Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of stories about local athletes who played in multiple North-South All-Star games
Playing in state tournaments is nice. Winning them even nicer.
Portales’ Zamorye Cox did both over the past seven months — competing in the state volleyball tournament in November and helping the basketball team win the 4A state title in March.
Her contributions were well known at Portales, but were not lost on state all-star selection committees, either. Cox was chosen to represent the Lady Rams in both sports as part of 1-4A all-star teams that played in Albuquerque last week. For her it was both an honor and a family affair.
“It was really cool,” Cox said. “My sister actually did (compete in two different all-star events), so I knew you could, but I really wasn’t expecting it. .... It was awesome to have two teams to meet and hang out with and everything.”
Cox’s older sister Sheraya had the same honor in 2016. “It was different back then,” the younger Cox said, “because I think this is the first year they’ve done it all in one week.”
And that was a grind. A fun grind, but a hectic schedule indeed.
Tuesday of last week, there were a few volleyball practices. Wednesday there was another volleyball practice, then team pictures, followed by basketball practice and ending with a basketball team dinner.
On Thursday, the volleyball game was held at La Cueva High School. Friday, the basketball game took place at Albuquerque High School.
Cox had two Portales teammates with her for each South all-star squad. Linsday Blakey and Sarah Blaeser were on the volleyball team; Blakey and Kelly Fraze were members of the basketball team.
“That was kind of a cool thing, too,” Cox said. “I don’t think most teams get three seniors to go to (all-star games in) two sports. So that’s been cool, knowing that your team was really strong. And getting to play another game with them, that was really fun.”
Though the South volleyball team didn’t fare so well. “We got beat pretty bad,” Cox said, “but it was fun playing the whole week with each other. So I’m not going to look back and remember we lost. I’m just going to look back at the whole week, and hanging out and stuff.”
Basketball went quite a bit better for the South, which won 98-57. “Yeah, it was a lot of fun,” Cox said. “I talked to someone and they were really impressed with our defense. I think we were just a really strong team that came together and clicked.”
Coaching the South was Joe Bailey, head girls coach at Moriarty — Portales’ chief district rival during the winter. Much of what Bailey employed was familiar to Cox and her Portales teammates.
“We ran a lot of the same stuff during the season,” Cox said, “so he put a lot of that in. Everyone picked it up really well.”
Cox says there was a familiar offensive play here or there, a defensive press the Lady Rams knew. It must have worked well, based on the 41-point margin of victory.
Cox’s teammates — the other South teammates besides the Portales ones — were people she had seen throughout the course of her high school career, players in different uniforms trying to stop her and the Rams, trying to score on Portales. As opponents, adversaries, it was different then.
“You see them as the competition and you think, ‘Oh man, we don’t like her,’” Cox said. “But when you meet the people, you see that they’re really nice. You see a different side of them. You see that they’re really cool people.”
Cox’s four-day all-star experience will likely stay with her forever. Her imprint on Portales basketball might last just as long.
“She has God-given athletic ability,” Lady Rams basketball coach Wade Fraze said. “She’s very intelligent in general, and about the game. And then also her work ethic, and not just work ethic but a relentlessness, never quitting under any circumstance. Altogether, you get a pretty special combination.
“She probably knows the game of basketball as well as any player I’ve every coached, so it’s like having a coach on the floor in a way, an extension of me.”
Cox will soon take the next step in her basketball career and play at the college level starting in the fall. She won’t have to travel far, though, going a few blocks away to Eastern New Mexico University, where she will study kinesiology toward the end of becoming an athletic trainer.
Basketball-wise, she knows her game has to develop more to be effective in the Division II college ranks.
“I think I just need to get stronger and be prepared for bigger, faster people,” she said. “And the pace of the game is going to be the biggest difference, I think. And my outside shot needs to get more consistent.”
When that all happens, Cox can probably expect four more memorable years of Portales-area basketball.