The McClave girls basketball team has been playing together for so many years it seems to have developed a sixth sense.
“It’s like we can read each other’s minds,” Kelsey Tague said.
With five senior starters, all of whom began to learn the game under coach Dick Peecher as early as kindergarten, it is easy to understand how.
And when it comes to basketball, about the only thing these girls do not agree on is how much pressure they are feeling as they close in on one of the longest-standing records in Colorado prep history.
McClave is three wins from breaking the state record of 74 consecutive victories, established by the Shelly Pennefather-led Machebeuf girls from 1980-83. The final countdown begins Thursday with the quarter- final round of the Class 1A playoffs at Colorado State University-Pueblo. Win out, and the Cardinals will break the record while winning a third consecutive state title on Saturday.
McClave, located about 215 miles southeast of Denver, has won 72 games in a row dating to the first game of the 2003-04 season.
“There is more pressure, but right now we are not worried about the streak,” said two-year starter Mallory Cline. “Our biggest goal is to follow through and win another state championship. We never talk about the streak, but it is getting exciting.”
Teammate Callie Curry did not seem as thrilled with the talk of the record.
“Everybody expects you win, and you can feel overwhelmed,” Curry said. “But once I’m out on the court, I forget about all of that.”
There are only two team records in girls basketball that have stood longer than Machebeuf’s winning streak – Wray’s consecutive state title streak of four (1976-79), and Ridgway’s season of six games with 100 or more points (1980-81).
The Cardinals (22-0) are on pace for their third consecutive 25-0 season. Only Eads – the last team to beat McClave, in the 2002-03 title game – has come within 10 points of the Cardinals. A season ago McClave won by an average of 63-29.
So how does McClave, with 85 high school students, keep its edge?
“It is pretty absurd, this streak,” said Peecher, in his sixth year with program. “We’ve had a number of tough games over the last three years, and we’ve had our opportunities to lose. But these girls refused to lose, and they have a great deal of mental toughness. I know that’s a tired old phrase, but it’s true.”
Peecher and his self-professed “fiery” coaching style deserve much of the credit, as does former coach Scott Gadd, who worked with Peecher to build the program from the ground up over the past decade. Peecher, a former football coach, begins coaching area girls from the first time they dribble a basketball until they graduate from high school.
Before he and Gadd arrived, McClave was “just awful,” Peecher said.
Now they are so good they have been accused of recruiting, quite a challenge for a school district with fewer than 260 students.
“You always hear this rumbling, but all those girls have been with (Peecher) since the sixth grade,” Eads coach Shawn Randel said. “I don’t call that recruiting. It’s just jealousy, people who are upset and trying to place blame.”
And while Peecher said a handful of players have come in from out of the district to join the program, mostly four or five years ago before this streak started, he points to the wave of talent that has grown up to keep the powerhouse going.
Cline and Tague are the team’s leading scorers and rebounders with Josie Mallard also averaging in double figures. Andrea Bexton and Curry fill out the starting lineup. All are capable of putting up big numbers.
“We play basketball together all the time and we go places together like sisters,” Bexton said. “So if we get into a tight spot where some teams might crumble, we hang together.”
