From Grammar School to High School seniors this group has grown
into champions
It’s hours before the boys basketball team will tip off against North Salinas for at least a share of the Tri-County Athletic League title. Bob Hagen Gymnasium, the site of the Homecoming game, has most of its walls decorated with California-themed signs.
Enjoying the down time before the game, the 12 Gilroy seniors on the girls and boys basketball teams sit in a group in the bleachers, talking, often breaking out in laughter.
They’ve played together for years. When they were young, they couldn’t wait to be Mustangs.
“I remember in Parks and Rec when we were younger, we’d come watch the (high school) girls play,” says Marissa Nowakowski. “And then at the Mustang Classic (this year) those girls came to watch us.”
Now things have come full circle, with both teams hosting their Senior Nights tonight (boys) and tomorrow (girls).
“In elementary school, we used to dream of being here,” says Dominik Wilkins. The point guard is being honest, which makes him the perfect target for a joke in this tight-knit crowd.
“I dreamt about it last night,” adds Vinny DeLorenzo, getting a laugh from everyone.
Later on that night, the boys beat North Salinas to earn at least a part of the Tri-County Athletic League title. The girls had done the same against the Lady Vikings of North Salinas the night before. It’s the first time the Gilroy girls and boys teams have both won a league title in the same year.
The accomplishment is one that many in the Gilroy basketball community thought this GHS senior class, many of whom have played together since elementary school, could pull off.
On the girls’ side, four of the team’s six seniors – Kristen Campos, Katherine Hussey, Jessica Groppe and Marissa Nowakowski – are starters. The boys also have four senior starters in DeLorenzo, Wilkins, Ryan Chisolm and Jeremy Teschera.
Point guard Campos remembers what she heard other people say after the girls team had a successful freshman year.
“We beat everyone in league and they were like, ‘Can you imagine our senior year? The boys and the girls are going to be so good,'” she said. “That’s really cool.”
Back in the Day
For much of the group, the basketball playing days began at Luigi Aprea Elementary. Of course, the boys didn’t always let the girls play, though “they picked Moe (Marissa) and I,” remembers forward Sara Griffis.
Then there was Campos, who had no problem mixing in with the boys. She was a precocious athlete who was good enough to hold her own as a third grader in the boys Rec Leagues. And the boys still remember it, howling when the subject is brought up.
“They almost didn’t let her play baseball because she was too good,” chimes in DeLorenzo.
But in fourth grade, all-girls leagues were offered and Campos would play in those from then on. When her mom told her she’d have to change, however, Campos wasn’t happy about it. Even then, the three-year starting floor general was competitive.
“I was like, ‘Fine!'” she said. “The competition was just better (in the boys league).”
From elementary school through junior high, several of the boys and girls ended up playing with each other in the Gilroy Parks and Rec leagues.
Fathers Gregg Chisolm, Don DeLorenzo and James Wilkins (who now assists girls head coach Kari Williams) coached several of the boys during that era and even had a travel team for a year.
“We thought they’d better go find out what the world looks like,” Gregg Chisolm said. “It was always just a learning process…Get your licks in now and not pay when you’re older.”
The tougher competition appeared to have helped. All six of the Gilroy seniors – Ryan Chisolm, Vinny DeLorenzo, Teschera, Dominik Wilkins, Christian Cania and Chris Yates – played for South Valley Middle School from 2000-2002. They didn’t win a county championship, but made it to the semifinals under the guidance of South Valley coach Mike Tozi in seventh and eighth grade. And they might have gone further in their last year had point guard Wilkins not broken his wrist in the first playoff game.
“Dominik just gets drilled. So it was good-bye point guard,” Gregg Chisolm remembers. The Tigers, up by 20 at the time, won that game but lost the next one by two points in overtime.
The South Valley girls team, which included Campos, Hussey (who moved to Gilroy from South Carolina in seventh grade), Nowakowski and Griffis, did win a county championship their seventh grade year in 2001. The Lady Tigers lost just two games from 2000 to 2002.
