Broncos ready for more trophies

Published January 14, 2013 5:00pm by Josie Musico

The 2012-13 Meadow Broncos are (top row, left to right) Adrian Flores, Trey Herrera, Tyler Harrison, Mason Davila, Gavon Gardner, Brandon Flores, (bottom row) Christian Herrera, Zach England, Alan Estrada and Ralph Urias.

The Meadow Broncos stampede through the playoffs nearly every hoops season, and don’t plan to let this stretch go any shorter.

The Broncos - as of press time 5-1 in district and 11-7 overall - are so far second place in district behind Petersburg. They plan to keep improving, then trample the Buffaloes for the district title and behind.

"Our goal is always to win district and advance as far as possible in the playoffs,” said head coach Kyle Johnson. "We have a uphill battle to overcome, but is still a very realistic goal.”

Other tough opponents are New Home and Ropes, longtime arch-rivals who on Jan. 8 gave them their closest, most exciting match yet with a narrow 46-45 win.

"Our most important win so far was the one-point victory over Ropes,” Johnson said. "This is because not only were able to put ourselves in position to still win district, but also because we were able to win a ‘big’ game. 

"Throughout the year we lost a couple of close games that we were in position to win at the and we did not finish. I’m hoping that now that we were able to win a close game at the end we will have the confidence to finish the close games throughout the rest of the season.”

This year the team returned four lettermen, including District Newcomer of the Year Christian Herrera, a senior, and All-District recipients junior Brandon Flores and senior Zach England. New to varsity are senior Ralph Urias, junior Tyler Harrison, sophomore Mason Davila and freshmen Trey Herrera and Adrian Flores.

"Coming into the season we only had really three players with any varsity experience, so at the beginning of the year it was important for us to get the experience and continue to improve throughout the year,” Johnson said. "Right now the thing we are working on is playing with more consistency.  We have periods throughout games that we don’t play as well and we need to correct that.”