Sunrise Mountain finds first football coach

Aaron Thompson / Special to the Home News

Sunrise Mountain High School football coach Jason Basso poses in front of the soon-to-be new football stadium.

By Brett Okamoto (contact)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 | 7:57 p.m.

Aaron Thompson / Special to the Home News

Sunrise Mountain High School football coach Jason Basso poses in front of the soon-to-be new football stadium.

Right about the time Jason Basso had given up looking for a football head coaching job in Las Vegas for next season, a job found him.

After spending last season with first-year Desert Oasis as an assistant to head coach Matt Jenkins, Basso started putting his name out to open positions. Minus a phone call here and there, Basso didn't garner the interest he had hoped for and told Jenkins he'd be back with the Diamondbacks. Then in late February, after he had put the idea away, an opportunity turned up out of nowhere.

"It was actually a funny thing," Basso said. "Jenkins sent me to a head coaches meeting he couldn't make and the first thing [Palo Verde] coach [Darwin] Rost says is, if anybody has an assistant coach that wants to become a head coach you need to notify Sunrise Mountain because they are looking. I e-mailed them the next day, went in for an interview and had a job offer by the weekend.

"I believe in fate and being in the right place at the right time. I had been looking around and nothing had happened, so I pretty much decided to put it off until next season. Obviously, I had no intention that late of taking off for somewhere else, but then this opportunity came up."

Which is how Basso, who was also an assistant coach for two years at Liberty, became the first official head football coach of the Sunrise Mountain Miners, a school opening its doors for the first time next year near the corner of Hollywood and Carey avenues in northeast Las Vegas. It will be the 12th school to open in Las Vegas since 2000 and should be the last for some time.

Sunrise Mountain Athletic Director Anne Harper said that after one meeting with Basso, giving him a shot at the first head coaching job of his career was an easy decision.

"As a new school we were looking for a new coach with a vision that would put everything into it," Harper said. "He came in and he was very organized and assured us that it's not just about athletics. He believes academics are just as important."

If the Miners were looking for a candidate excited about coaching and who puts academics first, it's no wonder they found a match in Basso. Despite living just one mile away from Desert Oasis and having a son that attends school there, Basso said the opportunity to run a program was enough to get him to make the long drive Northeast to Sunrise Mountain. He's also been an advanced English teacher at every school where he's coached.

Sunrise Mountain is expecting an enrollment of approximately 1,800, drawing students from Eldorado, Desert Pines, Rancho and Mojave. It will also draw incoming freshmen from four different middle schools. Earlier this month, the Clark County School Board nearly passed a set of options that would have allowed students within the new school's zoning area to continue attending their current school if they so chose, but ultimately decided to force students to transfer in order to fill the brand new facilities.

Basso will get his first look at perspective students later this month when the school holds a community night for transferring students and their parents. Incoming freshmen will have a similar opportunity on April 20.

"It's going to be a brand new experience and we have to sell our school and sell our program," Basso said. "When you're a new program it's all about building a community in your school and a family atmosphere on the field. This experience is going to be different from last year's, but I'm excited to meet the kids, meet the parents and get a staff together."

One thing Basso says he will take from his Desert Oasis experience is a mindset they instilled on their players last season: New program or not, he wants to win football games.

That may prove to be his greatest challenge of all, as few schools have been able to open with immediate success and aren't even eligible for the playoffs during their first year. Since senior athletes are immune to transferring to first-year schools, Sunrise Mountain will have to rely on a core of younger players at first. Although the Northeast region shouldn't be too harsh top-to-bottom as some of the others in the valley, Sunrise will have to meet annual powerhouse Las Vegas every season.

"I want to win more than I lose, bottom line is wins and losses," Basso said. "We're not going to make excuses, our first scrimmage of the season we were supposed to be against JV teams and I e-mailed the coaches and told them we're playing a varsity schedule so there's no reason for us not to be playing varsity teams. I feel like we're in a league where we can compete from the very get go."

Even if the challenges he faced at Desert Oasis couldn't have prepared him for the ones he'll face this year, maybe the most comforting thing about Basso to his perspective athletes is that he has been through this process before and didn't hesitate for a second when asked to do it again.

"The only advice I gave was I asked him if he was crazy," said Jenkins. "It's an overworked position. You can give someone advice but it's different for everybody. One thing I can say about Jason though is that he's extremely organized, he believes in the weight room and he's got moral standards he expects his kids to meet. That will take you a long way. He's got his roots and now he just has to take them with him and hold on to them."

Brett Okamoto can be reached at 948-7817 or brett.okamoto@lasvegassun.com.