{"id":89769,"date":"2020-03-28T00:26:18","date_gmt":"2020-03-28T06:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/griego-stays-home-fort-lewis-college-drops-interim-tag-from-womens-basketball-coach\/"},"modified":"2020-03-28T00:26:18","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T06:26:18","slug":"griego-stays-home-fort-lewis-college-drops-interim-tag-from-womens-basketball-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/griego-stays-home-fort-lewis-college-drops-interim-tag-from-womens-basketball-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"Griego stays home: Fort Lewis College drops interim tag from women\u2019s basketball coach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Orlando
Orlando Griego will be back to lead the Fort Lewis College women\u2019s basketball team for the 2020-21 season. After one year as the \u201cinterim\u201d head coach of the Skyhawks, he was named the head coach moving forward Friday by athletic director Brandon Leimbach.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Orlando Griego is no longer the interim women\u2019s basketball coach at Fort Lewis College.<\/p>\n

After a discussion with FLC athletic director Brandon Leimbach on Friday morning, Griego had the interim label removed from his title and was given a vow of confidence going forward as the head women\u2019s basketball coach of the Skyhawks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really nice to get that phone call and have a meeting with our AD and just be able to get that confirmation that he really values what I bring to the table and sees my vision,\u201d Griego said in a phone interview with The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n

Leimbach said he was \u201cthrilled\u201d to make the announcement and move forward with Griego.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe put a competitive product out on the floor last year in his first season running the show and is the ultimate team player within our department,\u201d Leimbach said in a news release<\/a>. \u201cHe has also done a great job mentoring (assistant coach) Cydney McHenry, who is another rising star in collegiate women\u2019s basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Griego, a 2003 graduate of Durango High School, took over the FLC women\u2019s team in the summer of 2019 when previous head coach Jason Flores was hired as an assistant athletic director at FLC<\/a>. Griego had served as Flores\u2019 assistant for one season after he previously was a girls basketball assistant coach for Tim Fitzpatrick, his former high school head coach, at Durango High School.<\/p>\n

The longtime Durangoan played college basketball at Cochise College in Arizona and was a conference freshman of the year, conference champion and team MVP before he got a chance to play Division I at Southern Utah University.<\/p>\n

In his interim season as FLC\u2019s head coach, the Skyhawks got out to a red-hot start before they lost the final seven games of the season to miss the Division II Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference eight-team tournament by one spot. FLC finished 15-12 overall and 11-11 in RMAC play.<\/p>\n

\"Orlando
Orlando Griego brought high energy and excitement to the Fort Lewis College women\u2019s basketball bench during the 2019-20 season, and the Durango High alum will be back to lead his hometown college next season.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cWe had a pretty good year but didn\u2019t finish it off quite how we\u2019d like to as a program,\u201d Griego said. \u201cI thought we had a lot of good learning on a young team. We learned we have to play every possession, so the small things like really boxing out for rebounds, things like that. If we can really do that and can focus and not lose ourselves in the moment and play 40 minutes every single game, we will be in a really good position moving forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know our kids are committed to wanting more, wanting better. We are excited about that moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his interim season, Griego coached like very possession would win or lose the game. He said that is simply his style.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to be engaged in the game,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m vocal and loud and just want to be able to have the girls feed off my energy like I feed off their energy. That\u2019s just how I go. I\u2019m loud at practice and loud at games. That\u2019s going to be how I approach every game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right now, Griego has no contact with his players with an NCAA suspension of all activities because of the new coronavirus and an effort to limit exposure to COVID-19. The RMAC canceled all spring sports because of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are at a standstill right now,\u201d Griego said. \u201cWhen things do come back, I will be excited to see the players.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Orlando
Orlando Griego and assistant coach Cydney McHenry, left, are both Southwest Colorado locals now leading the Skyhawks\u2019 women\u2019s basketball program. They will be back next season.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

While COVID-19 has shut down athletics, schools and many businesses, Griego and his wife, Katherine Sumrall-Griego, an FLC alumna and former Skyhawks volleyball player, have been active players in the Durango community on the \u201cStand Together Durango COVID19\u201d group on Facebook<\/a>, with people sharing information, offering to help each other and finding ways to support local business.<\/p>\n

Griego will also have McHenry, a Dolores High School and Adams State University alumna, return to the bench next season as assistant coach. With the local connections of both coaches, fans turned out in higher numbers to support the FLC women\u2019s team during the 2019-20 season. Griego hopes that will continue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s meant so much,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone has been very welcoming and open to me taking over and so supportive. I\u2019ve had a lot of people come to our games from my old high school friends, a lot of parents of people I went to high school with. It\u2019s nice to be able to bring extra people up to Whalen Gymnasium, put more people in Whalen and have that support for our girls. The community has done a wonderful job of supporting one of their own up at the college. I believe that support will continue growing as time goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n

jlivingston@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Durango alum no longer \u2018interim\u2019 coach of Skyhawks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[600,992,132,2343],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-89769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-sports-group"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89769","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=89769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89769"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=89769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}