“They were just great leaders, very coachable and had all the tools for success on the basketball court and off it,” said Tozi, who coached both the girls and boys South Valley teams in 2001-2002 and now teaches in the Sacramento area. “I’ve been teaching for a long time and that group by far has been my best experience in education.”
Both groups continued to build on their success as freshmen at Gilroy High. The girls lost just one game – the title game of the JV Alisal Tournament. The boys only lost a handful of games and won the consolation championship in the JV bracket of the Bob Hagen Memorial. Though both groups of the Class of 2006 contained players that probably could have played up a level on JV as freshmen, Gilroy head coaches Williams and Bud Ogden chose to keep the class together.
“That’s always been my policy. Freshmen play freshman basketball,” Williams said. “Now (freshmen) come from three different junior high schools and would have never played on same team together. It’s important for them to learn to win.”
Williams brought Campos, Hussey and Nowakowski up to varsity as sophomores. The team went 3-7 in league, but made an unexpectedly deep run into the Central Coast Section playoffs. All of the senior boys stayed on the JV team and finished with a 22-5 record.
A Hoops Family
“They’re close. Isn’t that remarkable?” pointed out girls assistant coach James Wilkins. “They’re pulling for one another.”
Remarkable, yes. It seems few girls and boys teams in the same sport are as supportive of each other as the Mustangs are.
They hang out together, laugh together, yell at each other and make fun of each other.
“It’s just fun, it’s not mean,” Ryan Chisolm says. “Everything’s just funny.”
The boys cheer from the stands in pink shirts at the girls’ games. After their own practice, the girls have driven all the way to Salinas on a school night to cheer on the boys. Or yell at them.
“We yell at each other, like, ‘Stop! Double dribble!'” Hussey said.
The girls recall the memories they’ll remember the most – like the time Groppe forgot to sub into a game and the team played 4-on-5 for a full minute against Sobrato.
Explains Groppe, laughing “Coach (Williams) told all the seniors to go in and I just wasn’t paying attention.”
The girls agree that watching the boys win the Bob Hagen and beat Live Oak in overtime earlier this year have been their favorite moments in watching their counterparts.
“We watched them when they were little, mini-freshmen and they’re so good now,” Nowakowski says. “They’re the most fun to watch, especially when you know them and they do well.”
Vinny DeLorenzo said he’ll remember when the girls beat Notre Dame this season.
“When they beat Notre Dame for the first time, I thought that was pretty cool because no girls team had ever done that,” he said. “So that was an image that stuck out in my mind, my senior year, my girls beat Notre Dame.”
Griffis, who didn’t play basketball her sophomore and junior years, is glad she decided to play her senior year.
“Playing with them now, it reminds me of freshman year and junior high,” she said. “Nothing has changed.”
But coach Williams has seen a change, at least with the girls, the first class she’s guided all four years as the Mustangs’ head coach.
“(As freshmen) they were just so little and cute and timid and all their little braces and bad hair and bad clothes. Now they’re just way different,” she said. “I tell them I won’t be sad, but I will. I know this: I’m not talking on Senior Night.”
Coach James Wilkins, who has coached and watched the boys and girls play since elementary school feels the Class of 2006 is one that will not only be successful after graduation, but also use that success to give back to the community.
“I think they’ve all surprised me because of the fact that when we first started coaching the girls and the boys in elementary school, they didn’t even know how to dribble a basketball. But their eyes. They looked at us for help,” he said. “It’s unbelievable how fast the time flies.”
And although both teams have come out of the regular season as TCAL champs, both have big goals for the CCS championships.
“It’s been a tremendous ride,” James Wilkins said. “In my heart, I feel it isn’t over.”
The boys host Salinas for their Senior Night tonight at 7pm. The girls host Sobrato tomorrow at 7pm.
