Life Coach in Flowing Well, AZ

Here are the candidates for the WaFd Bank Arizona High School Girls Basketball Player of the Week for Jan. 2-8 as nominated by coaches, fans and readers.

Read through the nominees and cast your vote. Voting will conclude Sunday at 11:59 p.m.

If you would like to make a nomination in a future week, email brittanyabowyer@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter at @bbowyer07. You also can tag us on Twitter or Instagram at @sbliveaz.

Editor’s Note: Our Athlete of the Week feature and corresponding poll is intended to be fun, and we do not set limits on how many times a fan can vote during the competition. However, we do not allow votes that are generated by script, macro or other automated means. Athletes that receive votes generated by script, macro or other automated means will be disqualified.

Adriana Bachman, Senior, Poston Butte - Leading Thursday’s game against Greenway in scoring, Bachman had 17 points on the night along with four rebounds, five assists, eight steals and a block to help Poston Butte cruise to a 61-23 victory over Greenway.

Sierra Bomhower, Senior, Cibola - Helping Cibola to a 71-21 victory over Brawley (CA) on Friday, Bomhower had 31 points, three rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block.

America Cazares, Freshman, Pueblo - In Thursday’s 67-24 conference victory over Canyon del Oro, Cazares led things in scoring while notching a double-double with 20 points and 12 steals, as well as four rebounds, two assists and two blocks.

Ashlee Gonzalez, Sophomore, Youngker - Leading Youngker to a 48-41 conference victory over Washington on Wednesday, Gonzalez nearly had a triple-double. She finished with 20 points, 11 rebounds, two assists and nine steals.

Emma Dasovich, Junior, Valley Vista - In Valley Vista’s 68-33 victory over West Point on Friday, Dasovich had 20 points, five rebounds, two assists, two steals and a block.

Navae Guidry, Sophomore, Mesquite - Guidry led things in scoring on Friday in the 58-45 conference victory over Saguaro, posting 17 points, 15 rebounds, an assist and a steal.

Avery Graber, Senior, Paradise Valley - Dropping a double-double for the Trojans on Thursday in their 54-27 victory over Apollo, Graber had 13 points and 18 rebounds, in addition to two assists, a steal and two blocks.

Nicolette Kelly, Freshman, Desert Mountain - Coming in clutch for the Wolves on Tuesday in their 52-40 victory over North Canyon, Kelly had her first career double-double with 21 points and 14 rebounds, along with two assists, and five steals for the best game she’s had so far.

Ava Lewis, Freshman, Casteel - In the best performance of her career thus far, Lewis had 20 points, 17 rebounds, two assists and two steals to help Casteel pick up a 43-34 victory over Chaparral on Saturday.

Bria Medina, Senior, Salpointe Catholic - Stepping up for Salpointe Catholic in their big rivalry game against Flowing Wells, Medina had 26 points, five rebounds, two assists and five steals to help the Lancers secure a 55-40 conference road win on Thursday.

Khamil Pierre, Senior, Perry - In Perry’s game against Gilbert on Thursday, Pierre helped Perry notch a 58-30 victory with 27 points, seven rebounds, four steals and four blocks.

Jerzy Robinson, Freshman, Desert Vista - Robinson’s undoubtedly one of the top freshmen in the class of 2026, and she showed out once again on Tuesday in Desert Vista’s 92-13 blowout over Maricopa. She finished the night with a huge double-double, notching 27 points, 17 rebounds, an assist, three steals and two blocks.

Mya Way, Senior, Mesquite - In Mesquite’s big 65-29 victory over Poston Butte on Tuesday, Way led the game in scoring with 23 points as well as three rebounds, three assists, five steals and one block.

Isabella Webb, Sophomore, Mica Mountain - Setting a new career-high in rebounding on Tuesday, Webb had 17 points, 16 rebounds, six assists and four steals to help Mica Mountain defeat Rio Rico 51-37.

Amanda Wiley, Sophomore, Yuma Catholic - Leading things on the floor for the Shamrocks in Tuesday’s 42-29 victory over Odyssey Institute, Wiley had 19 points, nine rebounds, four steals and two blocks. She followed it up on Thursday in the 49-27 victory over Parker with a double-double, posting 17 points, 11 rebounds, two assists and a steal.

The holiday period in Arizona girls’ high school basketball was, as usual, a hectic affair. Whether it was the Nike Tournament of Champions, the SoCal Holiday Prep Classic or a smaller local tournament, nearly every team in the state was busy in and around Christmas.

With those tournaments in the books and region play underway, The Republic breaks down the top performers from the holiday season. Players are nominated by coaches and listed in alphabetical order.

