Colby Henderson:
Grizz relished beating
Mountain View
and showed what might have
been
By Bruce Smith
Matchup
Colby Henderson felt Rocky Mountain’s 2011-12 boys
basketball season ended too early.
The Grizzlies turned around a disappointing year with
three straight victories late in the season, and the players’ hopes were at
their peak when they then finished off the regular season with a 56-50 upset
victory over Mountain View.“We definitely stepped it up,” Henderson said. “We were told that if we won the last Mountain View game, we would go to district for sure.”
Henderson said the Grizzlies played their best game of the season that night. He certainly felt he did. The victory and postgame feeling were his best memories of the year. Afterward, every player congratulated each other for beating one of the best teams in the league, and doing it to first-year coach Dane Roy’s former school.
“We just played amazing,” Henderson said. “It was my favorite game. They were our biggest rival because of coach Roy. Eagle was probably our chief rival in other sports but, in basketball, it was Mountain View.”
Henderson was Rocky’s 5-foot-11 senior guard. He averaged 3.2 points per game and 1.9 rebounds during the season. He missed four games because of a sprained ankle but was a big factor in Rocky’s late-season successes. The Grizzlies finished 8-12 overall. Unfortunately, they were just one of two SIC teams that didn’t qualify for the 5A District 3 tournament.
Meridian’s win over Vallivue that night forced a three-way tie for seventh place, and the Grizzlies were forced out in the tiebreaker. It was a disappointing end, but the Mountain View victory made the team realize how far it came during the season.
“It was the opposite of how it should have been,” he said. “The night we beat Mountain View was one of the best nights of my life, but it didn’t work out.”
Henderson was a two-year varsity player. He started and came off the bench at times during his senior season. His high game was an eight-point effort at Centennial. He also scored seven points in a home game against Timberline and in the Mountain View finale.
He had just three blocked shots during the season, but saved his best for last.
“(Brandon) Luedtke had a turnaround (jumper) and I swatted him out of bounds,” he said. “That didn’t happen to him very often … not as often as it should.”
Henderson felt his role on the team was to come on to the court and provide energy. He was athletic, and Roy noted that Rocky needed a spark because it often struggled early in games.
“Some games we just started terribly,” Henderson recalled. “Then we would go into half and be ‘pissed’ and just dominated the second half. Coach Roy didn’t have to say much. He would talk, but we knew what we would have to do. We would make it happen and give us a chance to win.”
Henderson was one of the guys Roy looked to in order to create the best player combination. He had always been competitive, playing football, hockey, T-ball and basketball growing up. During his freshmen year, he played quarterback and running back in football, but suffered a broken leg and a torn MCL. He said that set his athletic progress back more than a year and he decided to just focus on basketball.
He played for coach Todd Morrison, but appreciated the changes Roy brought to the program his senior year. Besides the games, he said another highlight of the year came at the team’s postseason banquet when Roy stood in front of the crowd of players and parents and gave his thoughts of the season.
“He dug deep for each player and told what he remembered … little things that we wouldn’t remember that stuck with him,” Henderson said. “It was a good time, and it was good to go off like that.”
After graduation, Henderson said he hoped to continue playing basketball. He received an offer to try out at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Ore. If that didn’t work out, he said he probably would attend Boise State.
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