Q&A with Cactus Shadows Boys Basketball Coach Zach Washut

CAVE CREEK — With basketball season slowly creeping up, teams are starting to prepare for the official start of the campaign.

Many teams are holding open gyms, offering players the chance to continue getting better before tryouts take place. One of those programs is Cactus Shadows, who made it to the Final Four for the first time in program history last season. This year, under Head Coach Zach Washut, the Falcons will look to make it to unchartered territory — the state championship.

Brittany Bowyer went out to an open gym and spoke with Washut about what we can expect to see from his team this season.

How many years have you been a head coach at Cactus Shadows? How many years have you been coaching overall?
“I’ve been coaching high school hoops for 16 years. Started at Desert Mountain under Coach Fazio. Freshman Head Coach, JV Head Coach, Varsity Assistant. Was over there for six years, had a great experience there, and I’ve been here now, this is year 10 as the Head Coach here at Cactus Shadows.”

Who are your team’s top returning players this season?
“There’s a long list, I’ll be honest. It’s a very long list. Myles Godfrey, our top guy for sure, but we’re gonna have 11, maybe even 12 seniors this year on our roster, so we have a lot of returners from last year. Big man in the middle is Eshaan [Iyer]. The four is Jackson [Kragel], aka 'Socks.' We’ve got some football players that are doing their thing on the football field right now, but Terrell Fair is a varsity senior returner. He’s gonna play a lot of minutes and play a big part in what we do. Myles’ younger brother, CJ, he’s only a sophomore. He started games and had a lot of contributions for us last year. Jack Gaston is a senior, he’s gonna play a ton of minutes. Man, looking around there’s a ton of guys that we can go through. We’ve got four or five more seniors on top of what I’ve already named that are going to get some playing time, as well, but we’re excited for the group. There’s probably, like I said, 11 or 12 seniors that are going to make this team so we’re definitely senior heavy. We’ve got a couple young guys that I’ve mentioned. We’ve got a 6-foot-8 kid who’s a football player, as well, who played a little bit last year and is trying to get their feet underneath them in Kasen [Broeker]. Obviously when you’re 6-8, we’re gonna find some time for you on the floor, but yeah. There’s a lot of guys and we’re gonna be pretty deep this year so we’re excited about it. Ryan Wolk is gonna be another one. Josh is gonna be another one. Mikey [Dow] is gonna be another one. Again, we think we’re gonna be 12 to 13 deep this year.”

Who are some of your newcomers you expect to make an impact this year, maybe not right away but as the season progresses?
“Yeah so we talked about Kasen, our 6-8 guy. He played a little bit last year as a freshman. We think his athleticism has jumped. He’s playing football, being a really talented tight end. Athletically, he’s kind of grown into his body a little bit more and he’s got a little more control this year. I think he’s going to play a lot of minutes. He’s one of them. We think that the combination of the seniors that aren’t our starters are going to get a lot more minutes to help not put such a load on that first five. So again, we have the Shawns, and the Mikeys of the world that are gonna play some minutes. Ryan Wolk is gonna play some minutes. Those guys are gonna have to play some minutes to give that starting five a breather. We’ll see who’s gonna be our sixth man. We’ve got another football player named Jon [Yaskowitz] who was with us this summer, didn’t play last year because they had to sit out eligibility-wise. Then we’ve got another guy coming in from Boulder Creek, his name is Mason [Vanderveen]. He’s about six-foot-five, got some good size and he’s got some real good toughness. So we’re excited about, again, I could sit here and name 13 or 14 guys for you. It’s all about the playing time and the minutes and keeping everybody happy. Making sure that they buy in to winning is number one, and minutes will come with that, but we’re excited for a lot of different guys. I know I just keep rattling off a lot of different players, but that’s just kind of the situation we’re in this year. This is going to be the heaviest senior team I’ve ever had in 10 years. I think our biggest was nine or 10, but we’re gonna have 11 or 12 this year, so that’s rare.”

I know you mentioned Mason coming over from Boulder Creek. Did you guys get any other transfers in the offseason?
“No, Mason was the one that came in from Boulder Creek. We have, again, a guy named Jon [Yaskowitz] who transferred in last year. Came from North Valley Christian Academy. Had to sit a year for basketball, is playing football right now. He showed a lot of good signs this summer; Good scorer, good under control, quality player that we’re excited for. Can shoot it from the perimeter, so he’s gonna play some minutes. But those are the only kind of new guys. Everyone else is home grown in coming here. As you can imagine, where we’re at, Cactus Shadows we’re not exactly right off the freeway, and we’re not exactly in that loop. It takes a little while to get up here. We’re a little far north, so. The transfer market’s interesting, the high school transfer portal is real. I have my very mixed emotions on it and would rather not see that be the case. But, you know, we don’t go out looking for transfers. It’s one of those things, we like to keep the kids that we have and do what we can with them.”

