Dan MohrmannWhen talking about his star senior, Vista Ridge boys basketball coach Joe Hites can’t help the way he describes him.
“I refer to him as a throwback player,” Hites says of Hunter Maldonado. “We live in a pretty me-first society and he doesn’t pay attention to that.”
And it pays off.
Maldonado plays in the brutally competitive Pikes Peak Athletic Conference, but has always been successful. He earned second team all-league honors as a freshman and a year ago quietly stood above Lewis-Palmer’s Jonathan Scott and Sand Creek’s D’Shawn Schwartz as the PPAC player of the year.
After the Wolves made a run to the Class 4A Final 4, he started getting looks from college programs. In June, he announced that he’d be heading north to play for Wyoming. Another top-end talent was somehow able to escape the Colorado border.
“A week or two after (the state tournament) ended, a couple of colleges started talking me,” Maldonado said. “I loved the coaching staff (at Wyoming). I love the campus and I love the environment in Laramie.”
But first thing’s first.
Maldonado and the Wolves aren’t off to the kind of start that they were hoping for. They beat Denver South in triple-overtime to open the season, but have since dropped three straight. But that will not deter the future Cowboy.
It was right around this time a year ago that Vista Ridge got pummeled by Pueblo South. Like this year, Hites said that the team just needed to find its footing.
This year might prove to be a little more of a challenge as the Wolves have made the jump to 5A. But they’ll still play in the PPAC, making it a 5A/4A league for the next two years.
Things won’t necessarily be more difficult for Maldonado and if anything, it just gives him more motivation to succeed and prove that he belongs.
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“Throughout every season, you have to learn these lessons of giving it your all every single day,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing right now. We’re going through a little patch of losses, but I’d rather do it now than later.”
He is the kind of player that a team needs to make sure that patch of losses doesn’t come later. He can rally the team together.
It’s not his talent on the court that does it, it’s his attitude. It’s why Hites likes to classify him as a throwback.
Maldonado’s most important trait as a basketball player is understand that the team will always accomplish more than he can individually. That’s what makes him stand out as a leader.
“He gets obligation,” Hites said. “He gets that you can’t do anything alone. He’s exceptionally humble and exceptionally appreciative.”
And when he’s on the court and in the zone, he tends to be exceptional overall.
Wyoming coach Allen Edwards has to be salivating to get Maldonado to Laramie. But there are things the young man still needs to do here in Colorado.
“I just want to be the best teammate I can be,” he said. “I just want to lead my team and do what needs to be done. We have some goals we want to get accomplished this season. I just want to get those done.”
For the next three months, it’s going to be a fun ride to watch him do just that.