Greg Hansen: Sports at Santa Rita High School: 'There’s not a lot more we can do'

The old scoreboard at Palo Verde High School got an unusual workout Monday night. In the first quarter of the Titans’ boys basketball game against Santa Rita, the lights kept blinking: 9-0, 16-0, 24-0, 31-0.

Palo Verde was on pace to beat the once-proud Santa Rita basketball program 124-0.

It went far beyond sad. Santa Rita dressed just six players for the game. Coach Cedric Martin’s club is 0-12 this season, outscored by an average of 72-31 per game. Amazingly, Monday’s final score was 73-31.

Playing in the small-schools Class 2A division, Santa Rita has lost equally lopsided games to Morenci, Benson, Willcox and Bisbee.

“It’s challenging. It’s really tough to compete,’’ says Santa Rita athletic director Tony Gabusi, who knows how the other side lives. Gabusi coached Catalina High School to the 2011 state championship and has had a distinguished career in which he has coached for USA Baseball and for Arizona Hall of Fame coach Jerry Kindall.

“We try our best; that’s all we can do,’’ says Gabusi. “It’s on me and the coaches to be a good example for the kids, to not give up, and keep encouraging them. But it’s tough. Just tough.’’

It wasn't always this way at Santa Rita.

From 1980 to 1986, Santa Rita won eight state championships in baseball, track, girls basketball and cross country. The far-southeast-side TUSD school produced an NBA player, Dave Feitl, and perhaps the top girls basketball player in Tucson history, Paula Pyers.

From 1999 to 2010, you could make a strong case that Santa Rita’s boys basketball program was the best in Tucson; Coach Jim Ferguson led the Eagles to five state championship games in 11 years, winning it all in 1999 and 2010.

And then the demographics began to change. Santa Rita has produced one winning boys basketball season and is 24-84 since 2017. The Eagles’ girls basketball team went through a sobering 11-171 collapse over eight seasons.

What happened?

The enrollment at Santa Rita High School has dropped from 1,700 to about 450 students. A wing of the school has been shut down. Its football program, recently led by state-championship coaches Richard Sanchez (Sunnyside) and Tom Joseph (Mesa Mountain View), has gone 11-88-1 since Jeff Scurran coached the Eagles to the 2008 and '09 state-championship games.

Santa Rita had to forfeit eight football games last fall because it didn’t have enough players.

From 2012 to '15, Joe Hickle, a Tucson Conquistador who will be tournament chairman of the 2024 PGA Tour Champions Cologuard Classic, eagerly replaced Ferguson as Santa Rita’s basketball coach.

Hickle could not have imagined that he was at the beginning of Santa Rita’s disconcerting and unexpected fall from 40 years of sports significance.

"Everything just deteriorated,’’ he remembers. “I had three athletic directors and two principals in four years. We had to eliminate our freshman team because we didn’t have enough kids. I was exhausted after the first four months there.’’

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His first team went 1-24, but he fought back. In retrospect, Hickle’s final three seasons, 36-43, were highly successful given what has changed the last decade.

“We didn’t have any money,’’ says Hickle, now a Tucson insurance executive who coached for Brian Peabody at Pima College from 2016 to '22. “After road games to Thatcher and Morenci and Safford, we’d stop at McDonald’s and order from the dollar menu. That’s seriously all we could afford.’’

Santa Rita’s decline in high school sports is not anyone’s fault. The school’s location near the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and its vast airplane “boneyard’’ is surrounded by homes mostly built in the 1960s. There has been little or no population (or business) growth near the school for almost 20 years.

It is a significant issue that has affected other TUSD schools such as Catalina, Palo Verde and Sabino.

When Santa Rita played Palo Verde on Monday, the crowd in the antiquated gymnasium couldn’t have been more than 75. The heating system wasn't fully functional. Two players on the Palo Verde bench wore winter jackets during the game to stay warm.

It seemed like decades ago that the 2010 Santa Rita-Palo Verde game was a must-see event, played before a packed house of almost 1,000 fans.

“Those were must-see games,’’ says Hickle. “It was standing-room only.’’

Santa Rita and Palo Verde met in the state semifinals that season; the Eagles were led by future Maryland star and ACC leading scorer Terrell Stoglin. Palo Verde’s star power came from point guard Bryce Cotton, who went on to be an All-Big East player at Providence and played for the Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns before becoming a three-time MVP of the Australian pro league.

There are no more Stoglins and Cottons in the enrollment-challenged TUSD schools.

“The kids we used to get at Santa Rita now go to Cienega or to Sahuaro, or their families move to schools on the northwest side of town,’’ says Hickle.

When Santa Rita fell behind Palo Verde 31-0 on Monday, Martin, the SRHS coach, didn’t crack or lose his composure. At the quarter break — his voice audible at the lightly attended game — you could hear Martin encourage his six undersized players.

“Let’s just try to win this quarter,’’ he said. “Let’s show them we’re not quitters.’’

Santa Rita has games remaining with Tombstone, Bisbee, Pima and Willcox, which, on the surface, would seem like winnable games. But the Eagles have already lost to those schools, including a forgettable 83-15 game at Pima, a small high school in Graham County.

“Sometimes it’s very emotional for these kids, and for the coaches,’’ says Gabusi. “We’ll just coach ‘em up and try to make it a positive experience. There’s not a lot more we can do.’’