Spencer Durose is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Valley Christian High School for AZPreps365.

When former head coach and Washington Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee Roger De Boer arrived at the Valley Christian doorstep back in 2020, nobody could have guessed the instant success.

De Boer came to the Trojans after a storied 30-year coaching career in the state of Washington, both at Seattle Christian for 19 years, and then at Lynden Christian, his alma mater, for the remaining 11. 

His arrival in Arizona came as the result of being let go by Lynden Christian. He moved his company, Cloud 9 Sports, as well as his family to start somewhere fresh. 

In his first year in the state, his two sons, Jaden and Cole, attended Valley Christian, with Jaden leading the boy's basketball team in points per game. De Boer helped the team with some play-by-play without any real intention of coaching before head coach Greg Haagsma offered him the job for the 2021-22 season. 

Haagsma says Arizona’s addition of the shot clock helped contribute to his decision. 

“We knew last year that we were going to be starting the shot clock this year,” he said. “Roger’s done the shot clock in Washington for almost 10 years, and so I basically said ‘I really want you to come on and run the offense and get us ready for the shot clock here and I’ll just focus on defense.’” 

Haagsma, who has had his own acclaimed coaching career in the state of Arizona, believes that the arrival of De Boer has helped propel the program even further than it’s ever been. 

“There are a number of things that I think every coaching staff does over time,” he said. “We were really good at a lot of things that I have focused on for 30 years, but there were other things that I just felt could improve that honestly were some of his strong points.”  

For De Boer, this incredibly unique pairing came as a surprise to him. 

“For a guy who’s won six state titles, in the hall of fame, has over 600 victories, to go ‘Hey I think there’s some things that I’m recognizing moving forward with the new generation of player, the new generation of kid in general, that maybe there's some things that we can look at differently and to take someone on that’s as opinionated and strongwilled as me shows a great deal of humility.” 

The team found instant success in 2021 off the backs of this new coaching dynamic, going 27-3 and winning the 3A state championship. Back then, the team had 10 new players, and with the coaching situation, winning wasn’t guaranteed.

“As we were discovering ourselves as a team, we were also discovering ourselves as a coaching staff, and all of that kind of has to morph together at the same time,” De Boer said. “It’s been fantastic honestly, for me personally, I could not think of a better situation to be in. Our relationship has stayed super strong through it. Greg has been not just a co-coach, not just a guy I coach with, he’s been a dear friend.”

Luke Shaw, one of the team's current captains and leading scorer, believes that this new coaching dynamic has helped shaped both his game as well as the team’s.

“My coaches got my back and they're confident in me, but also my teammates. One thing special about this team is we’re not afraid to call each other out on a bad shot, we love each other at the end of the day, but yeah we’re gonna go after each other at practice and get after it,” he said. “So I mean just the teammates having confidence in me and me having confidence in them to get me the ball and them having confidence in me to get the ball has really led to that kind of open play and I think that’s the main thing to our success is the trust we have.” 

Haagsma knows how important this new coaching approach is to the program's success. With the team currently sitting at 27-2 and favorites to win the 3A state championship again, it’s exactly what the team will need. 

“Truthfully, I don’t think you’d find a single coach in the country, I mean you could go talk to Mike Krzyzewski or John Calipari or the greatest high school coaches in the nation and they would say ‘I’m not very good at this or this or this,’” he said. “I just feel like we both fill each other's cracks so well.”