Three coaches in three years.
Can Righetti Girls’ Basketball catch a break? Last year, as the Sun reported, there was an bizarre Facebook exchange where a high school student baited their coach into talking smack on Facebook. The coach faced disciplinary action and left the job shortly thereafter.
The year before that, there was another coach-student dust up, another quiet internal settlement, and another vacancy behind the whistle and clipboard to be filled.
And so, after a disappointing sixth-in-league finish last year, assistant coach Desiree Domingues has stepped in. She’s a Righetti graduate herself who moved back to the area to pursue her master’s degree. She’s already coached the team as an assistant, and she hopes that her new job as head coach will be the chance to jump-start the program.
“I’m actually really excited for our season,” she told the Sun. “We have a lot of returners, but we’re still pretty young. I’m getting the girls to play a different style of basketball than what they’ve played the last couple of years. We’re going to focus on defense, and on some fast-paced basketball. I think it’ll be really good.”
Last year, she concedes, was tough. But she’s been with the team for three years, and she’s banking on that shared experience to hold the team together.
“I’ve been with the girls through everything, through the past three years,” she said. “The girls haven’t had much consistency, so that’s what we’re looking for right now.”
Their weakness? The fourth quarter. And their strength?
“This team, we really get along,” Domingues said. “I get along with the girls. And they get along with each other. I think that they know how to play hard for each other and for themselves and for the coach. And we have fun too.”
Between that fun is practice—a ton of practice. Three days a week during the summer is soon to become six days a week during the school year. They’re turning over a new leaf—less drilling plays, more fundamentals and defense.
“I think that’s more important than learning how to run a play,” Domingues explained. “I think our defense was one of the things that kept us in games [last year].”
Their fall league starts at the end of August, the preseason in October, and their league competition in January. The team to beat is Arroyo Grande, but they’re not spilling the beans on how they plan to do it.
“I’ve learned a lot, and everything that I’ve learned I’m trying to give to the girls,” Domingues said. μ
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 3, 2015.