BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
MERCEDES — There are few people who make the most of their 168 hours a week like Mika Vento.
Vento, a junior athlete, balances basketball with several other sports and activities.
“I’m in softball, volleyball, track and a cheerleader,” Vento said. “Every single Monday, I go down to Brownsville to work with my pitching coach for softball. Summers are when I devote time to volleyball and softball, traveling around. Sometimes I’ll play pick-up basketball games every now and then. When volleyball season ends, I go right to basketball. When basketball ends, I focus on softball and track and then I do it all over again.”
“She even does FFA, learns the cotillion and is doing (the) Miss Mercedes (Pageant),” Mercedes coach Santiago Rivas said. “Mika’s going to try to do everything that’s out there if she can. She does quite a bit.”
Vento’s bustling schedule has been her decision from the start.
“It’s tough because I’m always on the go all the time, but if I commit myself to something, I’m going to go through with it,” Vento said. “I’m not going to abandon one thing just because I have something else. I’m going to make time for everything.”
Vento continues to prove her worth as a basketball player this season. She is the Tigers’ top rebounder in district play (9.4) and is second on the team with 10.1 points and 2.9 steals per game.
Now in her third season at the varsity level, Vento shudders when she remembers how she played as a freshman.
“I’ve come a very long way,” Vento said. “Sometimes I go back and watch film of myself as a freshman and I think, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I played like that.’ It was different because we had a different coach then, coach (Monica) Meza. I used some of the things coach Meza taught me and now what coach (Santiago) Rivas is teaching me. Altogether, I’ve been able to grow as a person and a player because of them and the teammates I have around me.”
“She does other things than just scoring,” Rivas said. “She’s done well in district, hitting the boards hard, getting steals, all the little things. She doesn’t have to be the one who shoots. I’ve run her at point guard sometimes just to free up (guards) Mallory (Noriega) and Sellie (Gonzales) for looks. We’ve also had her at the top deflecting passes because of her long arms.”
Last season was Rivas’ first leading the Mercedes program. The Tigers won 21 games and finished second in District 32-5A, but their season ended in a 46-43 loss to Rio Grande City in the first round of the playoffs.
“After our playoff game last year, I was in the locker room thinking, ‘What are we going to do next year?’” Vento said. “We were losing guard Jessica Zepeda and Roslynn Rodriguez, who grabbed all of our rebounds. I was scared, but we came together and grew with coach Rivas. We have some new girls, but we had a lot of girls coming back. I was still learning some of the plays to start the year, but we’re more familiar now with what coach wants. We’re very balanced. It comes together when we need it to.”
The Tigers (25-8, 11-1) have been one of the biggest surprises in the Valley this season. They began district play 11-0, including a clean sweep of the two-time defending 32-5A champion Brownsville Veterans Chargers and are tied for sixth in the latest RGVSports.com girls basketball top 10 poll. Their first loss in district play came Tuesday, falling to Brownsville Pace, 45-41.
First-place Mercedes has a two-game lead on Brownsville Veterans and Donna High.
“Mallory has stepped up and Sellie has improved her game a lot as well,” Rivas said. “And (point guard) Jazmine Flores is going to dominate on defense. She’s the fastest girl on the court. If Mika isn’t the leading scorer one game, then it’s Sellie or Mallory. They don’t care about who has a great game. They’re very unselfish.”
“We need to take things one game at a time, but at the same time, teams aren’t going to roll over for us,” Vento said. “We have to go into every game ready to play and ready to work. We’re only going to go as far as we let ourselves go. We need to push ourselves to our limits.”