NMPreps.com's special feature that follows the newly formed New Mexico Flash basketball club team and their trip to San Diego, California July 21st - 23rd.

The New Mexico Flash are coached by former Las Cruces High School coach Matt Abney. Abney led the Lady Bulldawgs for 14-years where he won 267 games and reached the Final Four-four times in his career.

This will be a four day feature as we track the New Mexico Flash in one of the last open events in the country. The team features some of the top players in the state.

Deciding to retire from teaching and coaching from Las Cruces High was by far the most difficult decision of my professional career. I still loved coaching basketball but I felt I was missing out on other aspects of my life. During this past season, my mom had a health scare in January, the night before we had a district game vs Alamogordo. I had planned on missing the game and go visit her (in Las Vegas, NM) but my dad would not allow me to do so. In fact, he even cussed at me and said that he would take care of my mom and that I had to coach my team. You can’t imagine the guilt I felt coaching the next night while my mom was in the hospital.

Another factor in my decision to retire was the thought of missing opportunities to watch Sarah [Abney] play collegiate basketball (at Sacrament State). In January, we had a bye on a Friday night so I traveled to Sacramento to watch Sarah play games on a Thursday evening and a Saturday afternoon. In order to do this I had to miss two practices. I had an amazing coaching staff so I wasn’t worried about the practices I was missing, but it was the guilt I felt about not being there.

At the end of the season I had to decide if I was willing to not be able to visit my parents and to not watch Sarah play, or retire from teaching and coaching and be able to do both of these things. The conclusion I came to was that I can always coach again, but I can’t get back time with my parents and watching Sarah finish her last three years of basketball.

The decision to retire was such a tough one because I still love the game. It’s not like I was burnt out and didn’t want to coach any longer. I thought the best way to be able to coach without the huge commitment of a high school program was to start a travel team. I decided to model my team after Jerry Loya from Team Zoom out of El Paso. Sarah played club for Team Zoom in the spring of 2017. Team Zoom was different from other clubs in that they didn’t charge hundreds/thousands of dollars to be in their organization. What Coach Loya did was split the entry fee by 8 players, and then each of the families gave him $50 for his expenses. So for $150 each, Sarah and her teammates got to play in front of a lot of college coaches. I thought this was great for us financially as a family so this is what I decided to with my NM Flash team, split the tourney fees, cover my expenses and let’s go play.

When I decided to start this travel team the first player I thought of was Centennial’s Jessica Rios. She’s one of the best players in NM that many people don’t know about, including college coaches. She’s never had the opportunity to play club basketball as well as most athletes from Las Cruces and I wanted to change that for her as well as the other players on my roster. By coaching NM Flash, I’ll be able to take what I’ve learned from Sarah’s club experience and design a really good club program moving forward.

I’m really excited about my 1st ever NM Flash roster. Five of the girls I was very familiar with since they were in my district this past season. Joining Jessica from Centennial is Larissa Laborin. She’s a talented sophomore who was one of the best freshmen in the state last season. I also have Kayla Avalos, a 6’0 post from Mayfield. She’s going to surprise a lot people next season. She didn’t get a lot of minutes last season because Mayfield had 10 seniors. Sophomore Maggie Salas is the 4th player from Las Cruces. She is a solid up and coming point guard for the Lady Trojans. Also, joining us is junior Justyse Martin from Alamogordo. She gave my Bulldawgs problems last year with her length and athleticism. The last two players both recently won a state championship with the West Mesa Mustangs. Ce Ce Barela is now at Eldorado after her dad Leroy was named the head coach. She’s been an all-state player in the past so she’s definitely going to get some college looks over the next two years. Jazmin Cordova is the other Mustang on the team, She’s a solid player at both ends of the floor. She’s not flashy, but she’s one of those players you need on the court. The last two players on the Flash are both big time shooters. Emily Burk from West Mesa and Briana Marquez from West Las Vegas can really score. They weren’t able to make it for the San Diego tournament, but they will be joining us in El Paso at the beginning of August.

Since this team was recently assembled, we are clearly behind all of the other club teams that have been together since April. What’s going to make things more challenging is this group lacks experience. CeCe and Jazmin are the only two players that that are playing in San Diego with any travel experience. I look at this scenario very similar to coaching in the north/south all-star game. You have a group of talented girls that have never played together, most do not even know each other and it’s my job to get them to jell as a team and play well in front of college coaches during and NCAA viewing period. I’m very excited for this challenge.

We’ve only had a couple of practices, and we never had the entire team at either of them. This is always the challenge with a travel team. It’s always tough to get everyone together when they live in different parts of the state. As a coach, I have to ask myself “what are the priorities for this team?’ I have to be structured but still be able to showcase the strengths of each of these girls. How many offensive sets do we put in? Do we press our opponents? These are normal questions but when you bring together players from different programs you have to rethink how you do things.

The two practices were extremely productive. I just wanted them to feel comfortable with our motion offense that we’ll try and run. We do have our share of quick hitters, I’m just hoping we can remember them because they are really good sets that have always worked well for my teams. The biggest challenge is going to be our chemistry on the court. They are all great kids and are really positive, but again, we’re going to be playing teams that have played close to 30 games since April. There’s no doubt we’ll become more comfortable with each other as the weekend progresses. Our primary focus is going to be to play hard, be a good teammate, compete and most important, have fun!

Part two of our feature will run tomorrow, July 23rd.

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