Henry Greenstein is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Marcos de Niza High School for AZPreps365.com

Briana Gholston remembers the precise moment her parents found out she was going to start for the varsity basketball team at Marcos de Niza High School. 

It was 2003, and she had spent the summer before her freshman year unsure whether she would even make varsity. Imagine her surprise when her coach penciled her into the starting lineup before the season opener. Even better, imagine her parents’ surprise when the announcer called their daughter’s name.

“It was kind of funny seeing their faces,” Gholston said, “when they hear: ‘Starting at guard, number 10, from Mesa, Arizona… Briana Gholston!’”

They’d hear her name called plenty more over the next four years, as she spent her entire Marcos career starting on varsity, en route to Central Region player of the year honors as a senior in 2007, when the team finished 21-12 and reached the state quarterfinals.

Fourteen years later, the Padres are in a somewhat different position, having gone three seasons without a league win and seven without a playoff appearance, and Gholston is one COVID-disrupted year into her tenure as head coach at her alma mater. 

Gholston says her goal is to “train the whole athlete,” to instill athletic habits in her girls, but also to bolster their social and leadership skills — and gradually reconstruct a culture like the one she experienced when she played at Marcos.

“I have already been everywhere where my players are trying to go,” Gholston said, “so I have that knowledge and what it takes and the drive to be able to instill it in them.”

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“One team, one family.” That’s the motto Gholston implemented after being hired last July, and one that senior Shayann Engelbert said helped bring the team closer than in previous years.

“We really got to see the connection through the games, and through the practices,” Engelbert said, “and especially towards the end of the year.”

The slogan reflects Gholston’s past Marcos experiences. The mid-2000s Padres were a close-knit group, with seven players from Gholston’s year who rose through the ranks together.

“It was just that camaraderie that we had as a team that made it special,” Gholston said. “We had memories as a team both on and off the court.”

The team bonded over trips to Flagstaff, where they stayed together at coach Toby Greer’s aunt’s house, saw NAU play and watched “Hoosiers.”

Sometimes, the “family-oriented” environment took on a more literal meaning. Greer, who now teaches English at Mountain Pointe High School, was a young mother in her late 20s, who always had her kids at practice. 

“I at the time thought it was really good for the young ladies,” she said, “to see that here I am teaching, coaching, having these three kids… I just said, you gotta know what you’re doing and understand that you can do anything you want.”

It all came together for Marcos in Gholston’s senior season, when she won player of the year.

“We rearranged our offense for her that year, because she was so strong, so powerful,” Greer said. “Fifteen feet and in, nobody could stop her.”

Greer took home coach of the year, too, but the team fell to Tolleson in the quarterfinals. She then left for Seattle and took a break from coaching, while Gholston began her college career at New Mexico Highlands University. 

Gholston called her first year away from home “a shell shock.” But she settled in, and in her time with the Cowgirls the team went from one win to 16. 

It’s the same kind of rebuild she now hopes to engineer at Marcos. Fitting, then, that her first coaching job came as a graduate assistant under her NMHU coach Tiffany Darling, breaking down film and making scouting reports.

Gholston then moved to Texas, but soon faced a decision: did she still want to try and play overseas, where she spent one year, or did she want to coach? Her own family got the final say.

“They were like, ‘It’s time for you to come back to Arizona,’” she said.

Gholston spent a year on staff at Casteel High School before the pandemic. One day last summer she encountered a job opening at her alma mater. It had been up since March, but she applied anyway, and sold Marcos on her vision.

“She knew that she wanted to come back and give back to the very school that helped her build her career,” athletic director Lenica Ruiz said, “and helped her become who she is as a person.”

“I’m very passionate about being the underdog,” Gholston said, “and right now Marcos’s program is the underdog.”

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Marcos has plenty of athletic talent at its disposal, Gholston said, if you care to cultivate it. But she said outsiders often don’t.

“They want that satisfaction right away,” Gholston said. “But they’re not willing to build, and really nurture the kids, and take time.”

Last season was about honing not just basketball fundamentals, but also trust. Gholston hoped to develop a similar camaraderie to her old team’s, using events like pizza nights.

“Every day we had to let them know, ‘We’re here for you,’” assistant coach Terey Robinson said.

The team went 0-18, though Gholston expressed optimism about their scoring output, especially given that they had only seven varsity players — the size of Gholston’s past senior class alone — when opposing teams had twice as many.

“I think our numbers will grow, because kids are like, ‘OK, I’ve seen them coach, I’ve seen them play hard,’” she said.

As Gholston grows her one team/one family culture, one key asset is her history of leading Marcos to the highest levels of competition.

“I tell my players all the time, I’m like, ‘This could be you in 10 years. You could be coming back to the school and coaching,’” she said.

“I never thought when I was a senior in ‘07 that I’d be coming back and coaching, and now I am here.”