Raptors stretch young wings, look to experienced squad next season

Bob Banning has seen this before. As the only boys head basketball coach Silver Creek High School has ever had, he built the program from the ground up with not a senior to be found.

Charlie Hagan defends Teagan Kramer during practice at Silver Creek High School in Longmont. Lindsay J.C. Lack photo

That was during the 2000-01 season, the first year the west Longmont school opened. The next year he faced the same dilemma. So nine years later, when the Raptors found themselves again with a senior-absent roster, they could have resigned themselves to a rebuilding year.  But it’s been anything but.

With six juniors and two sophomores carrying the load, Silver Creek is hovering around .500 with the 4A Northern Conference tournament on the horizon. But the fact the Raptors are even in this position is a testament to the team’s background.

“We know coach and how he likes to coach. I think there’s kind of this idea that he expects a lot from us,” junior T.J. Adams said.

In a way he does. Adams is one of five players on this year’s team who has an older sibling who played for Banning. Add to that another player whose mother is an assistant coach on the girls team, a player who is the son of head football coach Mike Apodaca and another one who has the support of his teammates while his mother battles cancer and the Silver Creek Raptors are more than a team. They’re a family. Throw in a pair of assistant coaches who are former players under Banning and you get a sense of the tradition the program is building.

“All the former players that watch us play come into the locker room before every game. After every game we’ll have five or six former players with us,” said Banning, who has photos of his previous teams lining his office wall. “That‘s part of that family atmosphere. Each generation knows about the other.”

Just how close is this team? When it huddles up for a pre-game cheer they don’t shout team, Silver Creek or Raptors. Instead, the players shout “family” because, to them, that’s what they are.

Banning notes there are similarities with some of his previous Raptor teams, but this year’s squad is more athletic and has more size. That‘s evident when one sees the 6-foot-6, 205-pound Adams, 6-5, 190-pound Charlie Hagan, 6-5, 250-pounder Patrick Minter-Woodley or 6-9, 175-pound Graham Harms running up and down the court. Now if only Banning could find a cold-blooded shooter to compliment his core of post players the Raptors may be even more well-rounded.

That kind of shooter may have made the difference when Silver Creek started the season 2-5 with four of those losses by seven points or less. But with those defeats came a togetherness that brought the Raptors not only closer but jump started a five-game winning streak.

“It’s been tough. The juniors have had to step up and (play) in a senior role. I think we’ve been prepared,” junior guard Jake Machmuller said. “It was a rough start, but we now understand that we needed to step up.”

Now, not everything is so rosy. There’s still room to grow, as evident by recent back-to-back 30-plus point losses at Longmont and Northridge. But considering Silver Creek, which had six seniors a year ago when it won just five games, is knocking on the door of its first winning season since going 18-7 in 2005-06 is a tribute to how well this team has come together.

“I think we’re just trying to learn how to win again. We want to be good this year and we have our goals that we set as a team. We definitely want to reach them,” Adams said.

Those goals would include another Northern Conference title, advancing further than any previous Silver Creek team has in the state tournament and possibly winning it all. Yet, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Banning is expecting bigger and better things next season when the program’s nine juniors are seniors and a crop of junior varsity and C-team players move up to the next level.

“All three teams have been very successful this year. The (junior varsity) team has a better record than we do and the C-team is better than them.,“ Banning said. “We have a good ninth-grade class coming up together that is playing against sophomores now and our JV team has three or four players who are very solid. So the depth is there.”

With all that talent, who needs seniors?

Email: kodeysdad@yahoo.com