Eagle Valley girls basketball wins first league title in program history

In 2006, head coach Phil Tronsrue and his assistant, Vinny Cisneros, coached the Battle Mountain boys basketball team to its first league title. On Thursday, the pair — in reversed roles— led the Eagle Valley girls basketball team to its first Western Slope crown, defeating the Huskies 43-28 to finish 5-1 in conference play.

“It was just really special for me to have him there,” said Cisneros, who has coached the Devils the last five years. “I wouldn’t even be a coach if it wasn’t for Phil.”

But Cisneros himself also said he can’t take credit for what happens on the court. It was the senior-led Devils who pulled away late in Edwards to complete a season sweep of their county rivals.

“It’s awesome,” Abby Talbot said after winning the Western Slope. “Since I’ve been here at least, that achievement seemed so far away, but this year we played really well and worked hard for it.”

Eagle Valley led 8-4 after the first quarter and built a 14-6 advantage early in the second. But the Huskies’ timely 3-pointers repeatedly injected hope. The hosts closed the gap to 20-19 early in the third after Izzy Kovacik and Akeliah Hancock connected from deep.

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“We knew a couple things get their team excited: the 3-ball and offensive rebounds,” Cisneros said of his opponents, who hit three triples in the second half. “I think our girls knew what was on the line and there were a little bit of nerves there.”

In the second half, the Devils adjusted their press, shortening rotations to limit the Huskies’ stealth speed. While they’d been breaking the press off the dribble through the first 16 minutes, the Battle Mountain guards couldn’t stretch the floor late.

“I think that was really the difference maker,” Cisneros said before also crediting the play of lone junior starter Ella Webster and senior Reef Kenney, who filled in for injured starting point guard Alondra Ruiz. Webster and Kenney poured in eight points apiece — all in the second half.

“They really changed things, too,” Cisneros said.

With five minutes remaining, Hancock pulled up for two of her team-high eight points to make it 32-24. Webster responded with a 3-pointer in transition. Then, Shreeve — who’d come up with a key offensive rebound moments before — stole the ball and dished back to Webster under the hoop to make it a 13-point game and put the Huskies away for good.

“We needed something to kind of stretch ourselves away a bit,” Cisneros commented regarding the game’s defining sequence. He said the Devils lean on Shreeve for her defense and intangible play-making, like the clutch 3-pointer she made to put her team ahead of Glenwood Springs in the final 90 seconds of Tuesday’s 55-49 win.

On Thursday, the hot hand belonged to Addison Mandeville, who stuffed the stat sheet with a game-high 15 points. Meanwhile, Talbot, who plans to play collegiately at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin next year, anchors the team’s half-court offense.

“We have a really decent balance of what our top-3 players do,” Cisneros said.

“I think we all kind of know where we are on the floor at all times and we play off each other really well,” Talbot added regarding the Devils triumvirate of senior playmakers.

The Huskies (10-12) face Cedaredge in their season finale Saturday. No matter what, 2025 will be a marked improvement from 4-16 a year ago and 5-17 in 2023. With the win, Eagle Valley finished the regular season 12-11 — its first winning season since 2016. The seven seniors and two juniors who make up the bulk of the Devils’ rotation will be playing in their first state tournament next week.

“I think their dedication over the last couple years — to summer tournaments, off-season programs — all that stuff just finally clicked,” Cisneros said in explaining his team’s growth. “We’re just really happy with where we’re at and what we’ve been able to accomplish and we look forward to what’s next.” 

The official 40-team 5A playoff seedings come out Sunday. As it stands now, the No. 30-ranked Devils would host No. 35 Grand Junction Central in a play-in game on Feb. 26. The Warriors sunk the Devils on a buzzer-beater on Jan. 14, the first of five-straight heart-breaking losses that ended with an overtime defeat to Summit on Jan. 28. Cisneros said the stretch was a “blessing in disguise,” especially the one-point loss to the Tigers — a game in which Eagle Valley held a double-digit lead late in regulation.

“That loss, as devastating as it was, really was the catalyst for how we finished the season,” he said. “We just completely changed our whole mindset. There was a level of urgency we didn’t have before.”

“It definitely sparked something in us where we weren’t going to let that happen to us again,” Talbot added.

Even though the Devils are league champions and nearly beat the Tigers twice this season, Summit and Glenwood Springs are both ranked higher in the CHSAA Selection & Seeding Index. Talbot said she’s OK if people underestimate Eagle Valley.

“We definitely have something to prove,” she said. “We know we’re better than our record shows.”