Alexander Olivas is an ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism student covering Cesar Chavez High School for AzPreps365.com

Always pushing through and getting the program back on track, the 2023-2024 Cesar Chavez boys’ basketball team turned things around with its best season after two rough seasons due to barriers and obstacles caused by Covid.

Cesar Chavez, has had quite a good history when it came to its basketball program. Years prior to Covid, the team would have successful seasons with a couple of playoff appearances and one time almost making it to the state championship in the 2016-2017 season. 

However, once Covid came around, the program experienced a lot of obstacles that did affect the team in a couple of ways. Some of the obstacles included losing a lot of players due to transferring, coaching changes, and players from the younger level having to be brought up early to varsity.

The team’s current head coach Marcus Wright was part of the program at the time but as a coach for the freshman and junior varsity levels. Wright, however, experienced the entire journey and says that it was a tough experience especially when he took over as head coach after the previous head coach at the time left. 

“We lost a lot of guys, we lost guys to different schools for a variety of reasons when I first took over, when I took over we only had two guys with varsity experience, so all the other kids that stayed with us were with us in JV,” said Wright. “Guys struggled through the summers, rightfully so we played a lot of tough games, we got beat a lot, but those games actually helped them get battle tested and prepared for the actual season and rose to the level of a varsity player.”

The 2021-2022 season was quite challenging for the program, missing the playoffs and marked the last season for the program’s head coach at the time before accepting another coaching job and Wright taking over the reigns. In the 2022-2023 season, the program had a great turn around including making the playoffs, but that was only a preview for what was to come next the following season. 

Once the 2023-2024 roster came together, the team picked up fire very quickly and had the best season in terms of win and loss ratio since the 2018-2019 season before Covid began. Some of the huge accomplishments from the 2023-2024 team included a 21-game win streak which was the longest in the state during the regular season finishing 24-2 and marked the least amount of games lost in a season since the 2012-2013 season.

Royal Haley, a senior on the team, was part of the program during the transitions and explained how the team has come together to be successful and how coach Wright helped him and the program to grow. 

“This team is different because we all had a winning mindset and I feel like coach Wright put that in us two years ago, we’ve also bonded more than the team two years ago and we didn’t have chemistry compared to now,” Haley said. “Coming from Covid, I kind of lost all of my confidence and I really wasn’t the player I was before, coach Wright took over the program and he changed a lot of things, he helped our confidence get back up.” 

Another player included, Gabriel Briones, a junior on the team, started out his time at Cesar Chavez on the junior varsity level before being brought up to varsity during the transitions. He explained the impact and change set from coach Wright and how he feels the programs’ future will be after the 2023-2024 season.

“I feel like coach Wright stepped his game and was working with us and did his job, I was on JV last two years ago and so him becoming my coach on varsity was a good change,” said Briones. “I feel like it’s going to be good, we got a couple of good incoming players coming and coach Wright is a great coach, he’s going to do his thing.” 

During the 21-game win streak, the team won by an average margin of 20.28 points per game while also only going one loss at home and away court. This season the Champions also clinched its second straight playoff berth and even finished in the top 16 seeding in both the Open Division and 6A Conference brackets and have high hopes to make a run for the state championship.  

Without a doubt, the 2023-2024 roster made a huge turn around for Cesar Chavez and will surely be remembered for its accomplishments as a team. After fighting through tough obstacles for two years and turning things around, the future for the program indeed looks to be very bright in the time to come.