Girls Top 20: Elk Grove High School rebuilding girls basketball team around AAU program
It used to be a girls basketball program rooted in championship success.
The trophy case tells the story at Elk Grove High School: Playoff teams in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, punctuated by CIF Sac-Joaquin Section and Northern California Division II championships in 2016. The Bee’s Player of the Year that season was Elk Grove junior guard Mira Shulman.
The program has since flipped a complete 180. Now the goal isn’t to win championships but how to play the game, learning and initiating fundamentals such as shooting, rebounding and playing defense.
The hard times are reflected in a 3-18 record entering the week. Elk Grove seeks its first Delta League victory. The Thundering Herd has lost games to teams it not long ago defeated regularly, including setbacks of 58-14 to Davis, 77-31 to Cosumnes Oaks, 95-19 to St. Francis, 59-16 to Franklin and 56-14 to Pleasant Grove.
From the Thundering Herd to a thundering crawl, the rebuild is on, but the spirit of competition remains. No one has quit, certainly not their 76-yer-old coach, Dave Crawford. The program’s last winning season was in 2018-2019 when Elk Grove finished 20-9. The team went 15-15 the following season. The program went 2-21 in 2021-22 and 4-24 last season.
Crawford, with more than 40 years of coaching experience, is in his 10th season with the Herd. He’s a holdover coach from the staff that won championships. Crawford said the emphasis of late is “developing the skills to be competitive in league games,” he said.
“They play hard, but obviously in the Delta League, the competition is over our heads,” Crawford added. “But when we play (similar) competition, we’re very competitive.”
Crawford pointed out a Jan. 15 nonleague game game against Sacramento Adventist, which won in overtime, 49-42. Sacramento Adventist is a Division VII school, the smallest of the small, and Elk Grove is a large school trying to play big again. But in an effort to make that climb, Crawford scheduled teams similar in ability.
“If we had made our free throws, we would have won the game and that’s like competition,” Crawford said. “In our preseason record, for most of the time, we were playing like competition. We lost five games by eight points or less. But when we step up to the more advanced teams, we’re still in the learning process.”
Setbacks in the program
Elk Grove flourished under spirited coach Larry Price, who led the title teams of 2016 and made basketball a big deal on campus after doing so for another Elk Grove Unified School District program at Florin. His death to cancer in 2018 crushed the spirit of the program.
“Losing Price set us back big time,” Elk Grove athletic director John Heffernan said.
Trisha Campbell assumed the Elk Grove coaching position for two seasons, following Price, and she guided competitive teams. She bowed out of coaching to teach and spend more time with family.
“She had a good core group of kids that played together and she did a good job coaching them up,” Heffernan said. “They made the playoffs, made a good run. And at the time, we were trying to work on developing a junior varsity program, trying to build a pipeline of girls that were coming through.”
He added: “Losing two coaches that quick really set us back big time.”
Interest in the sport slowly dissolved on campus. The COVID-19 shutdown of schools and athletic competition was also a setback for Elk Grove in 2020.
It also boils down to this: You must have players.
“You have to have kids, hoopers,” Heffernan said. “If you don’t have a lot of hoopers on your campus, you’re not going to be good at basketball. That’s what it is, period. That’s any sport. We all coach the best we can with the kids that we have, but if you don’t have (athletes) you’re going to struggle.”
Other EGUSD programs struggling
Elk Grove is the oldest school in the Elk Grove Unified School District, but it is not not the only one that is struggling in girls basketball. The Bee’s Top 20 rankings include just one EGUSD program — Monterey Trail. Franklin and Cosumnes Oaks have fielded competitive teams this season and will be in the playoffs.
Sheldon, Laguna Creek, Florin, Valley and Pleasant Grove have all won section championships in the past but are in rebuilding modes. Laguna Creek won a section championship two years ago under Bee Coach of the Year Cody Norman, who stepped down to catch his breath after that season.
Laguna Creek is 3-17 this season. Norman’s first teams won three and four games, respectively, and then he built from the ground up.
At Elk Grove, the focus is to draw girls to the court. Third-year Elk Grove junior varsity coach Dion Campos has been tasked with building an AAU program so the girls can compete year-round, to develop skills, to play together and to face good competition.
AAU spring and summer teams are the foundation for powerhouse programs in Placer County, at McClatchy (ranked second by The Bee), at Oak Ridge in El Dorado Hills (ranked third) and at top-ranked Folsom.
The summer of 2023 is when Elk Grove put an AAU program together, Campos said. Late coach Price had AAU influence, but that connection dissolved after his death.
