Lori Mabrey's return to basketball is both welcome and complex

If you have seen — or more specifically, heard — Lori Mabrey coach a high school basketball game, then you are familiar with the sound of her voice.

It is piercing, penetrating, distinctive. Inside a gymnasium, it carries and projects in a way that’s different from any coach, man or woman.

She hadn’t planned on using it much Wednesday night.

As she made a quiet return to the Rio Rancho girls program, the team she leads, she really just wanted to be close to her girls, be a front-row cheerleader as they played a road game at La Cueva. The plan was to sit on the end of the bench, and mostly observe.

“I need to get going again,” Mabrey said, fighting back tears, as she spoke about why she chose Wednesday night to get back into the gym during an interview about an hour before tipoff. “The highlight of my day was seeing these kids.”

She didn’t quite achieve complete tranquility in this nondistrict game, and that was probably a good thing for all concerned.

“It was exciting to see her out,” junior post Kaci McHugh said. “I’m glad she could come.”

From time to time, Mabrey held a small dry board and scribbled. She consulted with several of her players. She barked a few things to the team. She wasn’t running things; assistant Eric Jack, as he has been doing since the season began, handled the head coaching duties in what proved to be a 66-57 La Cueva victory.

But Mabrey was back with her team, back on the bench, and this represented a brief respite from what has been the most traumatic period of her life.

Her husband, Buster, who was the executive director of the New Mexico High School Coaches Association, died on Dec. 30. He had been at an Albuquerque hospital for about seven weeks before he passed away.

Lori was by his side throughout. She put coaching, and teaching, far on the back burner.

She had returned to work earlier in the week. Wednesday was the first time she and her team had been together on a game night this season.

“It feels awkward right now,” Mabrey said in a follow-up chat Thursday. “That’s the best way I can describe it.”

From this chair? It’s good for all of us, and maybe for Lori, too, that she’s easing her way back into basketball.

“I spent a lot of time with these girls in the summer … and I know them best,” Mabrey said. “It just felt most natural to be around them, and I thought tonight’s a good night for me to come and support them to the best of my ability.”

Mabrey said she does not at this point plan to come back and coach the Rams. She said she would do much of what she did Wednesday, and be near, but leave Jack to coach the team through March, not wanting her situation to be a distraction.

“That’s pretty much what the plan is right now,” she said. “I’m gonna try not to be a distraction to my team, just help out where I can and feel useful. … I’m extremely proud of them. I’m proud of their resilience. I just want to do what I can to help them down the stretch.”

Jack, she said, has “done an incredible job” running the team in her absence.

The team? They’ve proudly got Mabrey’s back, as they have throughout these last couple of months.

“They’ve been incredibly supportive,” Mabrey said. She was crying again. “Cards, texts, homemade blankets, whatever they can do to help me. I showed up on Monday and (junior guard) Milly Martinez came running at me and gave me a big bear hug.”

Although the Rams fell on Wednesday, they are largely having an excellent season. They are 10-5, and ranked No. 4 in Class 5A.

“We had to play for her, play harder every game,” freshman guard Madi Martinez said. “When we couldn’t see her there, we knew she was battling her own thing, so we knew we had to battle for her.”

And believe it, the battle churns. Mabrey is fighting, and she is hurting. The anguish is visible. it’s been only 2½ weeks since Buster has died. And she is carrying much burden on her slight shoulders. No words from anyone can truly soothe her pain.

But on this night, she was back coaching, sort of, and that’s what coaches do. They coach. Sometimes through pangs of grief, through unbearable pain, through an unthinkable event.

She was on the bench, which is home, and for 90 minutes, you could on a few occasions hear that unique voice.

It’s what her husband of 15 years would have wished for her, she said.

“He would definitely want me to carry on,” Lori said. “He was extremely proud of my coaching. “(And) he wouldn’t want me to wallow in my grief. He would want me out there with my kids.”

Said senior Rilie McQuerry: “It was just a great feeling to know that she’s back, and that she’s here with us again. It was amazing having her back.”

But Buster’s absence was felt, to be sure. He would provide donuts to the girls after wins.

And while that was missing, there was basketball. This, for Lori Mabrey, was a modest start, and a tiny step on this road of emotional recovery and healing.

“Everything just feels like a blur to me right now,” she said. “I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the other and get through.”