When Dulce rookie head boys basketball coach Anthony Salazar unexpectedly resigned during the Christmas break, it left the program in limbo.
Specifically, there was no one to coach the team. And there was talk of canceling the rest of the season.
But Hawks’ girls coach Clyde Sanchez, who just took over on that side of the gym this season after coming over from Clayton, said he couldn’t let that happen.
“It came close,” he said. “When they asked me, I had to make a decision to help the team. I had to decide which way it was going to go and it had to happen pretty quick. I told them ‘I’ll help. It’s for the kids so I’ll do it.’”
Juggling the two teams doesn’t appear to be a problem as they both played in the same tournaments, and all the upcoming District 1-2A games are scheduled back-to-back with the boys and girls varsity teams.
Practice-wise, the girls will continue with practices immediately after school, with the boys following later in the evening.
Yes, Sanchez admitted, it means more work, but he’s fine with that.
“It’s like a job, a four-hour job instead of eight hours,” he said. “And I’ve done this before. I coached junior varsity and varsity at Clayton. When I really started coaching in the ’80s, I coached middle school and high school. I’ve got a lot of energy. I have a passion to coach. I have a passion to teach.”
And dumping the season simply wasn’t fair to the boys, Sanchez said.
“That’s why I jumped in,” he said. “You cancel a season and everybody is losing out. I didn’t go there to take anybody’s job away, so the community is accepting it. I’m doing it for the right reasons.”
It’s been a bit of an adjustment for the players, but they’re coming around, Sanchez said.
“It’s like anything, they liked coach Salazar. He was their coach,” Sanchez said. “They went through some change and that’s difficult for anybody.”
The Dulce girls have been playing well, sitting at 9-5 entering the week. And the boys were off to a 5-3 start before Sanchez took over on Jan. 5.
“I took it over and we had a game right away, the next day,” Sanchez said. “We had a game on (Jan. 6), we won that game and then we had to get ready for the (Northern Rio Grande) tournament. And then we had Indian School right away, then we headed to the Cuba Tournament. So we’ve only been able to practice four or five days.”
That left Sanchez no choice but to cut to the basics with the boys.
“The boys are just getting used to what we want from them, to play defense,” he said. “That’s a big part of the game. We put in a couple of offenses; a zone offense and a man-to-man offense. The zone offense is pretty simple, they’re starting to pick it up. The man, there’s more to it, but they’re starting to understand what we want to do with our offense.”
With the base offenses in place, it doesn’t take too much to make small adjustments to fit game-specific situations, Sanchez said.
“With those offenses, you change a little something, but we’re not going to make it too difficult,” he said. “One thing I’ve learned, especially with high school, you don’t want to make it too complicated. The people who really understand basketball know that all offenses are good if they’re run right. If you run it the way that you’re supposed to, you’ll be able to score.”
Luckily, the Hawks boys have some extremely talented scorers who can fill up the basket.
“We have some legit players,” Sanchez said. “They can play. They’re salty. In my 35 years of coaching, I’ve never had this many guys who can really score. They’re the real deal.”
Defensively, it’s back to the fundamentals, the coach said.
“We’re teaching them the principles,” he said. “Guarding the screens, guarding the cuts. We play a pack-line defense so it looks a lot of the time like a zone.”
But the Hawks have a desire to improve, Sanchez said.
“One thing about these boys, they really have a desire on defense,” he said. “And when you have desire on defense, things can be done. They talk on defense. I’ve had a lot of teams where there was no talking but if you have talking on defense, it’s a lot better.”
And the prognosis for both squads is definitely positive.
“I’m pretty excited about both teams,” Sanchez said. “They both have the chance of making the state tournament. It’s up to them.”