BY NATE KOTISSO | THE MONITOR
DONNA — Edinburg Vela entered Day 1 of the Donna Dreamcatcher Tournament on Thursday coming off back-to-back losses. The young SaberCats team dropped its non-district games to Brownsville Veterans and La Joya Palmview by a combined 27 points.
But three days of basketball and six wins later, Vela (14-3) celebrated a tournament championship at midcourt following a 45-39 win over district rival PSJA Memorial in the title game Saturday at Donna High School.
“We (the coaching staff) talked about whether we show PSJA Memorial a lot of our stuff during pregame,” Edinburg Vela coach Lottie Zarate said. “We were kind of hesitant, and then we thought to ourselves, ‘We want to win.’ The mindset we put our kids in was to tell them we had to do what we had to do to get the ‘W.’
“Whether we show a lot or not, the coaching staff agreed, we just have to play. The cards will fall where they may.”
On Nov. 25, Edinburg Vela went on a 13-2 third-quarter run to cut Brownsville Veterans’ 12-point halftime lead to one before running out of gas in the fourth and losing by 15. The SaberCats coaching staff has stressed to its players throughout the week to put stronger second halves together.
One SaberCat who heeded the message was forward Abby Arredondo. The sophomore scored a game-high 16, with 11 of her points coming in the final two quarters. The SaberCats’ two-point halftime lead turned into an 11-point lead late in the fourth quarter.
“I know what my role on the team is, and I take it to heart,” Arredondo said. “I needed to step it up, because the coaches expect a lot from me. Being a sophomore is hard, but I know I can do it, and so do the coaches.”
“This is Abby’s first year of varsity competition,” Zarate said. “We know that she can drive to the basket. I told her at halftime that because she was facing a couple of bigs, she should take advantage of that. That’s where the youthfulness and the inexperience comes in as a player, because she is just a sophomore. She knows she’ll be facing some big bigs this year, so she’s going to have to be our power forward down low who can box out and get rebounds for us.”
The Wolverines (10-10) traded one-point leads with the SaberCats throughout the first half but had heavy legs in the second half.
“We had been in a slump for a long time,” PSJA Memorial coach Marisa Gutierrez said. “We came into this tournament and played a lot better during the first couple days. We were slow today, but we did improve a lot. Overall, I’m happy with our girls’ performance, but not completely satisfied.”