Friendly rivalry
Cubero basketball, jump rope battle revive tradition

Cubero Elementary school reading coach Liz Elkins tries to keep Domonique Lowden from gaining control of the ball Friday as the faculty challenged the sixth grade students to a basketball game. The faculty won 22-16. [photo by Jeff Jones / Independent]

By Helen Davis
Cibola County Bureau

CUBERO — How do you get 45 people into one basketball game and a jump-rope demonstration on two week’s notice? Ask the staff and pupils at Cubero Elementary School how they got the gumption and the gold.

Cubero sixth-grade pupils took on the elementary school’s staff last Friday in what staff and pupils hope will be the revival of the old Cubero Elementary School annual staff versus student basketball play-off. Fourth- through sixth-grade rope-jumpers opened the afternoon by showing their stuff before the big game.

Game facilitator Charlotte Hemingway said from the beginning, the jump rope and basketball day evolved almost of its own volition. She explained that physical education teacher Linda Platero asked the recess jumpers if they want to be a team, than second-grade teacher Gabriel Gallegos suggested that the school could play a game like they used to. Pairing the two activities was a natural and the event was born, Hemingway said.

As soon as pupils and teachers heard of the game, friendly trash talk started and the challenge was on.

“You’re going down, Grandma” vied with “We’re gonna school you” for the biggest challenge to the staff, except when it got personal with such taunts as, “I’ll see you on the court.” Everyone was jazzed and two weeks or so after the idea came up, the school had a trophy game, the facilitator said.

Hemingway could not throw any light on just how 30 sixth-graders and 15 staffers, including teachers and aides, managed to get everyone on the floor at least twice and keep the competition orderly but hot. “It just happened,” she said.

Hemingway explained that a dozen and a half sixth-graders seemingly instantaneously organized themselves into groups of five while she was addressing the staff.

When she turned around, they were ready to get on the floor and serve some serious trouble.

The staff was ready, as well, when principal Alton Autrey explained the complex system of rotation that would keep offense and defense going and allow all players several minutes on the floor.

The game went off without a hitch, with Autrey and fourth-grade teacher Kelli Montoya acting as referees and fifth-grader Jason Riley serving as personal water boy for fifth-grader teacher, Ronald Calvert.

But Grandma did not go down. Staff handed Amanda Gonzales’s and Guy Archambeau’s sixth-graders their court shoes on a platter with a 22 -16 win.

Sixth-grade hoopster Tiffany Shroulte said, “We did not play enough defense.” She said she’d play again and added, “I think we’d win a second time.”

A third-grade fan said the pupils lost because they are short. She told the staff they won because some of them are tall. Staff had the surprise asset of teacher Jon Driskell, who is over 6 feet tall and taught the shorter team a thing or two about fakes on the court.

The surprise outcome did not seem to bother anyone.
Hemingway said, “The sixth-graders were smiling, the audience was smiling, the teachers were smiling.” She added that when the 20-inch trophy was unveiled before the game, everyone cheered. The trophy was designed by Fred Rodarte of The Sport Shop in Grants and is engraved with the title of “annual basketball game,” and could be an omen of games to come.