For coach, it’s full-circle basketball
The boys and girls basketball teams at the San Andreas
Continuation High School in Hollister never made headlines earlier
this season, but they probably should have.
It’s not everyday both teams are able to take league titles, one
as a repeat champ, the other in its first year of existence, all
under the tutelage of one head coach.
For coach, it’s full-circle basketball
The boys and girls basketball teams at the San Andreas Continuation High School in Hollister never made headlines earlier this season, but they probably should have.
It’s not everyday both teams are able to take league titles, one as a repeat champ, the other in its first year of existence, all under the tutelage of one head coach.
But David Cramer, a teacher of social sciences and language arts at the high school, perhaps exceeded most expectations, especially after the way the regular season started, when he led both the boys and girls basketball teams to respective championship wins in the Monterey Bay Alternative Schools Athletic League in March.
And in his first year of coaching at San Andreas, no less.
“When we won those games, we arrived back (in Hollister) honking the horns entering school,” Cramer recalls.
“For me, I love sports, and I am grateful they gave me the opportunity to coach them. To see them take it, you kind of dream of taking the championship. I knew we were close, but to actually get there was special. It was always possible, but they’re the ones who did it.”
And Cramer is quick to point out the mutual support both teams gave one another throughout the course of the season at San Andreas, which caters to approximately 200 at-risk students.
Dealing with a facility conflict early on, Cramer conducted practices simultaneously on a single court – boys on one half, girls on the other – not necessarily the hallmark of championship teams.
“You learn patience,” he said.
But when Vice Principal Charles Campbell at Rancho San Justo Middle School opened his doors on Tuesdays and Thursdays, allowing the Knights to practice in the school’s gymnasium, Cramer felt the season, the strategies, the plays, began to develop.
“That’s when the practices took off,” said Cramer, adding that the girls would routinely help the boys during practice and vice versa, often leading to co-ed scrimmages.
“We couldn’t have done this without the assistance of the community.”
Although the boys team took the MBASAL title last season under a different head coach, ending a championship run of approximately six years by Central Coast High School in Seaside, Cramer said, some of the Knights on this year’s squad were limited in their basketball knowledge, perhaps leading to a pair of Central Coast routs during the regular season.
The Seaside school appeared destined to reclaim its trophy after it trumped San Andreas 37-15 and 54-18 in two games early in the year.
“But they knew in their heart,” Cramer said. “The kids knew they were a better team.
“The baskets just weren’t going in. But throughout all of that, my team knew how hard we worked.”
It would be the only losses the Knights compiled over the season, as it finished with an 8-2 record. And in the championship final, redemption: San Andreas 59, Central Coast 48.
“Once they figured it out,” Cramer said, “there was no stopping them.”
The girls, meanwhile, were a slightly different story. Never had San Andreas fielded a girls basketball team, and Cramer recalls of the team’s first game, and first win, a couple of the girls were even throwing up before tip-off.
Perhaps not the best of signs before the start of the regular season.
But noticing his team’s strength and stamina, Cramer built upon the Knights’ passing, blocking and shooting, and “from scratch, developed a nice team.”
Indeed.
Inaugural season? How about 10-0, including a 37-16 victory over a continuation high school from Watsonville in the championship final.
Not bad from scratch.
“The girls came up to me after the first game. They figured they were going to lose,” Cramer said. “They felt that they weren’t going to measure up to the other team, but they got better and better as the season went on.”
If the rise of the Knights basketball program wasn’t special enough, though, if a first-year coach manning two basketball teams to two different titles doesn’t seem the least bit unexpected, how about the fact that Cramer, coaching at-risk students at San Andreas, was an at-risk student himself.
“For this particular school, I’m glad it was my first opportunity to coach and to make it happen here,” he said. “I know what they’re going through. I grew up as an at-risk student myself.
“To see them growing academically and athletically, to being full round individuals, that’s all I hope to instill in my students.”
San Andreas Knights
Boys
Alex Lopez – MVP
Martin Perez
Ivan Ocampo
Alex Nieto
Quirino Moreno
Jordan Frutos
Richard Sosa
Luis Barajas
All-Stars:
Alex Lopez, Martin Perez, Ivan Ocampo and Alex Nieto
Girls
Thalya Ramirez
Vanessa Rodriguez Laura Macias
Stacey Servin – MVP
Liliana Lopez
Alyssa De La Torre
Marina Centeno
Rechelle Travis
All-Stars:
Thalya Ramirez, Vanessa Rodriguez, Laura Macias, Stacey Servin and Rechelle Travis
