CENTER RIDGE — The transformation Kyle Payne has witnessed in his three seasons as girls basketball coach at Nemo Vista has been nothing short of spectacular.
In 2012-13, his first season, the Lady Red Hawks played with seven girls, including three freshmen brought up to the varsity “just so we could have a basketball team,” he said.
Nemo Vista finished 8-19, and the Lady Red Hawks thought that was a success.
“We were building from the ground up,” Payne said. “We had three girls who came to play from study hall. One had not played ever, and two hadn’t played since fifth grade. We struggled, but we thought 8-19 was a good season.”
As it turned out, the foundation for higher success was laid that year.
In 2013-14, the Lady Red Hawks finished 33-6, winning the Class 1A state title with a 37-32 decision over their Conway County rival Wonderview, which had won the state championship in 2012.
This season, they continued that improvement, going 35-4 and repeating as Class 1A state champs.
To cap that special season, Payne has been named River Valley & Ozark Edition Basketball Coach of the Year.
“It’s just a hard-working, dedicated group of girls,” he said, referring to the secret of their success. “We had everybody returning. We were still young, but a lot more seasoned and experienced. That really helped down the stretch in another one-possession game with Wonderview.”
The Lady Red Hawks’ rivalry with the Lady Daredevils has developed into one of the state’s best. This season, Nemo Vista won the five-game series, 3-2 — winning the tiebreaker by two points for the state championship.
“We split during the regular season,” Payne said. “We beat them five here; they beat us five there. They held the district tournament and beat us 19 in the final, and the following Saturday, we were in the finals of the regional and beat them 17. Then we met up in the state championship and won, 32-30.”
Wonderview reached the state semifinals in 2013, and the championship game the past two seasons.
In this year’s state tournament at Nashville, Nemo sailed over Caddo Hills in the first round, 59-25; beat Scranton in the quarterfinals, 56-47; and escaped Kirby in the semifinals, 37-36, before the state final at Hot Springs.
“It’s tough every time we play,” Payne said of the Wonderview series. “You might as well throw anything that’s been happening out the window. They know everything we do so well. They know how to stop and contain us, and it’s the same with us about them. It pretty much comes down to who’s hot that night. It could be 15 to 20 points, or it could be a nail-biter to the final minute.”
The Lady Red Hawks’ only other losses in the season came against Class 7A Cabot and Class 5A Vilonia. Cabot ended its season in the opening round of the Class 7A state tournament; Vilonia reached the quarterfinals of the Class 5A state tournament.
The future remains bright for Nemo Vista as just one senior — 5-10 center Kassidy Thompson — graduates.
“She anchored our defense,” Payne said of his lone senior, who averaged 4.8 points and three rebounds per game. “She’s the type of player everybody looks up to. She’s one of the first ones in the gym and the last to leave. She always, for the most part, did what I asked of her, and she was a big-time threat. She had the ability to shoot the 3, so in some games, she carried us by hitting some big shots outside.”
Thompson was a sophomore during Payne’s first season at the helm.
“She was the only one on the team, other than a couple of ninth-graders, who had played much,” Payne said.
Thompson said defending the state title was a trickier feat than winning the first one.
“Coach Payne always told us that every team out there is looking at us with a target on our backs,” she said. “All they want to do is knock us off. [The coach] knows this game really well, and in any situation, he takes control. He keeps us in check.
“We’re a team, but he’s made it more of a family unit.”
That first season, when those three freshmen moved up to varsity, their peers went 26-0 in the junior high season. Last year, the Lady Red Hawk freshmen went 19-0.
“It’s just a great group of young athletes we’ve got,” Payne said. “There’s still some potential in the junior high, but there’s definitely going to be a drop-off from the last couple of years, but we hope the recognition they’ve gotten will carry over to the younger ones.”
Nemo Vista will return five players with starting experience next year: senior-to-be guards Jacie Andrews, who averaged 8.2 ppg, 2.1 rpg this year, and Chase Paladino (5.4 ppg, 2.4 rpg); rising junior guard Adrianna Munoz (4.7 ppg, 2.7 rpg); junior-to-be post/forward Sade Harrison (11.3 ppg, 6.6 rpg) and rising junior Maggie Mahan (13.8 ppg, 4.8 rpg).
Harrison and Mahan were honored among the top five players in Class 1A during the recent inaugural Arkansas Basketball Coaches Association awards banquet in Benton.
Payne, just 28, was named ABCA’s Class 1A Girls Coach of the Year.
He grew up in Morrilton and graduated from Sacred Heart High School. Hired at Nemo Vista to coach baseball and seventh-grade boys and girls basketball in the fall of 2009, he arrived just after graduating from Arkansas Tech. He spent five years with baseball and now has added athletic director, softball, and boys and girls track duties to his girls basketball slot.
His hobbies are anything outdoors — hunting, fish and golf, especially.
After back-to-back state championships, though, the indoor hobby of basketball may be at the top of his list.