Rio Rancho facility aims to improve girls’ hoops skills

If the Girls Youth Basketball of New Mexico program isn’t one of the City of Vision’s best-kept secrets, it should be in the running.

In its defense, after sending out a “media day” press release, Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull and Lobo Louie showed up to see what’s going on at GYBNM.

“We’ve been around for about two years,” says founder Randy Macias. “First of all, girls basketball is not really huge in our area. We’re trying to change that. … And then the pandemic hit, so we had to scale back.

“In June 2020, we got this facility. We started out in a 23 (foot) by 23 (foot) space; this one is actually at 1,100 square feet, so we make every inch count,” he said.

“We teach all the skills — ball-handling, shooting, passing — individual skills, to give girls confidence trying out for their teams, trying out for their club teams and growing the sport in its entirety.”

There were 52 girls in the club programs (compete in teams around the city and Albuquerque), with the two high school teams occasionally traveling to tournaments in Colorado or Arizona.

Macias said the teams are Rio Rancho Vision Elite (for high schoolers) and Rio Rancho Vision Blue (seventh- and eighth-graders), plus a Vision Orange (sixth-graders and younger).

Thus far, he said, the organization has received a “very good reception from the community. We have a lot of parents that are helping us out — we can’t do without them.”

The skill labs, held Sundays, Mondays and Fridays (beginners at 6 p.m.; advanced sessions from 7-8 p.m. and 8-9 p.m.) have nearly two-dozen girls honing their hoops skills. They go on year-round; club ball runs through the end of August, a couple months before high school tryouts begin.

Macias, a graduate of Cobre High School, said he’s been coaching youth sports “for about nine years, and then I got USA Basketball-certified.”

Macias provided some data on the press release: “… by the age of 17, 51 percent of girls quit sports, and 70 percent of those girls do so because they don’t feel like they belong.”

Macias wants to put a stop to basketball dropouts here.

“They want to gain more confidence,” he said, as far as the common denominator of what is most lacking among young female cagers.

“For these young ladies, it just means they don’t know how to do certain movements, so we teach them those movements and they go from there,” he said, which aids their confidence.

GYBNM is at 1533 Stephanie Road, Ste. 304. Visit them at gybnm.org or call 505-264-9033 for more information.