Our Lady Eagles basketball team is competing for a fourth straight state championship this 2017-2018 season, and senior Gabby Standifer will take the lead with the help of new coach. 

Standifer, known for her excellent play during the State tournaments the past two years, has been the State tournament MVP two years in a row.

“Basketball has always been my favorite sport,” Standifer said. “I started playing for fun, but then when I started getting good at it and with the help of my dad it just went up from there.”

Standifer’s biggest mentor, her dad, an ex-college basketball coach, pushes her to be the high colaber player she is.

“He is the one that has always trained me and is the one that showed me the sport,” Standifer said. “He’s why I am where I am today.”

The new girls basketball coach, Chance Westmoreland, has only been at Argyle since the end of last year. Over the summer the two worked together and learned from each other. Westmoreland understands the way Gabby plays, and Gabby understands the way Westmoreland coaches.

“She is a very hard worker, and she knows the game,” Westmoreland said. “And it has been good having the ability to be able to coach a player like that. She has also been open to my ideas for the way that I invision our team being.”

Gabby has only lost six games in her Eagle career. After every loss she and her teammates have learned from the loss and pushed themselves not to make losing a “habit.”

“Yeah, we might have had a rough start,” Gabby said. “Like volleyball they had a rough start, but yet they still made it to state and I think we can do that, too. It is not where you start, it’s where you finish.”

Offered multiple scholarships due to her basketball performance, Standifer eventually signed with Fresno State.

“I went and visited Fresno St., the head coach wasn’t there, but I still got to meet the assistant coaches and they gave me a tour,” Gabby said. “And I just fell in love with it, it was very nice and I thought, ‘I really want to go here.’”

Over the past three years, Standifer has left a mark on the school and created friendships with teammates to last beyond her time at Argyle.

“We don’t just hang out in basketball, we hang out outside of school,” Gabby said. “Just going to college, and not being around each other will be different, but hopefully we will stay in touch and hang out.”

She carries on the tradition to win, but more importantly she teaches her teammates to have fun and enjoy playing the game.

“This season will be a lot of fun, and we will have to make mistakes to learn,” Standifer said.