As fall weather slowly slips out of town, winter sports have arrived at Salida High School, and basketball is a long time SHS favorite. During the 2022-2023 season, the varsity team was able to go to the Colorado State Championship with a record of 25-2 led by coach Adam Christianson. Sadly, they were eliminated in a close match-up against Faith Christian Academy.
This season, last year’s boys junior-varsity coach, Chris Bainbridge, has taken the coaching job of the girls varsity basketball team. This vacancy has allowed Coach Severin Kaess, who was the boys C-Team coach last year, to be promoted to the boys junior varsity coach. This leaves one spot open to fill: the C-team coach for the boys basketball team.
The boys on the Spartan’s basketball team have full faith in their coaches and their leadership. Every practice is different from the practice before and is geared towards the skills that the team needs to work on.
“Our coaches are paying attention to everything we are doing on the court and adjust practices and game play based on how we are playing as a team,” stated sophomore Eli Schwarz.
Both Christianson and Kaess have been working as the coaches for High School Spartans for the past three years, and their leadership and guidance have had a great impact on the team.
When asked about the lack of a C-team coach, Christianson said ‘I’d rather have the [right] guy rather than just any guy”
Christianson has been looking for a new coach since Bainbridge left at the end of last season. Practice for basketball recently began on November 13th.
Christianson has been organizing open gym training sessions throughout the summer in an effort to help in-coming freshmen and others discover how practices work and what the team expectations are. These open gyms have been on Tuesdays and Thursdays from seven pm to nine pm. The team practices every weekday during the school year and sometimes on Saturdays.
As practices began this year, there have been coaches that have shown up to practice to see what it’s like. Unfortunately, none of the coaches have been able to work with the practice schedule that the team adheres to.
This is the type of training schedule that has allowed coach Christianson to lead his team to last year’s state championship game, and it could be one of the reasons why there is no C-team coach yet.
On Saturday, December 9th, the C-team had their first games at a tournament out of town. They lost both of their first two games this year but have high hopes to improve from there.
After their heartbreaking loss in the state championship last year, both coaches are determined to make a return this year and post a winning season. So far this year, the varsity boys team’s record is 4-1, and all of those games have been high scoring games in which Salida averaged about 71 points per game. This year, the team has had an incredible turnout, and they hope to continue growing the team to include more and more talent in the following years. It has been a very promising start for the season and looking good for them so far.
