To get to the NJCAA women’s basketball championship game last week, Pima College had to overcome a 98-91 deficit with 52 seconds remaining in the semifinals. The Aztecs had to somehow stop Community College of Baltimore County All-American guard Gissel Gamble, who scored 53 points. Yes, 53.
Yet Todd Holthaus‘ Aztecs won 115-112 in overtime, an experience Holthaus said ended perfectly. “Everybody was crying, hugging their parents,” he says.
There has been a lot of crying and hugging in Holthaus’ 18 seasons at Pima. The Aztecs have won 394 games. They’ve finished in the top five at the NJCAA Division II finals on six occasions, including No. 2 this season and in 2011.
Pima’s head coach Todd Holthaus gathers the Aztecs for last-second instructions before the tip-off against Scottsdale in the NJCAA Region I, Division II semifinal at Pima Community College West, March 7, 2024.
Almost nobody could see this coming.
After graduating from Grand Canyon University in 1997, the 6-foot, 7-inch Holthaus, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, got a job teaching at Homer Davis Elementary School, near Ruthrauff Road. Over the next few years, starting from the bottom, Holthaus coached the Flowing Wells freshman baseball team, helped to coach the Caballeros girls and boys volleyball teams and coached the high jumpers for the Cabs’ track team.
Now, with the bulk of his 29-win team returning for the 2025-26 JC basketball season, Holthaus doesn’t have to be modest when he says, “talent-wise, we’re loaded; I don’t see why we wouldn’t open close to No. 1 next season.”
Although roster construction is often volatile and ever-changing in junior-college sports, Holthaus expects to have the ACCAC Player of the Year, 6-3 Kiley Sours-Miller back, along with Kennedi Niemann and Melicia Nelson, all of whom combined to average 35 points per game.
The worry about an NCAA school poaching Sours-Miller is real, but Holthaus said, “Kiley told me that if I’m coaching, she’s coming back. And I’m coming back.”
The Aztecs, keyed by long-time assistant coaches Pete Fajardo (who coached Salpointe Catholic High School to the 2003 state championship game) and 17-year Arizona assistant coach Jim Rosborough, have already signed seven players for next year’s squad, including Flagstaff High state championship guard Teagan Martin, Flowing Wells standout Nevaeh Urenda, Salpointe’s Jolee Nelson and Gilbert Mesquite High guard Kahlia Gonzales, sister of the MVP of Pima’s 35-1 men’s basketball team, Cohenj Gonzales.
Pima has won 102 games the last four seasons, and Holthaus says the loss in last week’s NJCAA championship game to 34-1 Johnson County College of Kansas provides ample motivation for a return to the biggest stage in women’s JC basketball.
“We’re not using smoke and mirrors here,” he says. “We’ve proven we belong at the highest level. One of these days it’s going to happen.”
