BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
EDINBURG — Kayleen Rios’ association with Edinburg Vela goes back to 2012, when the school first opened.
Rios grew up in McAllen, but her family moved to Edinburg where she started her sixth-grade year at South Middle School. When she became a seventh-grader, Rios attended the first SaberCats basketball camp.
“They were the new ‘cats’ in town,” Rios said. “I knew South (Middle School) was their feeder school, so I wanted to get familiar around here and have coach (Lottie Zarate) see what I could do.”
Rios’ most vivid memories of the camp was the time she spent working and competing against future teammate Jaida Muhammad. Muhammad was a four-year point guard with the SaberCats from 2013-17 who led the team in scoring, assists and steals during her junior and senior seasons.
“I remember they would give us drills to do at the camp that most players didn’t know how to do, but Jaida and I knew,” Rios said. “They put Jaida and I off to the side to work on those drills and the other girls were on the other side with the rest of the camp.”
When Rios was a freshman during the 2015-16 season, Muhammad went down with an injury that caused her to miss half of her junior year. Rios, a point guard like Muhammad, was inserted into the starting lineup.
“It was hard, being a freshman and having to step in, but playing AAU ball helped me a lot,” Rios said. “We had to play up whenever went up north and be more aggressive. I felt like I could do well, but the chemistry of the team wasn’t there because they hadn’t known me as their point guard before. That helped me grow.”
“She was an incoming freshman with inexperience at that level of play on top of the expectations that we had for that team,” Edinburg Vela coach Lottie Zarate said. “Jaida provided Kayleen the important aspects of the game, not just for her freshman season, but for the years to follow. She absorbed a lot from Jaida. Now that’s she’s a senior, Kayleen has matured immensely.”
Rios has always been known for her defense, but she has shown a strong uptick in her offensive game since becoming Edinburg Vela’s starting point guard in 2017. Rios averaged 5.7 points per game in 2016-17, 11.2 points last season and currently leads her team at 16.8 points per game through 19 outings this season.
Similar to Muhammad’s senior year, Rios also leads her team in assists (2.5) and steals (3.6).
“I’ve talked to her about being able to shoot the 3 from the outside and penetrating to the basket,” Zarate said. “Usually you’ll see point guards who dish the ball, but she’s created a lot on her own. We lost (former forward) Bianca Cortez’s scoring and rebounding. When you lose multiple players who can score, it’s important that players step up.”
The departure of forwards like Cortez caused Zarate to change the way the 2018-19 SaberCats (13-6, 2-0) would play. Previous teams would be a bit more deliberate with how they operate their offense, but Edinburg Vela is speeding the tempo up now more than ever.
Rios is hardly alone in the scoring department. Her scoring is supplemented in the backcourt by sophomore Andrea Molina (10.9 points) and freshman Lauren Vega (9.1 points).
“Playing faster has definitely helped us with scoring because teams don’t really know how fast we are,” Rios said. “When we push the ball, they get surprised and we score a lot.”
“Being that we’re more guard-oriented, I feel confident with the game play that each of our girls have out on the floor,” Zarate said. “They have the green light when it comes to shooting the ball. In the past, I coached the girls when to set up traps on defense and look for the double teams. With this team, they already have the instinct for those things. They have great chemistry together from playing in the summer, so each of them knows what the other is going to do.”
The SaberCats will face one of their toughest challenges when they take on Weslaco High (16-5, 1-0) at 6:30 p.m. Friday in Weslaco. It will be the first meeting between the schools as district opponents since both Weslaco high schools and Donna North merged into District 31-6A back in February.
“Our district’s tough,” Rios said. “We’ve got strong city rivals like the one we have with Edinburg (High) and now Weslaco (High) is one of our new district opponents. We’re all going to be fighting for the first, second or third spots for the playoffs.”