The day before their game against Santa Rita, Coaches James Simmons and Emily Belvado talked about their peripatetic basketball schedules.

As their players practiced on the tile floor of the Copper Rim Elementary School gymnasium cafeteria, they were careful not to run into any of the folded-up tables slightly impinging on the sides of the court. Coach Belvado remembers that it was the day after the Memorial Day weekend — the day that Globe was going to hold a basketball camp — when she heard about the flood that the Principal Robert Armenta had discovered in the gym.

It was not a leak: It was a flood that had stood on the gym’s hardwood floor for a good part of the weekend.

There had been a pipe failure the previous Fourth of July weekend, which providentially, she and Armenta had caught early.

But when she heard it had happened again, she recalls, “I thought ‘Oh, no!’ In the back of my mind I knew the amount of water that had come down and just stayed there. It’s not good when water just sits on a hardwood floor like that.”

They cleaned up the water as best they could, but, as in the case of Safford which suffered such a flood from a rainstorm, the floor and the concrete under the floor were permanently waterlogged and a whole season would have to be played without the use of Globe’s home gym.

This entailed setting out schedules month-by-month in advance for practices and for games. “Home games” are being played at San Carlos or even further afield, and practices are being held at three local gyms in Globe.

Simmons said that having double the amount of travel time, has tired their players. And the Seniors are sad not to be able to play on their home court for their senior year. But as Belvado put it to her players, “Whatever happens, happens. All I know is that we’re going to have a place to practice and we’re going to have a place to play games.”

At worst they would have to play at High Desert, which would shut out many of their fans since that gym has only one small side of bleachers.

Luckily, the Tigers were able to get the use of San Carlos’s gyms for games and for their annual Copper State Tournament. They were also lucky in the sheer quality of their basketball programs at the time of the catastrophe. In eight games, Globe girls have lost only once and that to Valley Christian — a 3A team.

Coach Belvado has 11 players on her varsity team and thinks she can replace anyone on the court with another player who “can pick up right where somebody left off.

“We have an inside game and an outside game. [The players] are quick. They love to pressure the ball. They love the transition game. They get it and go,” she said.

When discussing the upcoming game with low-ranked Santa Rita, which Globe won, she indicated that the Lady Tigers would use it as a training session, making eight passes before shooting as they would have to do when pressed by the defense of a top team like San Carlos.

Simmons, the boys’ coach, said that it doesn’t matter who Globe is playing on a given night.

“We take every opponent seriously, but we do what we do,” he said. “We run our style offensively and defensively, and it doesn’t matter to us who the opponent is.”

He sees his main challenge as “keeping everybody healthy” with a lot of sickness going around, and with the players having to travel so far to play “home” games. He was as expansive as Belvado was about his team.

“This is my fifth year as coach; I’m really proud of our kids and they are being positive as well as embracing playing on the road,” Simmons said. “They have the same mentality as I do. They don’t care who we play, where we play, or when we play. Just tell us and we’ll be there.”

On the Dec. 21 and 22, the boys will play at San Manuel and San Miguel respectively. They will play in the Chandler Prep New Year’s Classic before coming back “home” to San Carlos to play in the Copper Cities Tournament.

After that, on Jan. 8, they will play number two ranked San Carlos.

The Globe High School basketball programs have been practicing at High Desert Middle School and playing all of their games on the road. 

Photo by Susanne Jerome.