Eva Amenhauser, Estrella Foothills, G, So.

Amenhauser averaged a double-double with 13 points and 13 rebounds per game during the Christmas period. Her interior presence has helped lead the Wolves to a 16-4 record.

Sidney Anderson, Ironwood Ridge, G, So.

Anderson was the MVP of the Bullhead City Holiday Shootout, averaging 25 points and six steals as she helped Ironwood Ridge to a 3-0 week.

Grace Beckler, Basha, G/F, Fr.

Beckler recorded two double-doubles at the TOC, providing a bright spot for a Basha team that has struggled in the early going. She’s averaging 13.1 points and 10.1 rebounds through 15 games played.

Amya Bekele, Mesa, G, Jr.

After a few tough losses, Mesa got its season back on track Thursday night with a win over Hamilton. Bekele scored 12 points in the contest while also contributing with six rebounds, an assist, two steals and a block.

Ayjianna Bonapart, Sahuaro, G, S.

Sahuaro impressed over the holidays, winning the Estrella Foothills Tournament and going 3-1 at the SoCal Holiday Prep Classic. Bonapart averaged 19.0 points per game across the two events and was named to the all-tournament team at the So Cal Holiday Prep Classic.

Meisha Caserio, Gilbert, G, Jr.

Caserio starred in the Epic Tourneys New Years’ Classic, scoring 20 in a first-round win over Arizona College Prep and, even more impressively, dropping 21 in an eventual championship game defeat to Valley Vista.

Victoria Cazares, Pueblo, G, Sr.

Pueblo has been one of the surprises of the season, going 16-2 to earn a No. 2 ranking in 4A from the AIA. Cazares has been the biggest ingredient in that success. In a 3-1 week against strong competition at the Flowing Wells Holiday shootout, she averaged 24.3 points

Cassandra Coolidge, Sahuaro, G, Jr.

Coolidge had games of 20, 16 and 19 points at the SoCal Holiday Prep Classic. She and senior Nashelle Ponds have been critical in helping Bonapart lead Sahuaro to its 18-1 record.

Kayden Cosgrove, Horizon Honors, G, Sr.

Cosgrove scored her 1,000th career point in Horizon Honors’ win over Benjamin Franklin on Tuesday, becoming just the fourth player in school history to reach that mark.

Ayanna DeJesus, Flowing Wells, G, Sr.

De Jesus impressed at the Flowing Wells Holiday Shootout, which the Caballeros hosted and won. She averaged 14.7 points and 9.5 rebounds per game in the event.

Tati Harness, Leading Edge Academy-Gilbert, G, Fr.

It’s one thing to dominate against Leading Edge’s competition in 2A, as Harness has all year. It’s quite another to do so against 5A schools, as she did at the Epic Tourneys New Years’ Classic, scoring 32 against Buckeye and 20 in a win over Ironwood.

Taliyah Henderson, Salpointe Catholic, F, So.

Henderson dominated on both sides of the ball during Salpointe’s 2-2 week at the TOC. She averaged 17.5 points and 8.8 rebounds per game.

Shay Ijwoye, Desert Vista, G, Jr.

Ijwoye once again staked her claim as the top player in the state, even against elite competition in the TOC’s toughest bracket. She averaged 13 points and four steals per game to earn a spot on the all-tournament team.

Navine Mallon, Flowing Wells, G/F, Sr.

Like Cosgrove, Mallon crossed the 1,000-point threshold this week, doing so during the Flowing Wells Holiday shootout. She averaging 16.3 points per game during the event.

Mallory Matthews, San Tan Foothills, F/C, Sr.

Matthews has scored in double figures in every game since November. She leads the Sabercats in every stat except assists.

Aspen McClees, Gilbert, G/F, Fr.

McClees has played beyond her years all season, but never more so than in Gilbert’s 60-48 win over Chinle at the Epic Tourneys New Years’ Classic, when she scored 24 points on 10-of-13 shooting.

Khamil Pierre, Perry, G/F, Jr.

Pierre led Perry to an undefeated week at the TOC. Not only were the Pumas the only Arizona team to win their bracket of the event, but they were the only Arizona team to even reach the semifinals.

Madison Pond, Estrella Foothills, G, Jr.

Pond averaged 18 points and eight rebounds per game over the holidays and was named to the all-tournament team at both the Lady Wolves Classic and the Prescott Lady Badgers Holiday Classic.

Kailer Reid, Tuba City, G, Sr.

