There are few places Jana Baguskis would rather be than in the Moriarty High School gym.
“I feel at home here,” Baguskis said after a practice last week.
Baguskis is in her second year as the Moriarty varsity girls basketball head coach. She’s been spending time at the school since she was a child. When Baguskis was in second grade, her father was coaching the Moriarty girls team—and she got hooked.
“I was a gym rat from that age, and we’d come to practices and games with my dad,” Baguskis said.
She remembers when the players tossed souvenirs to the fans.
“They had little green balls that they’d throw to the kids,” she said. “I still have one to this day.”
When she attended Moriarty High School, Baguskis played basketball all four years, three of them with her father as coach. Her senior year, the Lady Pintos earned a trip to the state tournament.
“We were ranked No. 3 in the state, and we lost in the quarterfinals to [Albuquerque] Academy, and I was heartbroken,” Baguskis said.
After graduation, she took a short break from basketball. But the lure of the game called her back. When a coaching position opened at Moriarty Middle School, she started the next chapter in her life.
“At that point, I was like, okay, this is what I’m supposed to do,” she said.
Baguskis coached at Moriarty Middle School for a few years. She also coached Moriarty High School’s C-team and Edgewood Middle School, and she was an assistant to her father with Moriarty’s varsity squad.
After her father retired in 2019, Baguskis took a couple of years off to be a mom. When the varsity girls head coach position at her alma mater became available in 2022, she applied for it.
“I just felt it was time to shoot my shot,” she said, adding, “I told them, ‘If I’m not the right person, give someone else the chance and tell them I wanna work for them because I wanna be a part of Moriarty basketball.’”
Baguskis described her first season at the helm as “unexpected.” Moriarty finished with a 16-12 record and made the state playoffs as the No. 12 seed.
This year has been more of a challenge. Moriarty kicked off the season with a double-overtime win at Bernalillo.
“That was a great start,” Baguskis said.
But the Pintos have won only three other games since. They will likely not make the state playoffs.
So Baguskis encourages her players to keep working and keep battling. Above all, she wants them to know how much she cares.
“I tell them, ‘I’m gonna love you through it. You turn the ball over, I’m gonna love you. You miss every shot, I’m still gonna love you.’” Baguskis said. “At the end of the day, it is just a game.”
And she can honestly tell her players she’s walked a mile in their basketball shoes.
“I grew up here since I was eight years old. I walked these halls, I played in this gym,” Baguskis said. “I truly feel it’s home.”