Lady Sharks on a roll

By MARK WAITE

VIEW STAFF WRITER

Like their counterparts at the high school, the Rosemary Clarke Middle School Lady Sharks basketball team has jumped out to another winning season this year, with a 5-0 record, much of it on the play of eighth grader Veronica Villa.

Next door, the Pahrump Valley High Lady Trojans have only two losses this season. Middle school is an effective training ground for many players who earn starting spots on the Lady Trojan team.

Villa paced the Lady Sharks with 21 points, while eighth grader Darla Hopkins added 12 as the Lady Sharks beat Kenny Guinn Middle School 45-35 to start the season Jan. 13. They beat The Meadows 33-20 during the same tournament, behind another 21 points from Villa.

During a tournament at Beatty, Villa pumped in 16 points and Hopkins 12 as the Lady Sharks turned back Tonopah 40-27. They almost shut out Beatty 44-2 in a game where some starters sat much of the game on the bench. They pounded Tonopah again 37-20, behind Villa's 23 points.

Coach Pete Peterson was at a loss to describe Villa's position, noting she plays all over the court. Peterson said Villa handles the ball a lot, plays well in the post position, completes a lot of three-point shots and just plays good, all-around basketball.

"She'll start next year for the high school team. I'll be amazed if she doesn't," Peterson said. "She's quite a player. she's a very talented young lady. She'll have a good shot at starting in all three sports she participates in."

Five-foot eighth-grader Darla Hopkins could follow in the footsteps of her sister, Pahrump Valley High senior Lori Hopkins, the second-leading scorer for the Lady Trojans, averaging 10.3 points per game.

Peterson called Sara Coleman, a 5-8 eighth grader, a good all-around player who rebounds well.

Last year, Peterson had Jessica Beatty, a 6-0 center who started this year as a freshman playing for the Lady Trojans, averaging five points per game. Amanda Kunzi, a 5-4 guard, and Kalee Schnelzer, a 5-4 guard-forward, graduated from the Rosemary Clarke Middle School team to earn spots on the Lady Trojan junior varsity squad in their freshman year.

While middle school basketball games don't pack the stands like the high schools, Peterson said they are a training ground for high school.

"Success breeds success. If you start at this age and you start to win you're going to expect to win," Peterson said. Schools that have good sports programs, like Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley, starts their players off young, he said.

The drills aren't as specialized as high school, Peterson said they practice, "a lot of basics -- dribble, shoot, pass, play a good defense."

The Lady Sharks play a good one-on-one defense, Peterson said. Middle school basketball is also more competitive than it used to be, he said.

Peterson hopes to repeat his success last season.

"We were excellent. We only lost one game," he said.

That sole defeat was a two-point loss to Molasky Middle School during the Meadows tournament in Las Vegas. Last week the Lady Sharks were gearing up for a rematch with Molasky last Friday night, depending upon whether they won the opening game against The Meadows. Results weren't available at press time.

The Lady Sharks don't have the organized league play like Pahrump Valley High, which plays Moapa Valley, Virgin Valley and Boulder City in a Class 3A southern league. The middle school team sometimes plays against a mismatched Beatty and Tonopah squad, which are from a smaller Class 2A in high school. But, Peterson said, they also play much larger Las Vegas schools, like Guinn, which can have 1,500, 1,600 or 1,700 students. Rosemary Clarke has an enrollment of 966 students.

"We just try to pick up games in town. Last year we played in the Martin Luther King tournament. We got to play some of the big junior highs in Vegas and we beat everyone we played last year in Vegas. That's a good test for us. If we can go in and beat the junior highs in town we know we're doing pretty good with our girls," Peterson said.

The Lady Sharks will host a tournament in their own gym Saturday, with some good Las Vegas middle school teams coming out, like Molasky, Guinn, Faith Meadows, Tonopah and White Pine. The Rosemary Clarke team will travel to Tonopah Feb. 10, then on to Faith Lutheran Feb. 17 and Moapa Valley the following week.

Peterson, who was named Class 3A coach of the year for leading the Pahrump Valley High Trojan soccer team to the state semifinals, has been at the helm of the Lady Sharks for two years. He previously coached the Rosemary Clarke boys basketball team and before that, the girls team again. He teaches computer keyboarding and word processing skills at Rosemary Clark Middle School.