Repenting for the sins of the past, Gabby Cortez, a former longtime assistant under Mitch Rolls, has the Labette Cardinals women geared up for a revived basketball season this winter.
Last year, Labette canceled its first-semester slate, played six Kansas Jayhawk Conference games then canceled the rest of the year under thenhead coach Kaylena Andersen.
Labette went 0-6 and lost by a combined 357 points as the Cardinals tried to navigate the season with a roster comprised mostly of volleyball players on loan.
Cortez ain’t having it. “I have a really good corps of six, seven kids,” Cortez said. “They’re bought in from the very beginning. We’re going to be good defensively and we can knock down the three. We’ve shot the ball well. I’ve really got a good group that will get us through the year and compete.”
Labette has 10 players on roster — five Division I transfers, four freshmen and one Division II transfer.
“This group had a really good preseason for a group that has never played together before,” Cortez said. “I have two kids that haven’t played in two years. I have a few others that haven’t played in a year. But now we’re ready to start the season.”
Maintaining a healthy roster has been a key focus for the first-year head coach.
“I have kids that take really good care of their bodies,” Cortez said. “Shoutout to our trainer, she does a great job of making sure our kids have what they need. Being at Iowa Western when we had eight kids a few years ago, I got prepared for situations like this. As long as we can keep the injury bug in games away, we’ll be OK. Ten is small from what I want, but there’s teams I’ve seen that have seven kids. So I’m in the ballpark.”
Ahmani Klabunde, a transfer from Chipola where Cortez served as Rolls’ assistant last year, will be the Cardinals’ point guard.
“She’s already had previous experience of success. She’s my floor general,” Cortez said. “If she plays with the motor she plays with, she can be the conference player of the year. We’re in great hands with her.”
Cortez is also excited about Tierra Bargeman, a sophomore transfer from Yavapai in Arizona.
“She’ll do all of the little things,” Cortez said. “She can guard two-through-four, or even a five. She always grabs rebounds. She’s going to be great. She’s one of the kids you forget is out there because you can’t take her out.”
Others on Labette’s roster this winter include Aubreyanna Yelverton (Rockwall, Texas), Najaya O’Neal (Omaha, Nebraska), Jordyn Searles (Philadelphia), Jon’qora Moore (Shreveport, Louisiana), Elyse Burnett (Rockledge, Florida), Gabrielle Burnett (Rockledge, Florida), Delani Crawford (Albuquerque, New Mexico) and Mattea Henry (St. Paul, Minnesota).
Having three transfers from Chipola, Cortez’s last coaching stop, has helped bridge the gap for an entirely new roster.
“It’s perfect, so all I have to do is look at them and they tell everybody how we do stuff around here,” Cortez said. “They know how energetic you have to be to play college basketball here.”
Cortez will emulate many of the schemes Rolls implemented at Labette when the Cardinals routinely found themselves in the upper echelon of the NJCAA rankings.
“We’re going to switch it up on defense because I don’t want to tire them out. We’ll play a lot of man, but we’ll mix in some zone to slow the pace down when we need to,” Cortez said. “Offensively, we’re going to push the ball up the floor. I don’t want to run offense. And they don’t want to run offense. I want them to go out there and make plays. It’s going to be fast, quick basketball with good pressure.”
Cortez also found her assistant coach in JoJo Munroe, a Bahamian who previously served as an assistant at Benedictine University and played NCAA Division II basketball at Albany State in Georgia.
“I love her. She does all the little things I need and always has them in the gym,” Cortez said. “I have a kid who’s in welding and she works with her. When the kids hate me, we get to play good cop, bad cop. I hope I get to keep her around.”
Labette was picked to finish dead last in the KJCCC preseason poll.
Johnson County was picked as the favorite to win the league, followed by Allen, Neosho County, Kansas City Kansas, Fort Scott, Highland and Labette.
“Having seen everybody, I think we’re in the middle of the pack,” Cortez said. “We’re going to surprise some teams this year. I’m feeding my kids the fact that nobody expects them to win. They need to go out there and prove people wrong. I have transfers that I had to fight people off with sticks for. So we can compete this year for sure.”
Damning the demons from last year’s debacle weighs heavily on Cortez’s mind as well as her roster’s.
“It’s definitely on their mind,” Cortez said. “With what I helped accomplish here a couple of years ago, these kids are ready to prove that Labette women’s basketball isn’t dead.”
Labette begins its season on Saturday at Seminole State. The Cardinals’ home opener is on Nov. 12 against NOC-Enid.
