GIRLS BASKETBALL: Lady Jackets maintain focus amid coaching shift

The Kermit girls basketball team could have cracked last month.

The Lady Jackets’ third-year head coach, Michael Carrasco, had to leave the team in early January because of medical reasons. Assistant coach Alan Ayers, in his first year with the program, took over the team three games before the start of District 4-2A play.

Such a sudden change — at such a critical point in the season — could easily throw a team off course. But the Lady Jackets grew stronger because of it, and now they’re hitting their stride at exactly the right time.

Kermit (21-11), which won a share of the district title and then dominated Crane and Tornillo in playoff games for the top postseason seed, takes a four-game winning streak into tonight’s Class 2A area-round matchup against Idalou (19-12). The opening tipoff is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at Seminole High School.

“For the most part, I think everybody did a really great job of keeping their head and making sure they were focused on the game,” Kermit senior Lindsay Nutt said. “I think we kind of took it as Coach Carrasco started us on the journey and we need to keep it going. We know he’s watching and cheering for us, and we feel like it’s kind of dedicated to him.”

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Carrasco said he was diagnosed with scleroderma, an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue, in 1996. He said he once underwent chemotherapy to treat the condition and for the last year-and-a-half had been taking medication given to recipients of organ transplants.

Carrasco said the medication had “lots of nasty side effects” including nausea and weight loss, but he fought through them last season and guided Kermit to the outright district championship. But Carrasco said the condition began causing heart palpitations, which were severe enough to land him in an Odessa emergency room on Jan. 10, so he’s now taking heart medication and has been advised to rest until he gets better.

Carrasco said he’s on indefinite medical leave from his duties as a coach and teacher and has been staying with his parents in Crane. The only Lady Jackets’ game he’s been able to attend since leaving the team was their road game at Crane on Jan. 24, but Carrasco said he’ll try to attend tonight’s game in Seminole if he feels well enough.

“I felt really bad about having it go down like this, but I kept in contact with the girls and coaches and let them know I was still behind them and supporting them,” Carrasco said. The plans we had talked about at the beginning of the year still applied even though I wasn’t on the bench. Just because I wasn’t there doesn’t mean they could feel sorry for themselves.”

Nutt and senior post player Kadye Bedell said Carrasco’s departure was tough to handle initially, but Nutt said the players were bracing for the change because they could tell Carrasco was ill and needed to address his medical condition. Ayers said he and fellow assistants Sandra Tribble and B.K. Williams also were prepared to lead the team without Carrasco, because Carrasco had warned them early in the season that something could come up and gave the assistants more responsibilities just in case.

Ayers, whose first game in charge was a road game at Eunice, N.M., on Jan. 10, said the players still had to adjust and not let the situation adversely affect them. The Lady Jackets responded by winning their last three nondistrict games, and they’ve gone 9-2 since Ayers took over.

Ayers credits the team leadership provided Bedell, Nutt and fellow seniors Dynesha Dingle and Lindsay Ayers, the coach’s daughter.

“The night that (Carrasco) was gone, we just talked on the bus and told them that they were going to have to step up and fill that void that he had left,” Alan Ayers said. “And they did a really good job. I never saw them skip a beat, really.”

Bedell and Nutt said the Lady Jackets still run most of Carrasco’s practice drills and still feel the influence of the intense, energetic coach. The players also said they’ve benefitted from the basketball acumen and coaching style of Ayers, a former head coach at Abilene Wylie and Spur.

“What Coach Carrasco taught us, we kept that,” Bedell said. “And Coach Ayers has added on a lot of stuff, and it’s really helped us.”

Now the Lady Jackets are playing their best basketball of the season. They won their last two district games to finish in a three-way tie for first place with Crane and Tornillo, and they beat each team by at least 14 points last week to earn the district’s No. 1 playoff seed and a first-round bye. Nutt said Kermit’s defense was especially good in those games, holding Crane and Tornillo to a combined three first-quarter points.

The Lady Jackets hope to win at least one playoff game after losing their postseason opener last season. Nutt said Kermit is more balanced and versatile this season and better prepared to win in the playoffs, because the team knows how to elevate its level of play like it did last week.There’s no doubt the Lady Jackets are better at handling adversity.     

“I really think our team has grown and gotten closer,” Nutt said. “We’re more a tight-knit group because of the change.”

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