BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
EDINBURG — No matter what else was going on in Edinburg Vela coach Jon Maples’ central Texas hometown of Temple, the area was guaranteed to shut down on high school game nights.
A graduate of Temple High in 1999, Maples took part in a fair share of basketball games that caused those town shutdowns.
“A lot of it is tradition,” Maples said. “My sister graduated from Temple in ’92, when the football team won state and the basketball team was ranked No. 1. They had a lot of good players, like (former Baylor University basketball player) Jerode “Smokey” Banks and (former Temple College player) Cornelius Chiles. Luckily, I got to grow up with those athletes. When I was there, we did very well. All the values I learned from those teams, I brought down here.”
A few players from Maples’ basketball team have become high school coaches in different parts of the state. Among Maples’ teammates was David President, a former guard at the University of Texas-San Antonio and now the current boys basketball coach at Shadow Creek High in Alvin.
Like his teammates under then-Temple basketball coach Bruce Etheridge, Maples had been bitten by the coaching bug at a young age.
“The breaking down film, study hall, listening to Coach Etheridge and watching how he prepares — it’s always been my thing,” Maples said.
Maples arrived in the Valley in 2007, when he taught and coached at Valley View before leaving after one year. After three years as an assistant baseball coach at Santa Rosa, he returned to Valley View for three more years.
When one of Maples’ coaching friends, Ozzy Hernandez, got the job to lead the softball program at McAllen Rowe, Hernandez called Maples and asked if he would join him as an assistant. Maples did and served in that role for three seasons.
The Vela job surprisingly came open five games into the 2016 district season and was arguably the most sought-after position in the Valley. The Lady SaberCats had made the playoffs in every season since the school opened in 2012, including a perfect 12-0 regular season and district championship in 2015.
“It was an attractive job,” Maples said. “This was the job I told Coach (Ozzy) Hernandez is the one I wanted. I think (Vela girls athletic coordinator) Coach (Lottie) Zarate and I were on the same page about how we build the program. I wanted to add a little bit of my way to the program, but I didn’t want to change too much. Every coach wants a challenge, and this is a challenge I wanted.”
In Year 1 with a new coach and new district competition, the Lady SaberCats went 18-10 overall and took third place in District 31-6A with a 9-5 record.
Vela lost three key players from 2016 while returning a core of nine sophomores, three juniors and one senior. Maples believes his team’s progress is ahead of schedule.
“The depth has done great, but it’s still a challenge,” Maples said. “These girls have taken this challenge, and the challenge of being in a difficult district, and did really well. We try to set goals for ourselves every week, and we’ve done pretty good with them so far.”
Vela will take on San Benito (22-5, 12-2) in Game 1 of a best-of-three bi-district series at 7 p.m. Friday in San Benito. The series will be a rematch of a non-district game Vela lost 3-1 on March 3.
“We fell short against San Benito, but we found out what we needed to work on,” Maples said. “And that made us better.”