High school players make transition from gridiron to hard court

Some transitions take longer than others.

Central Valley and West Valley had stellar high school football seasons come to an abrupt end in Saturday’s state football playoff semifinals. For CV, it was a 42-10 loss to Richland. For West Valley it was a 53-30 loss to Hockinson in a battle of 12-0 Class 2A teams.

On Monday, a number of those Bears and Eagles were already hard at work, preparing for their next season.

At Central Valley, coach Rick Sloan likes to run practices with his varsity and junior varsity combined, and for the first two weeks of the season his squad was short seven football players, including a big part of the Bears’ projected starting lineup.

As the offensive coordinator under coach Rick Giampietri for years, he would never complain about the football team making a long playoff run – that’s an experience to be savored. But as a basketball coach, it takes some accommodation.

“It gave us a chance to take a long look at some younger players, for sure,” he said.

The coach said he and his assistant coaches would take a few precautions with football players shifting to the hard court, making sure their transition is smooth and uneventful from a physical standpoint.

“Most of those guys just want to get right back at it,” Sloan said. “Guys like (quarterback Grant) Hannan there, they don’t want to take any time off. They’re ready to go.”

They will have to be. Central Valley’s season opener is Saturday against Coeur d’Alene.

“The way it works is that every kid has to have 10 practices to be eligible to play in a game,” Sloan said. “If they’re in the playoffs for football, that counts as five practices.”

That means football players will have just enough time to get eligible to play the first game – a week after they were playing Richland in the playoffs.

Another accommodation that will be made comes with the subject matter covered during practice.

Just like in the classroom, if you miss two weeks you’re going to be significantly behind.

“We’re going to have to get these guys up to speed as quickly as we can,” Sloan said.

At West Valley, basketball coach Jay Humphrey had his season opener scheduled for Tuesday night and another set for Friday night.

As his Eagles worked to dial in their jump shots and worked on their ball skills close to the basket, the coach was busy thinking about the sense of urgency that comes with having a significant portion of your roster out.

Had either football team advanced to this weekend’s state championship games Saturday in Tacoma, the basketball teams would have opened the season with a depleted roster.

Instead, they’ve been able to move things around to make things if not ideal then at least optimal.

“We shifted our Tuesday night game to next Wednesday and our Friday night game to Saturday,” he said. “Once we start playing games, we’re going to go Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday and our league opener with Cheney Friday. We’d better be ready.”

The Eagles don’t have the luxury of having four basketball courts laid out side by side the way they do at CV, so Humphrey and his boys squad had the evening shift this week.

It was worth the extra couple hours’ wait.

Three projected basketball starters are football players, and a fourth will see plenty of time on the court. A fifth football player will see lots of action with the junior varsity this season.