{"id":23366,"date":"2025-02-26T12:56:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T19:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/finding-closure-mancos-senior-randi-lewis-finishing-what-she-started\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:34:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:34:20","slug":"finding-closure-mancos-senior-randi-lewis-finishing-what-she-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/finding-closure-mancos-senior-randi-lewis-finishing-what-she-started\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding closure: Mancos senior Randi Lewis finishing what she started"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mancos
Mancos senior Randi Lewis led the Bluejays through a learning season under first-year head coach Julie Oliver. Lewis\u2019 high-energy brand of basketball helped spark a surge from the Jays while helping the younger Bluejays build confidence throughout the year. Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

MANCOS \u2013 Bluejays senior basketball player Randi Lewis could easily have stepped away.<\/p>\n

After a historic Bluejays basketball season in 2023-24, one in which Lewis stepped into Blue Arena in Loveland to represent the program\u2019s high-water mark \u2013 a fifth-place finish in the 2A state tournament \u2013 she could have happily cosigned on the pinnacle of Mancos girls basketball and turned the page.<\/p>\n

With the University of Wyoming in her future and thinking of saving money with her after-school job, Lewis could have readily told herself that she just didn\u2019t have time to play ball for one more season.<\/p>\n

But she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Knowing that the season would be full of new challenges with a brand-new core of Jays, Lewis suited up for her final campaign, surrounded by a roster where only she and junior Destiny Kramer had seen varsity minutes.<\/p>\n

After the final horn sounded on Mancos\u2019 Senior Night victory over Dolores, the Bluejays bench mobbed Lewis, honoring her testament to resilience \u2013 and for having chosen to stick with them to the end.<\/p>\n

\"Mancos
Mancos senior Randi Lewis led the Bluejays through a learning season under first-year head coach Julie Oliver. Lewis\u2019 high-energy brand of basketball helped spark a surge from the Jays while helping the younger Bluejays build confidence throughout the year. Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cI wanted to play for the girls that I\u2019ve been playing with since middle school,\u201d said Lewis.<\/p>\n

No, there wouldn\u2019t be a postseason run for the Jays this year \u2013 they would settle for fourth place in the San Juan Basin League \u2013 but after the dust settled from the Senior Night fanfare, the feisty guard etched her own legacy in Mancos athletics lore.<\/p>\n

Lewis proved herself as one of the most aggressive defenders in the league \u2013 a distinction that head coach Julie Oliver knew would be a double-edged sword.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were times where we\u2019d have to reel her in a bit,\u201d said Oliver, \u201cbut she has the personality of a leader, especially for a team that was so young \u2013 we couldn\u2019t have asked for anything more from her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis\u2019 numbers reflected her energy \u2013 high steal and assist totals \u2013 while teammates like Kramer, junior Caylee Moore and freshman Tinsley Aspromonte showed what the next wave of Mancos girls basketball will look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen one of my teammates scores, I\u2019ll be the loudest in the gym to let them know I\u2019m proud of them,\u201d said Lewis.<\/p>\n

A tough start to the schedule put the Jays through plenty of adversity, which could have easily trampled their confidence, but Lewis and her teammates persevered through the challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur coaches helped us take what we could learn from that rough start, so once we started to play within our league, it began to really make sense,\u201d said Lewis.<\/p>\n

\"Mancos
Mancos senior Randi Lewis led the Bluejays through a learning season under first-year head coach Julie Oliver. Lewis\u2019 high-energy brand of basketball helped spark a surge from the Jays while helping the younger Bluejays build confidence throughout the year. Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mancos collected seven wins and with each passing week, looked to be building confidence about their new identity under Oliver.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes one person to make the whole team step it up \u2013 and in the games that we won, our hustle was what helped us,\u201d added Lewis.<\/p>\n

The adjustment to a new head coach in her final year added a learning curve as well, especially as the Jays shifted from a high-pressing team to a more methodical half-court offense.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went into the first few practices of the season where she (Coach Oliver) was looking to learn who we were,\u201d said Lewis of her head coach, \u201cand with each passing game, she brought more knowledge and we were able to take it in and apply it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis led by example \u2013 she would be the first to swipe for a steal or dive on a loose ball \u2013 something that fed her team\u2019s energy, even when things weren\u2019t looking good on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n

The senior guard buried a couple of three-pointers early in the contest against Dolores on her Senior Night that ignited a big win for the Jays, ending her season and career with its own movie script finale.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud of us for where we finished,\u201d said Lewis, who looks to pursue degrees in English and pre-law during her undergrad studies in Laramie, \u201cand it helped that I felt like I was best friends with my teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a process that made all the years of camps, off-season workouts, scrapes and bruises all worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have teammates that you care about, you show up for them even when you may not want to show up for yourself,\u201d said Lewis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bluejays lean on Lewis\u2019 leadership in transitional year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,39,28,37,36],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dolores-high-school","tag-dove-creek-high-school","tag-headlines","tag-mancos-high-school","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78085,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23366\/revisions\/78085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23366"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}