It might be a little soon to tell, but I know you guys did do some stuff over the summer. What do you think your team’s best attribute will be this year on the court?
“It’s uptempo, we started that last year with all the guards that we have. We’re an uptempo team, guard-heavy team. We really only have, in my consideration, three real bigs … Definitely try to score and get up and down quite a bit. We’re gonna have to play 90 feet, a lot of press, get in your face, backdoor traps, just a different brand of kind of that uptempo basketball … The more we do that, the more minutes we can get for a lot of guys and keep guys fresh. So that’s kind of what we’re looking at. That’s kind of what we did some of last year, or a lot of last year, I should say. You’ve got certain games where you can’t do it against certain styles, against certain teams, but for the most part that’s what we’re looking to do. We’re trying to score 80 points a game and fly up and down and have success doing that.”

What are you looking forward to most with this squad this year?

“As I mentioned, we’re gonna have a ton of seniors. One thing to build on from last year, is that last year with a really junior-heavy group, we were able to get to the Final Four for the first time in program history. So that was really exciting, and we return almost everybody, so we’re excited about that and the opportunity to compete in what last year was the best region in 4A, probably the second best in the entire state regardless of class. It’s gonna be another fantastic region when we add Deer Valley. I mean, they’ve been to the State Championship every year for the past four years, or something along those lines. They have three or four transfers who are gonna be really good. It’s gonna be a great region, as always. We’re gonna be tested all the time. We’ll be in a good position come the postseason in terms of battle experience and being battle-tested, but just working with the seniors. They’ve been here, and I’m excited to see them on what we’re gonna call it, their last flight for Falcons. The last flight for them, and we’re gonna see what we can do. Hopefully, we can get to that State Championship game and see what we can do.”

You mentioned building off of last year’s success and getting to the State Championship game. What would you say your goals are? Obviously everyone’s goals are to get to the State Championship game, but do you have any other individual goals for certain players?
Myles Godfrey is at 900-something [points], he’s going to get to 1,000 probably in November, we’re hoping anyways. Not only 1,000 points, but he’s gonna be one of the all-time leaders in steals and one of the all-time leaders in assists. He’s truly an all-around type of player. Obviously you’ve seen he can score it, but from a stat perspective, he’s kind of the number one guy there. We’ve got a lot of guys that played a little bit of minutes last year, so I’m excited to see them get into that senior year and really spend some more time on the floor and contributing in different ways. Whether it’s guarding the best player, getting four or five rebounds a game, I don’t need multiple guys to score double digits. We need guys that can give us quality minutes and be leaders on the defensive end. I think one of the big things from last year that we’re looking for this year is around that leadership a little bit more. We struggled with leadership last year. It’s one of the things we continue to talk about and again, with all the seniors that we have, we think we’ve got two or three guys that can really step up. Whether that’s vocally, or just leading by example. But we’re excited for a lot of these guys … All these guys are seniors, they know what we’re expecting. They know how to play. They know what we’re looking for. It’s just gonna be a fun year. No matter what happens, it’s gonna be a fun year. Obviously we’d love to get to the State Championship game, where the program’s never been. Back-to-back Final Fours would be great, but the State Championship level is what we’re trying to get to this year.”

Is there anything else about Cactus Shadows Basketball that I didn’t ask you about that you’d like to include?
“You know, it’s interesting for us. When I started here, we were a 5A school and we had almost 1,800 kids. Ten years later, we are a low-end 4A school, with just over 1,000 kids now. I think we’re at like 1,050. So it’s been an interesting dynamic over the years to see the school from a population standpoint within the district. I know there’s a lot of public districts out there that are going through elementary school closures, middle school closures. We’ve seen that. We’ve had two close. But the core group of people, the core group of families, it’s been just a really great environment and a really great program to be a part of for 10 years. I’m excited to kind of cap it off at that decade mark. You know, I didn’t know if I’d ever say, ‘Hey, I’ve been here for a decade.’ But I live in this community, and my kids are in the district. It’s definitely a place that we like to call home and put a lot of time and effort into it, and care a lot about not only the district but these kids and making sure that they’re wonderful players but also wonderful students and wonderful community members. Multiple things that we try to do throughout the season, community events and show these guys what it means to be members of your community and active in your community. We’re excited about that, too. Yeah we’re going to play hard, we’re gonna perform on the court, but how do they give back to the community? How do they be good stewards of the community? That’s important for us, as well. So we continue to look for opportunities to give back, and teach them life lessons through basketball. Again, it doesn’t have to be on the basketball court. It could be at the local food bank. We do something with the local church every year, which is a lot of fun and the guys like it. It’s really kind of that well-rounded program that we try to be. We want to be as good as we can on the floor, and talking about grades and how important that is to get into colleges. Coaching is more than just the X’s and O’s and on the floor. It’s really running a program and building these kids up and trying to make them successful leaders. Whether that’s in the workforce or in college, or whatever their next step is going to be. So that’s a big focus for us, too, and we’re excited to do that just as much as we are about basketball. I think the last little note, you know, I want to give a shoutout to my old assistant Jeff Horst. He was with me for all nine years here and had to take a step back, he’s spending time with his family this year. So he was a great contributor for the last nine years as well and I just want to make sure he gets his recognition of what he’s done for this program and the community as well.”

Brittany Bowyer is a Report for America corps member, covering sports for Independent Newsmedia in Arizona. Report for America places talented journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and regions.