By STEFAN MODRICH, Staff Writer
At the start of the 2019-20 season, conventional wisdom would have suggested that Brownsville Veterans Memorial girls basketball coach Arnold Torres had a tough act to follow as he prepared to replace Valentin Paz.
As it turned out, Torres and the Lady Chargers made it clear that they were out to raise the bar from the jump — a standard he was eager to set and rejuvenate a program that had a temporary slip from its usual dominance in District 32-5A when it suffered a blowout loss in the area round of the 2018-19 posteason.
Coaching changes can sometimes bring about a series of sweeping reforms, but Torres instead focused on setting a tone to ensure he, his staff and his players were on the same page, commanding respect while also carrying with him a sense of humor and levity that quickly endeared him to his players.
It was this, among several other factors, that garnered him The Brownsville Herald’s 2019-2020 All-Metro Coach of the Year award.
“Coming into the year, I felt like there would be pressure coming into a program that had been so successful,” Torres said. “We knew the team would be good. We had a good group of girls coming back.
“I want to thank my wife and kids for all the support they’ve given me throughout the year,” Torres said. “They’re the ones who keep me in line and keep me positive, and always give me that confidence booster.”
Brownsville Veterans went 32-6 and 14-0 in district play, winning back the district crown outright, going undefeated in January and reeling off 21 consecutive victories.
“(Assistant coach Anthony Alvarez) and I were just along for the ride,” Torres said. “The girls had been here, the program had been successful and the coaching staff in the past had done well. We just wanted to do some things a little different that might help.”
Torres credited his team — particularly the seniors — for embracing him and Alvarez, and the improved player-coach dynamic helped Torres and his staff see that gradual changes in favor of radical ones were better suited to a team that already had solid on-court leadership and a good grasp of a system that encouraged frequent ball movement and a can-do attitude on defense.
Alvarez was a childhood friend and former Little League baseball teammate of Torres, who was coached by Alvarez’s father.
Their paths began to cross again more often during Torres’ 11-year run as coach at Brownsville Pace, when Alvarez had been coaching at Brownsville St. Joseph. The two reconnected once more when Alvarez joined Brownsville Veterans, and the pair was a natural fit on the bench together.
“Coaching with (Alvarez) has been a very big honor for me,” Torres said. “This award, I think, is as much his as it is mine for what he’s contributed to the program. It was a blessing for me to work with him and hopefully learn from each other throughout the year, and we can build upon this for the following year.”
Brownsville Veterans went 14-2 in non-district tournament play and turned heads by winning the Los Fresnos tournament. Along the way, it showcased the talents of Bryanna Buitereira, Caite Esquivel and Alexa Torres alongside established veteran leaders like Lizzie Garza, Alexandra Parchmont and Juju Alvarez.
The Lady Chargers are set to graduate six seniors, but with the core of Alvarez, Buitereira, Esquivel and Torres expected to return, Brownsville Veterans is poised to be a strong contender for the foreseeable future.
“We were blessed this year to have a good group of kids … that got along well, and they accepted their roles,” Torres said. “We had four or five different kids throughout the year be a high-scorer for the game, and the girls understood that, if they played unselfishly, that allowed us to have team success. I keep telling the girls that if you have team success, that will trickle down to individual success, and that showed in the recognition that the girls are getting.”