Eight months ago, Celeste Claw was living in Phoenix, in her fourth year as a fitness performance coach.

Tuesday, Jan. 18, the new head coach of defending 3A girls basketball champion Page may well find herself, with her Sand Devils, back atop the conference after a 63-40 blowout at Camp Verde High School.

“It was funny, because I actually heard about the position from Bryan Begay,” Claw said of the former athletic director at Monument Valley High School, the second stop Jan. 18 on a four-game, 10-day road swing for the Sand Devils. “He’s the one that told me, ‘Hey, this spot’s open. Are you going to take it?’

"I said, ‘Wait. I didn’t know that.’”

With top-ranked Holbrook’s season on hold due to a resurgence of COVID-19 in the district, and after second-ranked Gilbert Christian suffered its first loss Saturday, Jan. 15, at Thatcher, third-ranked, 7-1 Page could find itself restored Jan. 18 to a position it has known very well in five of the past 10 years--No. 1 in the conference.

“This is my first year of coaching,” said Claw, known better as “Boka” long before leading Page to the first of its five state titles as starting point guard in 2012. “I knew the pressure was coming, early on. I know what Page basketball is all about.”

Sporting an array of pink-tinged bangs, afros and other hairstyles held in place by black and white headbands, overlooking large, Clark Kent-style eyeglasses--which she continues to wear while pacing the coaches' box--Claw led the Sand Devils in assists and rebounds in a 31-win senior season one local publication described as "Boka Mania," capped in the Division III championship game with a win over Winslow that avenged the Sand Devils' only non-tournament loss.

"We're supported by our community, and we're supported by our past coaches," said Claw, whose predecessor, 3A Coach of the Year Ryan Whitehorse, won three of the past four conference titles before retiring. "So I feel more of a welcoming."

Having the Conference Player of the Year certainly helps that feeling. After eking out Page’s first three North Region wins by a total of four points, senior guard Miquedah Taliman made her case to lead the region in scoring with a game-high 25 points in the Jan. 15 blowout of the Cowboys, the largest margin of victory for Page this season.

“She’s the one that’s helped us in the past three games, so I trust the ball in Kada’s hands all the time,” Claw said of Taliman, who has taken a cue from her rookie head coach and simplified her first name in the scorebook. “When we have lulls when we don’t play defense, or we’re not waking up [in] our offense, she’s the one that has to spark it and get that fire going.”

Which, at the beginning of both halves, Taliman did. After senior forward McKenna Martin sank a free throw at the 5:38 mark of the first quarter to give the Cowboys a 3-2 lead, Taliman sparked a 20-0 run that held them scoreless for the rest of the quarter.

“It’s just more of understanding, within the first few minutes, especially teams that [are] not in our [region], ‘OK, can they handle the pressure or can they not handle the pressure?’” Claw said of the Cowboys, still searching for their first win of 2022 after losing their seventh straight. “Once we get the right rotations through those first few minutes [and] understand who showed up today to play, that’s when we can execute the pressure. That’s when we can play Sand Devil basketball defense.”

In fact, Camp Verde would score only a lone field goal over the next 10-plus minutes, as both teams went cold the first five minutes of the second period. Without senior guard Addy Caballero’s lay-in and three-pointer bookending the final seven minutes of the first half, the Sand Devils would have doubled up the Cowboys at halftime.

As it was, Camp Verde came out of the locker room still within reach of Page, 26-18. Like she did with her 11 first-quarter points, though, Taliman dashed those faint hopes by the end of the third quarter, hitting for 10 more, including a three-pointer at the buzzer to give the Sand Devils their largest lead, 48-27.

“She knows that she has every right to shoot the ball and be the creator on the floor,” Claw said. “She’s a playmaker.  I do have high expectations for her leadership on this team.” 

Despite losing all-North Central Region first-teamer Jade Reid for at least a week with a concussion sustained with less than two minutes to play in the period, Page’s notorious trapping press would provide no letup until Claw emptied her bench eight minutes later, up 61-37.

“It's a young group, but we’re growing, each and every game,” Claw said of her players, who she added that her staff is pushing to understand that their success, each game, is a measure of their desire. “‘Do you want it? How bad do you want it? Will you push yourselves and each other, mentally and physically, if you want it that bad?’

“When we get both sides of that mindset, we’ll be successful.”