‘Small package’ leaves big impact

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NIXON — It’s said the best gifts come in small packages. For Nixon-Smiley, that came in the form of Celeste Arriaga, who ends her high school basketball career with a total of 1667 points, a remarkable feat from a point guard of her stature. Despite her height, it’s her dedication to the game that will hopefully leave an impact on the Lady Mustangs’ program.

“I wanted to be a leader for this athletic program,” Arriaga said. “I want people to look up to me and think ‘oh she can do it, I can do it too.’”

The senior Lady Mustang got her inspiration from another “small” guard she played behind in the past.

“My freshman year I used to look up to Alena [Alvarez] and I always used to tell myself ‘I want to be just like her,’” Arriaga said. “I did everything I could to be just like her.”

Head coach Scott Jones hopes that the inspiration Arriaga got from Alvarez will transfer over to his underclassmen who would get their inspiration from the graduating player.

Jones took over the girls’ basketball program in Arriaga’s sophomore year and it didn’t take long for him to realize how special of a ball player she was.

“When it kind of clicked for me with Celeste, it was her sophomore year and we were in the Victoria tournament,” Jones recalled. “She had just tweaked her ankle or something like that in the third quarter and she came out for just a few minutes, got it looked at, she was OK, she got it wrapped up…she went back in and proceeded to score, if I remember right, 14 or 15 points in the fourth quarter, which led us to the win. When that happened I went ‘OK we got to have something here, she’s a pretty tough girl, she could play.’”

Although the Lady Mustangs would miss the playoffs that year, Jones knew that he had a building block he can rely on the next two seasons.

Nixon-Smiley isn’t known for producing tall basketball players, that much is true, but there are ways around winning games without height.

Arriaga used her outside shooting as well as her willingness to get to the paint and draw fouls to get points. But she wasn’t always this confident in her shot.

“I remember my freshman year, I didn’t really shoot that much because I was nervous,” Arriaga said. “Coach [Jeff] Van Auken had always told me to just shoot it, and I finally got used to it and got confident in my shot.”

The confidence didn’t come in just one game. Rather, it took a whole season of playing behind good guards until her number was called up.

“When Meghan [Guerra] and Alena got hurt my freshman year, I had to start as a point guard and I was nervous, I didn’t want to take the role yet,” she admitted. “But he built up my confidence and made me the way I am now.”

That freshman year, Nixon-Smiley made it the playoffs as the fourth seed out of their district upset Blanco, a district champion, in the first round. The Lady Mustangs made it to regional quarterfinals before losing to Hallettsville, an eventual state semifinalist.

But if you ask the senior, that playoff run wasn’t her favorite moment.

“The greatest moment for me was when we beat Poth,” Arriaga said. “It was big for us because that’s the game we wanted really bad. Lexi [Trammell] and I talked about how we always wanted that game so bad and that we wanted to beat Poth and when we finally did it felt good, it was a relief that we finally did something that we wanted.”

Nixon-Smiley hosted Poth on Jan. 22, 2016. Poth, in second place at the time, previous beat the Lady Mustangs 69-60. A win was needed to stay in pace for a playoff spot. Down 10 in the fourth quarter, the Lady Mustangs were able to come back and win 57-52.

“It was a great accomplishment,” Arriaga said.

Fast forward to today and although the season ended with a tight first-round exit, Arriaga hopes that her play this year along with fellow senior Trammell will be enough to leave a legacy for the underclassmen.

“[Arriaga] was up here every Saturday, sometimes we’d have to run her out of the gym,” Jones said.

The coach hopes that the underclassmen who saw her success will connect the fact that it was her dedication and work ethic that led her to this point and hopefully it’ll translate to success for future Nixon-Smiley players.

“Her leadership, her drive to want to win and her work ethic is what I’ll miss from her,” Jones said. “Hopefully the kids in the future will pick up from there and keep going.”

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