Coaches see tourney as opportunity for players

For three months out of the year Virgil Loretto paces in front of the bench during his basketball team's games.

For almost 10 years he's coached Amateur Athletic Union basketball and his daughter Robbie Loretto in summer tournaments.

"I see it as, for them, the girls, to get out there, they need to get out," he said. "I always stress that and it's not only with basketball but with education.

"In AAU you play all types of people and it's not just only Native American people," he said. "So that's another way of improving yourself.

And with the Native American Basketball Invitational, the team plays tribes from around the country and the players develop camaraderie and friendship with each other, he said.

"To me that's important," he said. "You can't just be enclosed in your own little world. You need to open yourself up and not be afraid to step out of your comfort zone."

Most of his girls on his team, the Blackhawks, are from the Gallup area and play at Gallup High. They fell to Kirtland in the third-place game, 45-43.

"Last year we took third," he said. "This year we came with the same expectation to hopefully do a little bit better but with the four teams in final four anyone of them could have won it.

"Just to come out and make it to the final four both years, that's a big accomplishment for the team and for the girls," he said.

Loretto said it takes a lot for the girls and their families to get them to the tournament.

"I want to thank the players and the parents," he said. "They did a lot to get their girls down here and it does take a lot of time with work and all that."

Ed Case, from the Klamath Tribe in Oregon, has taken a team to NABI for the last four years.

A six-year high school boys basketball coach, Case said he just wanted his team to be a part of the atmosphere.

"I just read about it somewhere that there's a big Native tournament," he said. "It's fun coming down and being around a whole bunch of Indians.

"We come from up in Oregon," he said. "The reservations are all spread out and we don't get to see other Natives a lot and coming down here the competition's fun and the kids like it. It's too hot but the kids like it."

His team, Mean Machine, lost to the Warriors from Florida, 76-68.

But Case said they learned a lot from the experience and he will continue to bring down players.

"They love coming down here just to see the other Indian kids," he said. "It's a different type of basketball. Where we come in from we're up north and everyone's generally pretty tall. We come down here and all the teams are smaller but, man, they really get up and down the floor."

A local coach, Jacque Begay, is an assistant coach at Kirtland Central. Her daughter, Nadia Begay, was a standout for Kirtland Central and played at Boise State.

Begay said many of the girls want to play at the next level and she thought NABI would do that for them but most of it has to be done on their own.

"I just don't think it's getting exposed, the kids and the coaches just aren't getting themselves out there," she said.

With mostly junior college scouts and recruiters at NABI, few made it to all the games and saw all the players.

"I got a couple of girls that want to go play at the next level," Begay said. "I told them you got to go get yourselves exposed out there, they're not going to come here ... hopefully we're going to get a couple of kids out there and go D1."

Being around the game as a player, coach and referee, Begay hopes to help some girls along the way, even if it's something as small as taking them to a tournament like NABI.

"Coaching wise, I love these little kids coming up," she said. "They have motivation, they want to learn, they want to go to the next level and I feel like I can help them in that area."

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