High school girls basketball: Rowland Hall a program on the rise

SALT LAKE CITY — It's no longer an anomaly to see freshmen in the starting lineup of a high school basketball game.

But it's definitely a rare moment when that freshman has only played basketball for a few weeks.

Noelani Blueford thought it might be fun to learn a new sport her freshman year, so she tried out for Rowland Hall-St. Mark's basketball team. What she didn't know is that she was just one of five girls who showed up for the 2A school's tryouts that season.

"I'd never tried playing it before, and it was kind of a shock going out and playing varsity basketball," said Blueford, now a senior for the Winged Lions. "It was really crazy."

What's almost as impressive as Blueford's ability to take a leadership role with no basketball experience four years ago is the way the Winged Lions' program has both grown and improved during her career. The team jumped out to a 6-0 start this season and looks to be more competitive than it has been in five or six years.

When head coach Bill Tatomer took over the program five years ago, he had a senior-loaded team and an all-state player in Blake Harries. The next year, he returned Harries, but started with just four other players.

"I'd known … because we graduated eight seniors that it was going to be a little difficult," he said. "I didn't think it would be that bad. Five girls show up the first day of practice. … I needed to increase numbers first and foremost."

He begged, pleaded and even convinced his own daughter to come out for the team. He managed to find three more players and then lost one to an injury. The Winged Lions played most of the season with seven players.

"We called them the 'Magnificent Seven,' " Tatomer said, smiling. "My goal was just to make it a positive experience so the incoming eighth-graders would see it's a fun thing, a productive experience."

Tatomer teaches math at Rowland Hall's junior high so he can be heard extolling the virtues of playing hoops. The result is that he has five times as many players as he started with, and that, he said, is turning the program around.

"It breeds competition," Tatomer said of having greater numbers. "That's the problem with my 'Magnificent Seven' year — we couldn't run against a press, we couldn't really run offense to defense, and it poses a whole different set of problems.

"Now we can practice the skill sets we need to do in order to be competitive."