BY NATE KOTISSO | THE MONITOR
McALLEN — After Celeste Saenz and her teammates finished a game shy of a district championship last season, reality set in for the McAllen High Bulldogs. The 2017-18 season would be different altogether.
McHi (16-17) lost 37 percent of the scoring and 40 percent of the rebounding from last year’s team, but three rising seniors, including Saenz, were expected to step up and fill the void.
“We did lose some good players last year,” Saenz said. “It’s been tough, a tough thing to deal with. We have two true posts. (Junior) Damaris (Llanas) has helped a lot, but it’s been difficult. We’re trying to do well, since it’s our last year here. We’re going to give it all we got.”
The Bulldogs got off to a rocky start in district play, losing three of their first five games. Their third loss came Jan. 9 against La Joya Juarez-Lincoln, a team that had never beaten McHi. The Bulldogs were then tied with the Huskies for fourth in the district standings.
Saenz responded in a big way in the team’s next outing against McAllen Rowe, scoring 18 points and hauling in 16 rebounds.
“I talked to her earlier in the season and I told her, ‘This is your senior year. This is the last sport you’re ever going to play here. How do you want to go out?’” McHi coach Stephanie Cantu said. “‘Do you want to go out with a bang, or do you want to be remembered as someone who played the post for McHi and was just all right?’ Right now, she’s going out with a bang.”
Saenz does a little bit of everything. She’s third on the team in scoring (7.7 per game), first in rebounds (9.7) and blocks (1.7) and second in steals (2.0). Saenz has seven double-doubles on the year for McAllen High, which has won four in a row and is a half-game behind second-place La Joya Palmview.
“Getting buckets is awesome, but blocking shots is great, too,” Saenz said. “Hearing that ‘oooooh’ from the crowd gets me excited.”
“She’s a hardworking kid,” Cantu said. “It’s going to be sad to see her go when this is over, but I’m happy for her in the sense that she has now raised the bar for our post players. I talk to my JV girls and I asked them what they were watching on the court when we played. One freshman said, ‘Coach, I was watching Celeste. How she makes her moves, how she gets her rebounds.’ These younger posts will have some big shoes to fill when Celeste leaves.”
Saenz is ranked 11th in her graduating class with acceptance letters to the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University already in hand. Saenz also serves as a parliamentarian in the National Honor Society and is a secretary for the Future Farmers of America.
All of this in addition to two years of varsity volleyball and three varsity basketball seasons.
“I rest on the weekend, but whatever time I have after school or practice is when I might have time to relax,” Saenz said. “I’m usually up until midnight or 1 doing homework, sometimes later. Just trying to work myself out.”
Saenz is raising steer as a part of FFA.
“I’ve raised steer since I was 11 or 12,” Saenz said. “You have to clean the pens and of course feed it in the morning, afternoon and evening. Mom and dad help me out a lot with walking them and bathing them. We have to shear them down to get ready for the district show.”
Saenz got her steer when it was a few months old and weighed between 500 and 600 pounds. The process of training a steer for different livestock shows is akin to how Saenz wants to prepare for her final few games as a Bulldog.
“We should be making the playoffs, hopefully,” Saenz said. “We want to win in the first round and bring back a trophy. I want to have that legacy in our hands.”