiri felt she would have gone through similar judgement with Coach Ayala. However, to her surprise, Ayala had given her the opportunity to learn the game of basketball in her late years of high school.
Usually, great players of the game start to play the game at quite a young age. But, there are stories out there like Amar’e Stoudemire’s, who didn’t start to play organized basketball until 14 years old. He went on to be the number 1 recruit in the nation. But there’s only so many stories about players gaining that amount of skill in such an amount of time, like a fairytale if one could say. So you would think that Coach Ayala would, after hearing from Yineiri, “I just started playing basketball,” would let her down, saying it’s too late. However, through her work ethic, she is now a rotational player, maybe even a star player in the eyes of the fans, giving all the credit to Ayala when it came to his coaching making her a better player.
Salma, however, said, “I feel like he is very hard on his players, and as a coach he should study his players.” Every player has their own personality, so treating every player the same will almost never work, so you need to create a relationship and bond with those players and find out if they can handle things like constructive criticism or tough love when coaching, but it is also the coaches job to turn them into someone who can take constructive criticism, or tough love.
Salma goes on to agree with her teammates' statements, going on to support her undeniable growth as a player of the game with the work she put in alongside Ayala to get better. She then goes on to share her opinion on Coach Ayala, leading to what we believe are ways of giving constructive criticism towards her coach. Players will always have critiques on their coach and how they believe they should run a team, similars to how students criticize teachers to let them know how they learn best, so we don’t believe she was offering these comments about Ayala with the intent of disrespect, but rather her opinion on how she believes the team would benefit from her perspective on Ayala.
Salma said “I feel like he uses us well; he has a great eye for the court, lots of game knowledge, and uses his IQ to breakdown plays.”
Yineiri agreed.
Seniors are the ones looked at to usually have leadership qualities and give out advice to the freshmen on the team.
After asking Salma how she feels about the freshmen on the team, and if there's any player to watch out for she said, “Watch out for Taylor, she is bound to have the star player potential, and is committed to learning the sport.”
We asked Coach Ayala how he feels about the performance of the girl's basketball team. He said, “ The Girls team has had its ups and downs. We have some new girls who are learning, and we have a strong core from last year. They have come a long way and are now in 3rd place in the overall league standings.”
We also asked him what is the hardest part of coaching a girls basketball team, and he said, “I think the toughest part of coaching girls is that you have to be very intentional with the language you use. Also you have to be adaptable to different coaching styles because you want to maintain motivation and joy. At the same time you want to make sure that you are pushing players to their best potential, so it’s a tough balance.”
This shows that Ayala understands that he still is open to learning and growing as a coach, and that he is also trying his best. Everyone is learning, and everyone is new to something, and trying your best is all you can ask in such a situation.