“We invited any girl that wanted to play, whether they were even considering coming to our school or not, because we’re trying to build a program here,” Campos said. “We’re trying to get a winning program at Elk Grove High School.”
The junior varsity and varsity programs at Elk Grove have worked the aspects of the game that they can control, specifically, how to play the right way. This includes drills on boxing out for a rebound, defensive positioning, moving feet, dribbling, shooting, running through offensive sets and more. To compete, a team has to know how to play.
Campos supervises early morning shooting drills at Elk Grove. He hopes to invite the middle school and elementary schools nearby to start getting players involved at a younger age to begin developing skills and to enjoy the game.
In terms of numbers, Crawford, the varsity coach, said this is the largest group of varsity and JV players Elk Grove has had in years. The teams have 26 players combined.
“Now we’re in the development stage, getting them ready to play at a higher level of basketball,” Crawford said. “That’s where we have to grow the program. That’s the mistake that was made in the past. No development in the junior program left us with nobody.”
Heffernan said he believes the program can be turned around.
“The thing that makes me excited is we got a good coaching staff,” he said. “We have young ladies that work their tails off and we actually have good numbers on the JV. We have an opportunity to build how you’re supposed to. Girls come in as freshmen; they play as freshmen and sophomores on JV, unless they’re that talented; then they go to varsity. But we’re able to develop kids at the lower level, get their skills up, get them into a year-round basketball type program, and then when they get to the varsity, they’re able to compete at that higher level.”
“You can’t keep putting Band-Aids on the problem,” Heffernan said.
‘Never give up’
Despite the losses, Herd senior Nyla Kiew said she isn’t discouraged. The three-year varsity guard has stuck it out because she loves the game and camaraderie with her teammates.
“It’s been a ride,” Kiew said. “(Losing), it’s really all in your head. I really love basketball. I keep doing it and then putting in the extra work. My teammates — shout out to my teammates — they make me (want to) stay here. Our chemistry is great.”
Elk Grove home games in Cartwright Gymnasium have been festive with parents cheering. The band, which can feature up to 110 members, is also a fixture. Elk Grove parent Dawn Fuhs, who’s daughter Charlotte plays on varsity, is at most games assisting with the scorer’s table and starting lineup introductions to help create a buzz.
“They play differently when people are in the crowd,” she said. “They play better when the band is here. They never give up. They fight.”
Crawford, like any coach, said he will continue to coach as long as the players care and continue to give it their all.
“There’s no quit in my kids,” Crawford said. “It’s just learning, just the experience that they’re going to have in the game, but they play hard. They gave me everything they could give and they’re learning.”
The coach said other teams in the EGUSD are an example of highs and lows.
“I know that (Pleasant Grove) coach (James) McKeever has done a wonderful job with that program,” Crawford said. “A few years ago, they were in the same position that we are. We don’t matchup with them talent wise at this point in time. They have the edge. Their girls play a lot of AAU ball. Our girls are just getting into it.”
Heffernan is an optimist. He’s the longtime Thundering Herd football coach who can speak of ups and downs. Elk Grove has mostly been up in football, and the girls basketball program can be up again, too, he said.
“You watch the girls, they play extremely hard,” he said. “The girls play their hearts out. Their basketball skill might not be up to the level of some of the other teams in the Delta, but that’s just practice. That’s playing basketball year round. That’s being on an AAU team that’s doing all those other things that our young ladies are now starting to figure out. So, once our young ladies figure that piece out and start doing the things that some of the other programs are doing, then we’ll catch up a little bit closer.”
THE BEE’S TOP 20
Girls
Records entering Tuesday
1. Folsom (18-4)
2. McClatchy (17-5)
3. Oak Ridge (19-5)
4. Whitney (16-7)
5. Colfax (22-1)
6. Christian Brothers (19-4)
7. Antelope (16-7)
8. Vista del Lago (14-8)
9. Grant (19-4)
10. Monterey Trail (12-9)
11. West Campus (15-6)
12. Kennedy (16-6)
13. Lincoln (19-3)
14. Del Oro (13-10)
15. Inderkum (20-5)
16. Liberty Ranch (20-5)
17. Rocklin (13-10)
18. Pioneer (22-3)
19. Woodcreek (13-11)
(TIE) 20. Rio Linda (19-5)
(TIE) 20. Marysville (16-4)
Bubble: Bear River (17-5), Davis (14-10), Faith Christian (20-4), Franklin (15-10), Ponderosa (17-7), St. Francis (10-11), Valley Christian (13-5), Woodland Christian (18-4).
— Joe Davidson
This story was originally published January 30, 2024 at 5:00 AM.