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Sports

Running in the Wolf Pack

The foundation for the Redondo Girls 20-win season and perfect run through the Bay League started with a quote.

Seems like a lifetime ago that the Redondo Union Girls Basketball team was the victim of a 67-28 drubbing by Cajon High in the CIF playoffs, a game Sea Hawks head coach Marcelo Enriquez described as his most humiliating loss at Redondo during his sixteen-year tenure.

“We played so scared. There was that sense of fear. We looked scared, played scared,” Enriquez said.

That was two years ago.

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Redondo’s current group of seniors, who were sophomores in 2009, found themselves thrust into varsity action following the 2008 CIF Championship squad that was led by current UCLA standout Atonye Nyingifa.

“I think they felt pressure stepping in so early. We had seven consecutive semifinal appearances and not being able to maintain that was tough for these girls,” Enriquez said.

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When a group of seniors was asked what the low point was during their steep learning curve, each player mentioned a different game.

“Two years ago we lost to Santa Monica and had 37 turnovers. We ran 37 suicides and coach told us we were going to keep running until someone quit,” guard Rachel Scarlett said.

The seniors on the Sea Hawks this year endured sub .500 seasons as sophomores and juniors.

“It’s not like we weren’t working hard all along, but last year nothing was paying off like we expected. It was really hard,” Scarlett said.

 

Storm is coming

Fast-forward two years.

“We knew that this year would be a special one for coach.,” said forward Allie Goldberg. “There were six of us that came to varsity as sophomores and he wanted us to come through.”

Coming into the season, Enriquez had high expectations for his seasoned group that included Goldberg, point guard Riki Murakami, Scarlett, and frontcourt players Michelle Lowery, Shayna Stuart and Ashiana Antar.

Despite the absence of a dynamic scorer or super-star caliber name, the team’s depth and potential to play together gave him hope.

He just needed something to get their attention and hold it.

As summer workouts and play stretched into the fall, Enriquez informed his group that he had something in store for them.

“We would be working out really hard and he would keep saying, ‘there’s a storm coming,’ and that piqued our interest for what it meant,” Goldberg said.

Enriquez found what he was looking for during the summer, a passage from Sam Smith’s book The Jordan Rules that chronicled the early 90’s Chicago Bulls.

 

 “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

-Rudyard Kipling (The Second Jungle Book)

 

Phil Jackson, who used the quote before the playoffs in 1991, also the first year his Chicago Bulls team would win the NBA title, aimed to combat negativity and discrepancies in the locker room with a common bond.

“I saw it more for our team as a powerful idea we could use. We really don’t have a superstar. Our strength is that each and every player gives their all and plays as a unit,” Enriquez said.

Enriquez, in his 16th season as head coach at Redondo, went beyond just the pack mentality. He delved into the hierarchy of the wolf pack, the hunting process and continued with the theme throughout the fall.

“They ate up the idea. From that moment on they were all-in,” Enriquez said.

“As soon as he read that too us, we just adopted that mentality and everything we do on the court is for each other,” Goldberg said.

Enriquez had black t-shirts made up with the quote and unlike in years past, he made certain that the shirts were for members of the pack only—not for parents or fans.

“A lot of people have asked me about the shirts and whether they could get one, but I have to tell them no. They aren’t part of the pack,” Enriquez states matter of factly.

“Every game we play for each other, every game could be your last and nobody is going to eat unless everyone is in on the hunt,” Scarlett says with the same casual delivery.

Hungry Pack

When it comes to wolves, it’s not just the shirts. The Sea Hawks locker room is adorned with a large book about wolves, a wolf calendar, posters of wolves and even a stuffed wolf that is given after every game to one player who carries it with her until the next game.

“Our struggles definitely made us more hungry. We had a list of teams that had kicked us around,” Scarlett said.

The girls made a list of the teams that had been beaten them badly and set out to make their senior season a memorable one.

“We had the list and it was not just Bay League teams. We went to Oregon and got beat in this tournament by like sixty. We were able to check off a lot of those teams this year,” Goldberg said.

The Sea Hawks came up with an important 44-43 win over Bishop Montgomery early in the season.

“We came into the Bishop game knowing they had blown us out the last couple years and we played great,” Murakami said.

With a 9-8 record and steady improvement to begin the year, the girls stayed focused on the task at hand and each other.

“We had a couple bad practices. Rachel talked to the younger players and said that everyone needed to contribute,” Murakami said.

The girls went into the Bay League season primed to show their stuff with a swarming defense led by Stuart, who routinely guards the opposition’s top perimeter player.

“You go for a steal and if you don’t come up with it, you know your teammates have your back,” Goldberg explained.

“It really helps on defense. We are in attack mode constantly and are never complacent,” Murakami remarked.

Offensively, the team regularly finds eight, nine and even ten or more players scoring in the course of a game, relying on a balanced attack where any player may lead the team on a given night.

Then the wins started coming.

“Our first win this year over Mira Costa was really important,” Scarlett said.

Redondo ran through the Bay League a perfect 10-0, and have won eleven straight.

 

The Hunt Continues

The very same group that was described as fearful a mere two years ago has come along way, according to Enriquez.

“This team’s continuity and chemistry are great. They have that mentality of the pack and are fearless,” Enriquez said.

“It’s been so rewarding.  I’m so proud of everyone. We have put in lots of hard practices over the years,” Goldberg.

With a Bay League title and a twenty-win season behind them, the girls are not resting on their laurels, however.

“We are not satisfied. We want to keep this momentum up and do well in the playoffs. At this point, every game is possibly the last one for us in our basketball careers, so we’re going to go out with everything we have,” Murakami said.

Thursday’s playoff game against Millikan (16-10) will be the christening of Redondo Union’s new gym.

“This group has never won a playoff game. We know we’re only guaranteed thirty-two minutes, so we are going to play hard and play for each other,” Scarlett added.

Play for the pack.

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