Who are we?

It's a question Lanse Carter asks.

A lot.

"We've got to find ourselves," Carter says.

This isn't Introspection 101.

It's deeper.

There's no time for a couch. But where's the damn clipboard.

"I have them for five days before our first game next year," Carter says. "This is our preseason."

That first game's in November.

It's June.

Dude!

Chill!

Carter can't.

What the Elkettes accomplish — or don't accomplish — in the next six days, which starts with three days of practice and ends with three days of competition at Metro Team Camp in Albuquerque, will impact what Pojoaque Valley High School achieves come November.

And December.

And January.

And February.

And, most important, March.

Ah, March, the month New Mexico crowns state basketball champions.

The Elkettes' interest in state is vested.

They hold the past two titles in Class AAA.

They own the girls state-record for most wins in a season at 31.

They've won 35 games in a row.

See. June matters.

A lot.

Especially, after three starters and the first substitute off the bench donned caps and gowns at graduation.

Carter has a soft spot for Nicole Gonzales.

"She was our fireman. She could play any position on the floor," he says of his nonpareil sub. "She naturally knew where to fill in to make it work. She's the only kid that went from
C-team, to junior varsity, to varsity, and I have to give Joe Estrada a lot of credit for keeping her in the program.

"She's a great, tough, hard-working kid. When Janelle (Roybal) took her in-season hiatus, Nicole stepped in and we didn't miss a beat."

Carter stops the walk down memory lane. Even though he has yet to celebrate 31-0, he's looking ahead.

"We're rotating our starting lineups, we're finding different combinations," he says of the pair of tournaments the Elkettes participated.

Right now, that rotation includes 10. It isn't just about the sweat.

"We're sitting and talking about what we're working on, what's going well, what we can do better," Carter says. "I let the kids have input. We're trying to find what our strengths are going to be. We have a lot of team speed, but we've got to play smart."

In Denver, at the Gold Crown Tournament, the Elkettes' brain didn't equal their braun.

A team from Montana pinned a 20-point loss on them.

Ouch!

Portales, a team Pojoaque Valley defeated 44-38 for the championship in March, outscored the Elkettes 3-0 in the final 2:00 for a 20-19 victory.

Ugh!

"We had four opportunities to score in the final two minutes," Carter says. "We couldn't close the deal."

Portales did, netting a basket and a free throw in its final three possessions.

"Time and score," Carter says, listing things to work on.

Transition is next.

"Montana sent us a big message," Carter says. "They showed us how a transition game should be run."

Crawl. Walk. Run. Isn't that the progression?

For most teams, it is.

The Elkettes aren't faces in the crowd. There is no back to square one in Ben Luján Gymnasium.

Not with Marissa Romero and Dionna Montoya, two of the best guards in their class, back in uniform for their senior season.

Not with the return of Kira Trujillo, a 5-foot-10 senior, who is expected to help fill the void of the graduated Jackie Bartleson, who at 6-2 made her presence known in her one and only season with the Elkettes.

Not with District 2AAA — sans Raton — improving hourly.

"If you don't run a good summer program, kids don't have that time to develop the way they need to," Carter says.

It's not just players.

"I'm working on finding my coaching style with this group," Carter says.

Next season didn't start in June.

Well, it didn't for Carter.

"I started thinking about next year probably two or three weeks after the season was over," Carter says. "It came from conversations with passers-by and people in the community."

So, who are you, coach?

Right now, the Elkettes are state champions.

Come November, they're still the team to beat.

"You have to give a championship team that respect," Anna Roanhaus, Las Vegas Robertson head coach, says.

Roanhaus, reared in Clayton, knows championships. In high school, her basketball team captured three straight state titles.

"The seniors choked when I was a freshman on varsity," Roanhaus says, before asking for an off-the-record pardon.

Sorry, coach.

In 1985, Roanhaus' senior season, Clayton finished 26-1, its only one-loss season in school history.

"We always played those Texas teams, and it was a different beast over there," Roanhaus says about never finishing undefeated.

Clayton owns 12 state championships, third most behind Kirtland-Central's 17 and Albuquerque Eldorado's 14. Clayton's string of eight straight titles shares third — not in the state, but nationally.

"I don't think any of us felt pressure," Roanhaus says. "We just figured that's how life was supposed to be in Clayton, New Mexico."

The calculations are different in Pojoaque.

It's true the Elkettes posted two undefeated seasons in school history, with the first taking place in 1998.

It's not exactly landmark.

Eldorado is the bar, with a state-leading 10.

Kirtland-Central is second with four. Clovis also flashes two undefeated seasons, the last a 30-0 mark in 2005.

It doesn't stop there for Eldorado. When it comes to successive undefeated seasons, only the Golden Eagles have accomplished that feat in girls basketball. Under then-head coach Don Flanagan, they stitched together four back-to-back masterpieces.

Milestones look good sitting in the trophy case, hanging from the ceiling, archived in record books. Buy they can't rebound, shoot, defend. If they could, six days would not a summer make.

"We have just three practices left to focus on the things we need to really work on," Carter says. "We'll go over it right now so it's not a slap-in-the-face new thing next year. We'll work on it, we'll talk about it."

But, they won't get to do anything about it until November.