Spending your summer days indoors may not sound like a lot of fun to some people, but for Carson High junior basketball player Eliza Matley it was pure heaven.
Matley spent time working with coach Todd Ackerman at open gyms and playing in a couple of tournaments with the Carson AAU team. If she wasn't at CHS, then she was helping out her middle school coaches at youth basketball clinics and she also found time to attend camps at both Stanford and the University of Nevada.
"It was wall-to-wall basketball," said Matley, whose Senators travel to Galena in the regular-season finale for both teams tonight. "The whole summer was practice, practice, practice. I had a blast.
"Basketball is my favorite sport. I like being in the tight space (of a basketball court). I love this game."
And, she is bypassing playing soccer in the spring to play travel ball for either NBA (a youth travel team) or Jam On It, the two competitive programs based in Reno. It's the first time she's played on a travel team outside Carson, and the reason is simple - exposure.
"I want to play college basketball; play Division II somewhere," Matley said. "Playing in Reno, I may have a chance to play in a college showcase.
"I've been in contact with Chico State. I send film to their coaches so they can see how I'm doing."
The hard work that Matley put in during the summer has paid dividends. The junior guard-forward, who averaged 3.1 as a sophomore, has stepped up her game quite a bit this season. She is averaging 7.3 points, 3.4 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.5 steals a contest for the 15-10 Senators. She is the team's second-leading scorer behind Whitney Nash and leads the team in steals.
One might scoff at those numbers, but Ackerman carries 14 players on his roster and he usually plays 10 or 11 players in every game, more if it's a blowout win or loss. In that scenario minutes are sometimes are tough to come by.
"I'm not surprised," Ackerman said. "She worked really hard over the summer. She's played well for us this season. I'd hoped it would have come a little sooner."
"She has really stepped up this year," teammate Jazmyn Stokes said. "I've known her since she was in seventh grade, and she's always shooting the ball."
After a so-so start, Matley has reached double figures in four of the last five games. She had 13 against Bishop Manogue, 12 against Spanish Springs, and 10 against Wooster and Douglas. Her best game was a 15-point effort in the first Manogue game, a 48-42 loss, last month.
She has the uncanny ability to carry a team over a short period of time by scoring in bunches. Against Spanish Springs, she had eight in less than two minutes, she had all 10 of her points against Wooster in one quarter and seven of her 13 in a second-quarter spurt against Manogue in a losing effort.
"She shoots it well," Ackerman said. "She does a good job using the glass. We have some drills in practice where we use the glass. We shoot a lot of those.
"I would say 98 percent of her shots are good shots. She doesn't take many bad shots. At times, I wish she would be a little more aggressive. I'm not opposed to her shooting it (more). She may miss three or four in a row, but she'll come back and hit three or four straight."
There aren't a lot of aggressive offensive players on this year's Carson team. Matley can catch and shoot, and she also has the ability to create her own shot by using ball fakes and dribbling.
What's funny is that Matley was anything but aggressive last season as a sophomore.
"I played timid last year," she admitted. "I was intimidated by the older girls. I was scared to step up and be one of the leaders.
"Earlier in the year, I was worried when I didn't start and wondering why. Now, I just go out and play my game. I don't care what anybody thinks."
She is one of the leaders on this year's team, though not in a vocal way. Her leadership is more by example than anything else, according to Ackerman.
"She's quiet when she's around people that she doesn't know," Stokes said. "When she's around us, she's crazed like the rest of us. She's fun to be around."
