Even though the Dolores High School Fieldhouse might have one of the smallest capacities of any gymnasium in the Four Corners, on a rivalry Tuesday night for DHS hoops, it gets as raucous as any venue around.
You might not be able to tell, however, by looking at boys head coach Joel Balderrama, whose unflappable demeanor on the sideline contrasts the din around him.
With a voice that doesn’t try to compete with the overbearing decibels of crowd noise, he makes sure to signal his requests for timeout with the “T” hand gesture, before calmly collecting his players and his clipboard to design the next sequence.
The impact on his players is palpable. Balderrama’s Bears took to an early season coaching change with aplomb, slowing down a perimeter-shooting oriented squad to a team that would methodically work their offense to find the best available option.
Rebounding off a slow restart from the holiday break, the Bears began to hit their stride in February with wins over Ridgway and Dove Creek. Sophomore Cliff Bice, one of several Bears as soft-spoken as his coach, emerged as an enigma for opposing defenses, living in the soft spots of zone defenses with a pure jump shot.
His leadership earned him a captaincy role, unfazed when the Bears hit a cold spell offensively or found themselves in a close game down the stretch.
Senior Tyler Nowlin brought the crowd to its feet on numerous occasions for the senior-laden Bears, providing thunderous blocked shots. His breakaway dunk in a tight contest against Ignacio in mid-February brought as much emotion as the Bears would outwardly show, as the senior gave a celebratory shout, before returning to his defensive post.
As much emotion, at least, until the Bears’ pinnacle of the campaign – a stunning 55-54 overtime win over Mancos on Friday, Feb. 18. Down at halftime, the Bears stormed back in the second half, with sharpshooting senior Tru Seekins nailing a three to send the game to an extra session.
From there, the Bears kept their cool in the face of an intense atmosphere. In the dying seconds of overtime, Balderrama collected his group once more, trailing by one. While the initial try misfired, Bears’ sophomore Jonathan Purkat corralled the rebound, drawing a foul on his putback attempt.
Fitting, then, that in the biggest game of his young career, Purkat channeled the same demeanor as the program had adopted all season, draining two free throws to win the game.
The victory snapped a nine-game losing streak in the Colorado Highway 184 rivalry, and further cemented that the Bears had found a winning formula.
Even in losses to wrap up the season, DHS stuck with the same demeanor that earned the Bears respect across the San Juan Basin League.
Emblematic of the way that his program manages adversity, senior wing Wyatt Koskie, amid a tooth-and-nail game against Telluride, got tangled with the Miners’ South Livermore while going for a loose ball. The two picked themselves up, with Koskie making a point to calmly hand the ball to the official, before sidling next to Livermore, asking his adversary, “You OK?” Livermore responded with the affirmative, giving a smile, before the two bumped fists and the game resumed.
Unfortunately, it would be Koskie’s last game, along with three senior teammates – Nowlin, Seekins, and Josh Ricca, as Telluride escaped with a hard-fought win in the SJBL pigtail game.
In the postgame handshake line, with the gravity of the moment sinking in for the heavy-hearted Bears, Balderrama tailed the line with hearty congratulations for Telluride, most notably for Miners head coach Brandon Bredlau. The two exchanged the mutual respect that comes from three nail-biting meetings, with modest jocularity: “How did we survive another game like that?”
The final record of 8-10 kept the Bears shy of their first winning season in six years, but, as the DHS Fieldhouse emptied for the final time in the 2021-22 season, a group of Bears held their heads high, having gone out in a way that would make their head coach proud.
