‘This is what we’ve been waiting for’: Riverbank looks for success with veteran-led team
When Riverbank High girls basketball coach Janelle Luu took over the program in 2018, the team went 1-20. In her second season, the Bruins went 4-19. They won just one Trans-Valley League game in two years.
This season, Luu’s fifth, the team already has won more league games than her first two combined and has raced to a 14-2 start, the best in recent school history.
The Bruins began the season 8-0, won nine of their first 10 games and finished third in the Manteca Christmas Classic in mid-December. On Thursday night they beat Ripon, 63-26, advancing to 2-0 in TVL play.
The program’s success hasn’t come without hard work and dedication from both coaches and players.
Senior guard Livi Fernandez, a four-year varsity member and one of the program’s few career 1,000-point scorers, was a freshman in 2019, Luu’s second season.
“I had to be with the girls on the court and it was hard to lead them at first,” said Fernandez, who averaged 11.9 points a game then. “I had never been a leader on the court, so I had to kind of find my way while also being on varsity.”
Luu had a message for the player she knew would be the center of the program’s turnaround.
“Three years ago, her freshman year, we didn’t win a lot and I told her, ‘Be patient, stick with it. Keep putting in the work and we’ll build something that you’re going to be proud of,” Luu said.
After its last playoff appearance in the 2014-15 season, Riverbank didn’t have a 10-win season until last year when it went 19-4 and played Capital Christian in the first round.
“I think when we were losing so much my freshman and sophomore year, it lit a fire under them and … it was motivation because we were down in the dumps really bad,” Fernandez said. “Last year was our first taste of winning.”
They went from going into games expecting to lose to winning games they would have been counted out of just two seasons ago.
“We know we’re gonna go in playing our best,” Fernandez said. “and if we’re not, I look the girls in the eyes and I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re not doing this again.’ Everyone just has the same look, you can just see it. We don’t want to lose. We don’t want to be known as the bottom … we have to make them respect us.”
Nothing encapsulates that growth like the team’s league opener against Escalon.
The Bruins trailed the Cougars by 18 at halftime and were plagued with foul trouble, but they didn’t fold.
“In the past, if we were down 18, they’d roll over, they’d just concede,” said Luu, a 2014 Riverbank graduate. “This year at the half, I looked at all their eyes, and they were not losing that game.”
They scored 42 second half points and won by two points on a layup from junior Chancis Gamez.
“That second half they started rebounding, hustling, playing defense and ended up winning at the buzzer, which is a true testament to their character.” Luu said.
The team’s experience has played a major factor in its success this year.
It graduated only three seniors from last year’s team that appeared in the playoffs for the first time in more than five years and finished with the most wins since Luu’s senior season in 2013-14.
Fernandez averaged 20 points a game last year, but this season she has a lot more scoring help. The senior with a scholarship offer from UC Merced averages 12.4 points a game and sophomore Taylor Macias and Gamez, a junior, are averaging career highs, scoring 15.7 and 15.5 points a game, respectively. Like Fernandez, both played varsity as freshmen.
“That’s kind of our MO,” Luu said. “I tell them when you work together, they cannot stop you. It just shows how much we move the ball around, how much it’s a team game … and we’re really, really proud of every girl that steps on the floor every night.”
After finishing fourth in the TVL standings last season, this year’s team believes it has what it takes to finish at the top of the league.
“That’s our first goal right now,” Fernandez said. “This is what we’ve been waiting for and I think we just really want to make it as far as we can. Our ultimate goal is to make our coach proud. That’s what we talk about on a daily basis. We are doing it for her as much as we’re doing it for ourselves … because we all love and respect her so much. She puts in so much work for us. It’s almost like we have to pay her back.”
This story was originally published January 7, 2023 at 5:43 AM.
