Small School Saturday at the Coliseum - Crowds, Coolidge, Crooms
- Jacob Seliga
- Mar 1
- 3 min read
Column
For someone who covers basketball as much as I do, no day excites me quite as much as championship Saturday for the small schools at the coliseum.
It is the experience you see in movies or read in books, a small town traveling for hours on end to a cathedral where one team gives hope for the future with its present success.
Tribes traveled from different corners of the state to Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum to cheer on Window Rock, Page, and Tuba City. While frequent small town champions Pima, Snowflake, and Coolidge were in the minority even with the crowds they brought.
The passion, the intensity, and the pride was second to none. As chants and screams filled the air and Pom-Pom’s and shakers were in the hands of six-year old children and 86-year old grandparents, the excitement to cheer on high school boys and girls that hoped to inspire the next generation while finishing what those who came before them started.
For Tuba City it was freshman Layla Curtis taking over the game in the closing minutes with multiple steals and layups that had a basketball palace that seen Bird, Jordan, and Magic reach a roar not seen since the ghost of Alvan Adams for the Suns in the Finals 50 years ago.
For Window Rock and Page, two towns separated by three and a half hours of winding roads and scenic views, it was a reminder that two towns forgotten considerably in the daily life of Arizonan’s that community pride isn’t just for 2,000+ kid schools and small towns praised by those in power as a relic of the good ol’ days. But rather where the most forgotten people by those in leadership come together with the same common values and pride that unite us more than it divides us.
For 14 hours on Saturday, Arizona united for basketball. Where all people from every background, every ethnicity, and every social-economic group came together to make high school basketball feel like the NBA finals
The Coolidge situation is out of hand
During the first half the 3A girls championship between Window Rock and Page, the Coolidge boys basketball team walked into the arena to the waiting area behind the basket. Immediately the team was met with a chorus of boos that echoed off the ceiling and continued into pregame and the beginning of their semifinal matchup versus Snowflake.
The players… The ones who had nothing to do with the incident at hand and on video were shaking hands and being gracious to the Chinle players.
At what point do the adults in the room acknowledge the situation is out of control.
It’s one thing to boo the fans, boo the adults, have an issue with the people who were vulgar, ignorant, and disrespectful to Chinle players and fans…
But the kids who just want to play, the kids who are trying to win a state championship, they’re the ones with a black eye and the thoughts against them when they didn’t do anything themselves.
Coolidge advanced to the unplanned and undetermined 3A championship game to face Palo Verde following a dominant victory over Snowflake.
32 minutes separates Coolidge from a state title that they will have earned, and with uncertainty as to whether or not it’ll be upheld with probation looming and a temporary restraining order keeping them in the tournament, one thing is for certain…
The kids may be punished for what they themselves didn’t do, but a victory will never be taken away even if the record books may not show it.
The new small school kings.
Make no mistake about it, San Tan Charter head coach Kyli Crooms is one of the most talked about coaches in the state for better or worse.
His swagger and confidence in his program is mistaken for arrogance but rather it’s the understanding that their zone-press defense leading to fast break domination that stacks up the score isn’t because of running it up but rather if you can’t stop it that’s your job to try and get past it.
The Roadrunners outside of a shocking semifinal loss last season to Gilbert Christian have been the best small school program in the state and have the ring to finally show for it.
Crooms had been very open about it and spoke about how his program had the talent and drive to do it and they went out and backed it up even with stars battling injury.
The next step is to sustain the success and that’s always the hardest part, but if one coach is built for it, and one team is built for it… It’s San Tan and it’s Crooms
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