Photo by Daniel Mohrmann
Jessie Nunley has spent as much time in the Manitou Springs gym over the last seven years as any coach in the district. She started as an assistant with the volleyball program before joining the girls basketball team when Justin Armour took over.
And now that program is hers.
Armour quietly stepped away from the team in the offseason and Nunley was elevated to head coach. It’s her first head coaching job, but she is far from a stranger when it comes to the athletes who suit up for the Mustangs.
And now those same athletes will look to her as she sets out to keep the team playing at a competitive level and battling for a Tri-Peaks League basketball title.
“(Coach) Nunley shows a lot of respect and care,” senior guard Lexi Vigil said. “She can relate to what we’re doing here.”
Nunley was a volleyball and basketball player for Woodland Park. As a coach, she has primarily worked with the volleyball team for the past six seasons but stepped away this fall when she was named as head girls basketball coach.
In her time on Armour’s staff, she has become much more basketball savvy. She got her first chance to act as head coach when she filled in for Armour against Banning Lewis at home last winter. The Mustangs won the game 68-16 and she’s eager to fully dive in as program leader.
“It feels like a fresh start,” she said. “I’m trying to utilize our biggest strengths with the crew that we have coming back and capitalize on the systems that really play to our advantages.”
She has the crew to do it.
This Manitou team is loaded with upperclassmen who have played a lot of basketball together over the years. Vigil is one of three key seniors coming back, being joined by Bella Coscetti and Abby Parker.
Grace Allen is coming off a knee injury from last winter and should also return fairly early in the season, giving the Mustangs a solid core to rally around through the season.
And it’s a core that has seen a lot of varsity experience over the past three years.
“It’s going to be helpful with us knowing how to deal with stressful situations,” Parker said.
“We know how to teach the underclassmen how to be prepared with everything and the time we have under our belt now has been huge. We’ve played in a lot of different games and we know a lot of different scenarios.”
It’s slightly too early to place expectations on this team in terms of wins or losses. But the key for the new coach is to make sure the girls are playing with a maximum level of energy and intensity on a nightly basis.
If she can couple that with the basketball knowledge that she has picked up from Armour over the years, this could be a very dangerous Manitou team to face over the next four months.
“I can’t say enough about what I learned from Justin,” Nunley said. “It’ll be different without him. But the energy, the speed, the intensity, the pace and the speed that we want things to operate, I would love to see that continue.”