CAMP VERDE — In the summer of 1998, tragedy struck the small northern Arizona town of Camp Verde when basketball player Yvonne Johnson was killed in a car accident.

Mark Showers had just finished his first season as leader of the Cowboys that summer and was preparing for another year when he got the news.

A basketball tournament in conjunction with the Yavapai Apache Nation was already in the works for the 1998-99 campaign, and the players chose to honor their fallen teammate by naming it after her.

Now 26 years later, the Yavapai Apache Nation continues to support the tournament, and Showers remembers what Johnson was like not only as a player, but a person.

“I like to say she was a pain in the butt,” Showers said with a laugh after a 40-34 win over Scottsdale Prep in the Yvonne Johnson Memorial Shootout semifinals Thursday afternoon.

Mark Showers calls a timeout during a game at the annual Yvonne Johnson Memorial Shootout on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023, in Camp Verde. Showers is currently in his 27th year as head coach of the Camp Verde girls basketball program. He spoke about his relationship with Yvonne Johnson, who died in 1998. (Brian M. Bergner Jr./AzPreps365)

A veteran coach of 34 years, Showers sat in a back “ball room” as he called it, a 10-by 12-foot space deep within Camp Verde’s gymnasium. A wooden bench surrounds the center of the room, and paper posters taped to the grey brick walls with players’ names and numbers remind outsiders who enter, “this is Cowboy country.”

“She was one of those kids who had a tough streak in her, but through that tough streak was a huge smile, and she could give me a hard time and smile about it,” Showers added about Johnson. “I had to figure out she was giving me a hard time. We were able to develop a great relationship from that.”

Showers recalled one story during his first season, Johnson’s sophomore campaign, when he was giving her the business about how she couldn’t jump.

I believe I said something like, “You can’t even get a piece of paper underneath your feet.”

“Get out of my way,” Johson told Showers, remembering that he was standing under the basket at the time.

Johnson sprinted, leapt in the air and touched the rim. At 6-foot-2 and barely age 16, that was quite the accomplishment, Showers said.

“I knew at that point she was going to go as far as she wanted to with her athletic ability,” Showers said, adding that this week’s tournament, in its 26th season of existence, gives everyone a chance to talk about Yvonne and remember her.

“It really keeps Yvonne at the forefront of the girls basketball program. We have a picture frame and plaque for her out in the lobby of the gym. This gives us an opportunity to honor her memory every year, and honor the rest of the girls who have come through the program,” Showers said. “A young girl who wants to play basketball, has some talent and forms a relationship with her teammates is successful. Those are things that we all try to do each season, and by honoring Yvonne we look for that in our kids.”

And because of that plaque in the hallway leading up to the gymnasium doors, students are always asking about her.

“Kids are always asking, ‘Who’s Yvonne?’ … She was just a kid, a neat kid with some ability who was short-changed, unfortunately,” Showers said. “We talk about living each day to the fullest. … Every year I’ll talk about Yvonne and what it means to give everything you have every day, because you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.”

Brian M. Bergner Jr. has covered professional, collegiate and high school sports for more than 20 years. Follow him on Twitter @AzPreps365Brian. Have a story idea? Email Brian at bbergner@azpreps365.com.