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Practice begins for girls basketball
Updated: October 24, 2011 9:32PM
CROWN POINT — For most basketball teams, the first official day of practice doesn’t mean what it used to.
These teams have been together for months, conditioning and practicing in voluntary open gyms.
The actual tryouts aren’t like tryouts used to be since coaches are pretty set in what the roster will look like.
But at Crown Point on Monday, the first IHSAA practice day, with 50 potential players in the building, tryouts really did mean something.
So it was fitting that Monday was also the first day for new CP coach Anne Equihua, who was part of some old school tryouts back in the day when she was part of the Bulldogs’ glory days of girls basketball.
“That was like a hundred years ago,” joked Equihua, whose maiden name is Kvachkoff.
Actually, it was 1982-85 when the Bulldogs won four conference, four sectional, four regional, three semistate and two state titles (’84 and ’85).
Equihua had a cup of coffee as Highland’s head coach (1993-95), but now she’s back in familiar surroundings after being the Taft Middle School coach and a frequent fan in the stands watching games in recent years after longtime CP coach Tom May retired in 2007.
To say the excitement is back when it comes to Crown Point girls basketball would be an understatement.
“She’s amazing,” CP senior forward Michaela Prough said. “She was always one of the first to come up to me after games and give me a high five. Even when she wasn’t formally the coach, she’s helped me out. So it’s nice to have her as coach now for my senior year.”
Equihua said she had “been waiting for (Monday) all summer,” and she added that one of her goals for the team is that “it needs to be fun,” but that doesn’t mean Monday’s practice was all fun and games.
“You all know what you’re fighting for,” she told the 24 girls in the main gym trying out for varsity. “There are no guarantees here.”
A cynical fan might scoff at those words if they knew three of the girls trying out.
It truly is a family affair for Equihua with two of her nieces in the gym — senior Courtney Kvachkoff, who was a P-T All-Area second-teamer last season, and sophomore Abby Kvachkoff — as well as her daughter, junior Taylor Equihua. But if anyone knows the first-year coach, she wants to win badly.
“Anyone who knows me knows I’ll cut my grandmother if I had to,” said Anne Equihua, who then clarified how she’ll treat her daughter in tryouts.
“She has to be better than (other players).”
Equihua does have a good mix of experience and youth on her coaching staff — longtime coach Chuck Smoljan, Scott Reid, who was a former CP assistant under Tom May and head coach for two years after May retired, former CP standout Sarah Zonder and Josh Goeringer.
“You surround yourself with great people you can succeed, and I have a great staff,” Equihua said.
Reid is just a volunteer coach who was away from the program since he resigned two years ago.
“Anne asked me to volunteer and I said, ‘whatever she wants’,” he said.
One of his jobs might be to hold back Equihua, who looked like she wanted to jump into some of the drills and start showing the girls how it was done.
“It’s day one and we’re going to learn to communicate (on the court) — talk, yell, be crazy ... large and in charge,” she told the girls during a defensive drill.
They won’t be the only ones going crazy if CP basketball returns to form.
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