Playing up against 5A and 6A competition at the Pepsi Holiday Tournament, Reid averaged 13.5 points per contest, including an 11-point outing as 3A Tuba City pushed Hamilton — a 6A championship contender — to the brink.

Jerzy Robinson, Desert Vista, G, Fr.

Robinson provided the highlight of the TOC, knocking down a mid-range jumper as time expired to beat St. Mary’s (Calif.). She averaged 18.3 points per game and was named to the team of the tournament.

Fanta Sackor, Paradise Valley, G, Sr.

Sackor continued her impressive season at the Lady Badger Tournament, where she put up 28 and 25 points in Paradise Valley’s first and second-round wins.

The hardest times to stop, take a step back and reassess are often those when a pause and reset are most needed, a paradox that is especially true for hard-pressed state and local officials. When you’re in the rhythm of day-to-day work, conceiving new approaches to services and delivery seems like a luxury — but is it?

Meghan Smart, senior scientist from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), knows exactly how to creatively stretch capacity. Smart worked her way up in the agency, starting as a sampler and collecting chemistry data on streams and lakes, so she understands how painstaking the work can be. And her current role, protecting water quality, is a broad assignment that extends beyond the capacity of state officials by themselves.

What she needed were more eyes, ears and samplers to ensure that everyone has access to safe water, so Smart began a program that uses volunteers to collect water quality samples, information and photos from streams and lakes throughout the state. The ADEQ AZ Water Watch program not only demonstrates how to protect precious waterways, but also offers a road map for how to get more people invested in the cause while fulfilling the wide range of public services designed to protect health and welfare.

Smart and her colleagues started by identifying gaps the department needed to fill: more data, more people in the field, and a more efficient, mobile and visual way to capture this information. The opportunity for ADEQ is that the volunteers represent a wide range of backgrounds, availability and skills — from college students to retirees to residents simply enjoying the state’s recreational opportunities — who could help preserve its waterways in just a few minutes using a free smartphone app.

Smart directly connects the volunteers with the data gaps she needs to address and the issues she needs to monitor, from E. coli to arsenic to trash. For some individuals she provides technical equipment, but the most common technology is a smartphone app. Since photos and data entered into mobile devices incorporate a spatial identifier, the department requires volunteers to upload their findings into the cloud-based tool called Survey123. With the app, volunteers upload photos and answer simple yes/no questions about a nearby body of water.

The diversity of volunteers and different levels of familiarity with technology can be challenging. Even though some people prefer paper-based documentation, ADEQ requires the use of the Survey123 tool. As Smart said, “Use of paper kills a community science program. I am one person, and they’re sending me thousands of data points. I need a way to both categorize the information as well as pass the pictures on to the right officials.” It was crucial that she paired the creative thinking that led to Water Watch with a tech component; after all, a key feature of this solution is the fact that a “single state official can handle the data” when processed in this way.

Sometimes, government agencies do not engage the public because of the quality of data necessary for an enforcement action. Obviously, an official needs verifiable evidence to act. The Arizona program is multilevel, meaning that Smart and her team evaluate the integrity and quality of the data, using it as a flag to further action. She conducts field and data audits and determines if the quality assurance procedures are in place. In other words, a state official can improve accuracy with more data, while simultaneously using quality control to determine when more and higher quality information is necessary for action.

In some areas a simple photo will do, like if there is trash polluting a stream or disrupting water flow. If the community “can notify us when these streams are flowing or not flowing, that really helps us understand the flow regime to target water quality samples in the future,” Smart said. These types of observations from citizen scientists aid the state in management, not just enforcement. Volunteers’ sampling work has even helped remove bodies of water from the Environmental Protection Agency’s impaired waters list.

As Smart looks to the future, she plans to post aggregated data more frequently and visually, creating story maps that will inform Arizonans and motivate further action as well as helping bring together state, local and nonprofit stakeholders. ADEQ points the way for many agencies charged with monitoring health and safety, from building to restaurant inspectors: Determine the missing data; think about how to expand data collection; invite the community to play a larger role.

Stephen Goldsmith is the Derek Bok Professor of the Practice of Urban Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and director of Data-Smart City Solutions at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. He previously served as Deputy Mayor of New York and Mayor of Indianapolis, where he earned a reputation as one of the country's leaders in public-private partnerships, competition and privatization. Stephen was also the chief domestic policy advisor to the George W. Bush campaign in 2000, the Chair of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and the district attorney for Marion County, Indiana from 1979 to 1990. He has written The Power of Social Innovation; Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector; Putting Faith in Neighborhoods: Making Cities Work through Grassroots Citizenship; The Twenty-First Century City: Resurrecting Urban America; The Responsive City: Engaging Communities through Data-Smart Governance; and A New City O/S.

