PHS grad helps South

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Playing in all-star contests can certainly change perspectives. Just ask Vicki Huber of Portales.

The lone Rams representative at the Class 3A North/South all-star basketball contest, Huber came into the week of practice leading up to the game with certain beliefs about some of the other girls there.

Beliefs that were soon enough shattered.

“I’ve met a lot of new people. People I didn’t think liked me or I didn’t think I’d like them because of sports,” Huber said. “But all of us coming together has been fun.”

What was a dead-even game through a half turned the North’s way in the opening moments after intermission. The North utilized that momentum and went on to a 89-72 victory as MVP Marcelita Povijua od Santa Fe Indian School scored 30 points for the victors.

After being held scoreless in the first half, Huber finished with five points to go along with four rebounds and a couple of steals. Huber’s putback with four minutes left, followed by a bucket by Laguna Acoma’s Amanda Pino, drew the South to within seven points after trailing by as much as 15. But the North countered with eight straight points and clinched its fifth victory in the six-year series.

Huber said that anxiety over a few of her teammates vanished as soon as she met them.

“The Sandia Prep girls and there’s a Dexter girl who’s in our district — I didn’t like her because she was their main player,” said Huber, referring specifically in the latter case to Dexter’s Krystal Banda. “Now she’s one of the coolest ones.

“We ended up building up a rivalry with each other against the North,” she added. “All of a sudden, we hate the North now — even though the Sandia Prep girls are from the North.”

In the fall, Huber will move on to play at Johnson and Wales — an NAIA school in Denver.

“My sister goes there and I had talked a lot about going there to play volleyball,” she said. “But then the coach heard about me playing basketball. We just went back-and-forth and he really wanted me to play there.”

Randy Hunt of Laguna-Acoma, the coach for the South, was impressed enough with Huber to build an early strategy around her and Sandia Prep’s Anna Roane. Although Huber and Roane are 5-feet-9, they were essentially the best post players for the South and Hunt told both to aggressively attack the taller North opponents from the start of the game.

“She’s the complete package. She runs the floor well and she shoots well,” Hunt said.

Portales would have had two representatives for the South at the all-star basketball tilt, but Bethany Self was unable to attend. Self, at 6-1, is a walk-on for the volleyball team at New Mexico State and was obligated to attend practices for her new team in Las Cruces.

“I missed her a lot and we really needed her, because we may have had height but we didn’t have any six-footers,” Huber said.