The Northern New Mexico womens basketball team showed off an entirely new look to start this year’s season, with three first-year starters and a couple of fresh faces coming off the bench.
Freshman Leah DeAguero, a former standout at Española Valley High School; RanDee Toya, a red-shirt freshman from Santa Fe Indian School; and Jade Hill, a transfer from Cochise College in Sierra Vista, Ariz., and formerly of Cleveland High School, are the latest additions to the Eagles’ starting line-up.
The three complement two reliable starters in Cheyenne Cordova and Ashley John.
“I definitely feel very lucky and thankful to be starting,” DeAguero said.
Alexis Lovato, also a freshman from Española, and Kyanne Kowatch, a freshman from Tularosa High School, have been making significant contributions coming off the bench.
Lovato is back to playing the same position she held for Española, at the number five spot.
After three games, the Eagles are 1-2.
For the first two games of the season, they hosted the University of the Southwest, from Hobbs, N.M., and Kansas Wesleyan University, two National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics programs. They dropped the first game, Oct. 27, against the University of the Southwest by one point, 76-75.
Following that loss, they took down Kansas Wesleyan, Oct. 28, outscoring the Coyotes, 81-70. DeAguero was the team’s leading scorer of the day, finishing the night with 19 points.
“She was able to spot up, get open and knock down some shots that we needed to fall,” Northern head coach Tony Gallegos said. “It was nice to see a local kid doing well.”
After scoring the team’s first points with a three-pointer, DeAguero made all five attempts from the three-point line.
The success came as a welcome surprise for her, as she has switched her shooting form since graduating high school.
“I’ve worked on, me personally, getting my shot off quicker,” she said. “I will definitely get stuffed if I don’t make it faster.”
After the win against Kansas Wesleyan, the Lady Eagles went on the road, Oct. 30, to take a Division 1 program in Southern Utah University.
They kept the game close in the first half and extended that momentum into the third quarter.
At the beginning of the third quarter, they were down by one point, 48-47, until a Southern Utah scoring streak ended hope of a win for Northern.
The Thunderbirds were victorious on the day, winning by a score of 86-67.
“They’re a D1 program, it is hard to withstand a run,” Gallegos said. “They went on a little run on us, and it was just something we couldn’t recover from.”
For Gallegos, the team is still a work in progress, but all signs are positive, at this point.
“It’s been an improvement, as far as how we’re approaching our philosophy of getting up and down, and running things to our strengths,” he said. “Every single time that we’ve been out on the court, we’ve been a little better.”