Basketball is life for former Rams standout Brio Rode

Brio Rode gives her Sartans instructions during their March 12 quarterfinal victory over Bloomfield. (Herron photo)

ALBUQUERQUE – Although she said she’d rather play in The Pit than coach there, former Rio Rancho High School standout Brennan “Brio” Rode has enjoyed more success in The Pit as a coach.

“I absolutely hate coaching in The Pit,” she replied when asked that question. “I want to play, but this team makes it really, really fun. My nerves are easier as a player than as a coach.

“One hundred percent, it’s easier to be a player,” she explained. “For me, because you have no control on the side, you can only do so much. … As far as like game things, I don’t go into anything unprepared.”

But during her five-year hoops career with the Rams (1999-2004), the Bobby McIntyre-coached team lost all three games it played there: to Gallup in a 2000 quarterfinal; to La Cueva in a 2003 semifinal, in which Rode scored 24 points; and in a 2004 two-overtime semifinal to Mayfield.

That March 2004 loss marked the last time the Rams girls, around since the 1997-98 season, have been as deep as the semifinals.

Rode’s “new” team, the St. Pius Sartans, won three titles under the late Phil Griego, a former Rio Rancho resident, in 2006, ’08 and ’09.

Rode, in her fifth season stalking the sidelines, got the No. 2 Sartans (26-4) to last week’s Class 4A championship game, a 45-33 loss to No. 1 Kirtland Central (29-3). KC’s only losses were to 5A’s La Cueva and Farmington, plus the Broncos’ district foe, Gallup, which they beat in the other 4A semifinal. The Sartans took an impressive 20-game winning streak into that meeting with the Broncos.

“Against a team like Kirtland, you can’t make too many mistakes because they’re going to capitalize on (them) pretty well,” she said. “And they have a long bench of kids. … You almost have to have a perfect game when you’re playing kids like that.”

Rode seemed intense on the sideline in the quarterfinal win over Artesia in The Pit when her team took a 20-point lead into the locker room at halftime, seemingly not convinced a win was in hand until 57 seconds remained in the game, and she emptied the bench.

“It’s just a goal of ours; we check the boxes – we’re not done yet,” after that 20-point lead was never reduced in the second half. “This is one step closer. … We go back to the drawing board. They’re locked into what we’re trying to do.”

After succeeding Griego, who was a Cleveland High boys’ assistant coach at the time of his untimely passing, Rode led the Sartans to records of 14-14 (2019-20), 7-3 (pandemic-shortened 2020-21), 11-13 (2021-22) and 22-6 last season, which ended with a loss in the semifinals. She talked quite a bit with Griego before deciding it was a job she wanted.

Now, those Sartan girls again are a force to reckon with, just as Rode was in her days as a Ram, more than often leading the team in scoring.

And, by the way, she was a two-time Gatorade Player of the Year in the state following her sophomore and senior seasons. She was inducted into the RRHS Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.

She was among the first RRHS student-athletes to go on to play Division I basketball, which she did at Cal-Berkeley. Her coaching career included a stint as an assistant boys coach at Sandia High School for former Lobo Alvin Broussard.

Lori Mabrey, the current head coach of the Rams – a proud Kirtland alumna — was an assistant to McIntyre during the Rode years.

“Bri is a very driven person and always has been,” Mabrey said. “She gives it her all and I am very proud of her.

“She was a natural-born coach in eighth grade, when I first met her,” she added. “I am so glad she is working with young women and inspiring the next generation of female leaders.”

Their teams have met once: The Sartans beat the Rams 47-42 in a meeting in the RAC during the December 2022 Rio Rancho Invite.

Rode said she actually knew at an early age she wanted to coach.

“I always have had a coaching brain,” Rode said. “It’s kinda how I played the game. I knew in college that I wanted to coach when I was done. … It was hard for me to decide I was done playing – I coached college basketball as soon as I was done playing – a job out in San Francisco.”

Before that, though, “My mom coached me my entire life,” she said. “We used to sit down and watch basketball games; I don’t think we’ve ever sat down and watched a basketball game we didn’t like, and analyze. Our relationship, I super-appreciate, and I get to do that with my daughter now. And Coach Mac, I bounce ideas off of and talk basketball with. (I’m thankful) for those two fed me the love for the game and let me kinda grow into it. My mom (Charlotte Rode) gave me knowledge and I think Coach Mac let me use it.”

Basketball is life, for Rode and, she hopes, others.

“You’re actually teaching life,” she said. “You just get to do it through basketball.

“I still feel the game, even now, as a player,” she said, wishing she could suit up and drill a few 3-pointers, like she did regularly for the Rams.

“The game, for me, was a way to have fun.”