{"id":1679,"date":"2010-03-25T05:07:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T05:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/state-bball-for-poly-it-might-be-the-shoes\/"},"modified":"2010-03-25T05:07:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T05:07:00","slug":"state-bball-for-poly-it-might-be-the-shoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/state-bball-for-poly-it-might-be-the-shoes","title":{"rendered":"STATE BBALL: For Poly, It Might Be The Shoes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
<\/em>Photo of Sheila Boykin’s Nikes by Shar Higa<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Must be the shoes.  <\/span>Well\u2026no, that’s not true\u2014but it’s a pretty impressive set of shoes nonetheless.  <\/span>Eagle-eyed basketball fans at the Galen Center on Saturday might have noticed a new look for the four-time defending state champion Poly girls’ basketball team.  <\/span>The matching black-and-gold Nikes the team was wearing, believe it or not, were actually designed by the team themselves, and then produced by Nike especially for the Jackrabbits.<\/p>\n

“We were in Arizona [at the Nike Tournament of Champions],” says Poly coach Carl Buggs.  <\/span>“And a Nike representative came up to me and said, ‘Man, you guys have accomplished too much not to be a part of this program we’re doing.'”  <\/span>After Poly returned, they were met on campus by a Nike rep who worked with the team’s underclassmen and seniors, designing two separate shoes based on the company’s new Kobe design.  <\/span>Then the coaches judged between the two designs, and (wisely) chose the seniors’ shoe to have Nike produce.<\/p>\n

“But when the underclassmen saw ours they were like, ‘Oh, your guys’ are better anyway,'” says Thaddesia Southall, who also said Brittany Wilson was the senior who did the most creative work on the design, which feature black and gold colors, each player’s number stitched into the side, Kobe’s signature embossed on the heel, and a small custom Poly message on the inside of the tongue.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, what’s really great about this program and Nike including Poly in it, is that this isn’t a big-money team that brought the shoemaker to campus to spoil their players.  <\/span>This is a case where Nike looked at Poly’s body of work, and decided they were worthy of getting royal treatment, based entirely on their on-the-court play.  <\/span>That’s pretty special.<\/p>\n

“It’s just a great thing for the kids,” says Buggs, “it’s fun for them.  <\/span>And we’re 1-0 in them too\u2026”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Poly girls’ basketball team heads north to Bakersfield to try to make history, they’ll be bringing some pretty cool good-luck tokens from Nike along with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":16885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}