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lose twice in the regular season to their girls. Womack took that negative energy and talked back on the scoreboard, which as it turned out spoke much louder than the Sentinels fans’ nasty insults. They lost their biblical cool perhaps because they saw something they had never seen before — a shockingly improved Maricopa team that held Seton Catholic to 33% shooting. Seton’s tying attempt from beyond the arc at the buzzer missed, handing the state title to the Rams, 52-49. The Arizona Interscholastic Association Division II title is still the only state title by any Rams team in school history. Building chemistry Haley, Womack and many of their teammates played together in Maricopa since they were in elementary school. By contrast, first-year Coach Kati Burrows had just met the girls at the beginning of the 2014-15 season, which created some friction. Junior Danae Ruiz, who had been a basketball standout since middle school in Maricopa, called her first encounter with Burrows a bit on the “rough” side. “Her expectations were very high,” Ruiz recalled of playing for Burrows shortly after she came on board. “Everything had to be perfect. It was her way or the baseline — that was the phrase we started using.” Haley said she felt she was “slapped with a new coach” at the beginning of her senior year with the team after being coached by the same person, Jenn Miller, from middle school on. Little did she know, at the other end of the growing pains would be a state title. Burrows’ ability to convey a drive to win helped the Rams to a 29-5 record that season, along with the state championship. It also earned Burrows Division II Coach of the Year honors from the Arizona Basketball Coaches Association and the title of All-USA Arizona American Family Insurance High School Girls Basketball Big Schools Coach of the Year. That coach knew how to win Burrows, today known as Kati Mobley and married to a fellow teacher and coach at Bozeman High School in her Montana hometown, was a legend as a player on that school’s hardwood floors. She continued her career at Montana State University as a high- scoring Bobcat. She now teaches health to 10th graders when she’s not on the court as the school’s head girls coach.
Backboard backstory Basketball girls recall only MHS state title a decade later BY JEFF CHEW
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IT consultant for a hospital system. She said she travels the U.S. for her job, with hopes of working internationally. The day they made history On championship gameday, Maricopa fans filled three rooter buses that tailed the team bus and the cheer-and-band bus up to Gila River Arena (now the Desert Diamond Arena) in Glendale. It was a big deal in Maricopa. The championship game was so intensely close that Seton Catholic’s fans forgot their peace-and-love teachings at times, raising hell and hurling profane insults at the unflinching, unstoppable Maricopa team. Womack, who led the Rams in scoring with 17 points, said she stepped onto the court with a bad case of the butterflies. “I can remember that our opponents’ team, their crowd was very rude, very mean,” Womack said of Sentinels fans who had seen MHS
Her brother, Jeff Haley Jr., today plays varsity basketball for the Rams, keeping hoops all in the family. Haley lives in Homestead and works as an insurance broker. She played with Womack at South Mountain Community College after graduating from MHS. Her basketball career abruptly ended at South Mountain one season in after a serious concussion while attempting a score a layup under the basket. Womack received Second Team All-ACCAC honors at SMCC in 2016 before sustaining a knee injury. She transferred on a full athletic ride to the University of Maine, where she was a standout for the Machias women’s team until her injuries caught up with her. “I wish I had taken physical therapy a little more seriously,” Womack said, looking back to her bone-chilling days in Orono, Maine, a far cry from Maricopa’s mild and warm winters. Today, Womack lives in Gilbert and is an
EN YEARS LATER, THE MEMORIES are just as vivid, thrilling and chilling as that winter day: Feb. 2, 2015.
Raegene Womack and team captain Ashliegh Haley, the top two scorers on Maricopa High School’s historic one-and-only state title, remember well that championship basketball game. “It was so bittersweet knowing that that would be the last time we would play together as a team, but then again it was the best day of my life being able to play a game like this and walk away with a championship,” recalled Haley, who still lives in Maricopa with her 5-year-old son and fiancé, Terrell Brown, a former All- Arizona wide receiver for Basha High School who played for the Northern Arizona University Lumberjacks. Haley’s younger sister, Allyssa, was a 2015 championship teammate.
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InMaricopa.com | April 2025
April 2025 | InMaricopa.com
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