As 2023 arrives, investors are looking for multifamily markets that will provide continued good returns and values, and most important, stability. In my line of work, I have the opportunity to meet with apartment investors from across the country regularly. And as we look to a new year, Phoenix is expected to be one of the best performing markets in the country.

Phoenix will be one of the few markets to continue experiencing strong rental rates and low vacancy rates in 2023. At some of the larger conferences I have recently attended, Phoenix is still the darling of multifamily. We’ve met a lot of investors from the East and West coasts who are talking to us about the Phoenix market again after not having invested here in a while, or in some cases, ever.

They say they realize Phoenix just might be one of a few markets with predictable growth in multifamily. Big companies locating in Phoenix are creating tremendous job growth. We’ve also changed the basis for our jobs. Phoenix is not so tech heavy, which means the tech layoffs aren’t hurting us as much. We have more manufacturing and service-related jobs than ever before, which also helps.

The Phoenix population will continue to grow, feeding continued demand for rental housing. The WM Phoenix Open golf tournament, Super Bowl, Barrett Jackson collector car auction, and Cactus League Spring Training will draw the envious attention of a national audience.

Our bright sunny skies, green grass, and abundant T-shirts and flip flops will stand in stark contrast to freezing cold winter temperatures and expensive fuel costs elsewhere. I expect people will think twice about where they want to live, how to stretch their pay, and if they want to stay where they are. Many will choose to move to Arizona.

The drop in single-family home sales will bolster rental property values. The single-family home market is hurting. Builders of single-family homes are likely to slow down developments due to decreased demand, caused by higher mortgage interest rates, which will push more people to rent. More investments will flow towards the U.S. and Arizona from international investors experiencing the hurt from rising fuel and energy costs in Europe and feeling the pressure to meet investment returns.

The massive crypto-currency failure will send shock waves through the investment community. People will be more careful about what they get involved in and investors will be more cautious with any opportunity. They will ask more questions, dig into things, and not take anything for granted. This should bode well for apartment investments in Phoenix, which have strong fundamentals as outlined above.

So, what sort of deal volume do we expect? As we head into Q2 and Q3, I expect interest rates to eventually go down and, in turn, Phoenix multifamily to generate more investment activity and offer positive returns to investors.

John Kobierowski is president & CEO of ABI Multifamily, co-founder of Neighborhood Ventures real estate crowdfunding company, and owner of The Grid.Works co-working space in Phoenix.

CommonSpirit Health is working to minimize its capital expenditures in a bid to reach positive cash flow amid challenges tied to inflation, labor and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Executives with the nonprofit hospital chain said during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco Monday that they are hoping to limit spending on existing projects. The Catholic hospital chain posted a $1.85 billion net loss across its full 2022 fiscal year that ended in September.

“COVID has obviously taken a toll on all of us. Not just COVID but also the inflation, labor shortages, difficulty discharging patients … has obviously taken a bite out of all of providers around the country,” said Daniel Morissette, CommonSpirit’s chief financial officer, during the session. “Certainly, CommonSpirit is no exception to that.”

Morissette said CommonSpirit is condensing and minimizing its use of capital at the moment, with the exception being projects that have already been approved.

“We are committed to have no so-called half-built walls,” he said. “If we’ve got projects that ran over three, four or five years and we are two years into it, we are continuing with those projects.”

However, CommonSpirit is instead focusing on growth in its most important markets, including those in Colorado and Arizona.

“We’re spending a significant amount of time on portfolio review, and evaluating the markets we serve, where we need to be deeper and broader in markets,” said CEO Wright Lassiter at the conference.

Part of the effort to return to positive cash flow is by bending down the labor inflation that has been plaguing the system and other systems across the country.

Morissette said the system has seen a 35% reduction in labor inflation, but it is still not enough.

“At least the curve is bending back down, but it is an uphill battle,” he said.

The system continues to work on improving efficiencies and synergy to reduce costs, a key priority since the completion of the 2019 Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health merger that created CommonSpirit.

Morissette said that back in 2019, the goal was to take out about $2 billion in costs thanks to the merger, and “we’re at about $1.3 billion.”

For 2023, the system has a goal to take out $500 million out of its non-labor cost base.

“We have to get that quite honestly because if you look at the spread between reimbursement and expenses we need that just to get us to some reasonable, stable number,” he added.

CommonSpirit reported in September that its volumes increased compared to the prior fiscal year, but high rates of contract labor usage and other cost hikes led to expenses surpassing any revenue growth.