On winter nights at the Pit, the roar of the crowd is a familiar sound to Kobi Gardea.

Once he burst out of that locker room as an undersized point guard for Pocatello High. Now he roams those same sidelines taking his spot not in the starting lineup but as one of the youngest head coaches in Pocatello High School history.

Gardea, heading into his third year as the head coach of the Pocatello Thunder, is giving back to the game at a place that shaped him.

“The culture and the staff is what really makes Poky Poky,” Gardea said. “I get to coach at such a young age and get the opportunity to do what I love. I love the game of basketball, and I want to help every kid, and I want to make every kid love the game and understand the game. It’s a great opportunity, and very blessed to get to do it.”

Gardea, a Pocatello native, grew up playing every sport he could before deciding on basketball in the eighth grade.

From there, it was no fairytale, just hard work and grit.

Gardea came to Pocatello High School in 2013 as a 5-foot-3 freshman and caught the eye of former Pocatello head coach Joe Green. He wasn’t the biggest on the floor, but he was brilliant with the ball in his hands, playing on varsity all four years.

In those four years he was voted captain three times and earned honorable mention his junior year, leading into his senior season in 2016-17. That season he took off and had a year to remember. In 24 games, Gardea put up 285 points, 107 assists, 102 rebounds and 51 steals, closing it out with a second-team all-state recognition and an invite to the Idaho All-Star Game.

He then decided to attend Idaho State and walk on to the basketball team, achieving his dream of being a Division I basketball player.

“That was my dream, to play Division I basketball,” Gardea said. “I’m 5-7, I’m a short small point guard, and so just seeing that level of basketball and skill and what it takes, you almost have to be perfect at 5-foot-7.”

During that year he redshirted, watching and growing from his time as a Bengal.

“Just the speed and the physicality that it takes to play at that level was great, and for me to practice every single day and see that, I think that’s what helped me go and succeed.”

After one year at ISU, he transferred to Eastern Oregon University where over the next three years he would once again be a team captain for two of those seasons and led the team in assist-to-turnover ratio, guiding the Mountaineers until a knee injury brought his playing days to an end.

Transitioning to coaching, he stayed at Eastern Oregon from 2020-23, learning the craft before returning home as an assistant under his former coach, Joe Green.

In the 2023-24 season, Pocatello was loaded with seniors and experience and were on pace for a state championship. They accomplished just that, finishing 22-5 and defeating Hillcrest 73-67 to claim the title.

After that season, with Green stepping away from the program, Pocatello handed the keys to 25-year-old Gardea.

From the first day he put on the whistle, Gardea instilled the lessons he learned from Coach Green into everything he does.

“Coach Green was a great coach, and I learned so much from him,” Gardea said. “He was very hard on us, but he was able to build that relationship where he truly did care for you. He always demanded things be done the right way, and that’s what I try to do with my group.”

Coming off the high of a state championship and losing all five starters, Gardea guided Pocatello to a 15-10 record, a feat he was very proud of.

“We lost eight or nine seniors, and obviously we lost Julian, the Player of the Year, and I was really proud of that group,” he said. “It’s hard to move on from that, because you bring a bunch of guys that didn’t have a lot of varsity experience, and I thought we did a really good job. We won a good amount of games and competed in every game.”

As someone who had to prove himself every time he stepped on the floor, that undersized, scrappy and defensive-minded approach is exactly what he wants Pocatello basketball to be.

“My philosophy is to play the right way and give it everything you have,” Gardea said. “Give the game and your teammates everything you have, bust your butt as hard as you possibly can, and don’t leave anything out there. The rest will take care of itself.”

The Thunder, coming off a 15-9 record, will look to continue striving to be the best they can on and off the court when they hit the floor this winter.

Beyond the X’s and O’s, Gardea wants to be a coach that makes an impact far beyond the white lines.

“Basketball has been part of my life for a long time, and without basketball, I don’t know where I would be in life,” Gardea said. “It’s taught me a lot of life lessons.

“I want to be that coach that my kid looks up to and knows that I truly do care for them, and at any given moment, if they ever needed anything, to be able to call me and reach out to me, and kind of just know that I’m always going to be there for them, because I had coaches like that growing up, and that’s what type of coach I want to be.”

Gardea wears that Poky pride every time he walks into the Pit. When the lights shut off and the empty gym falls silent, that same undersized point guard walks out the door, now with the desire to coach his hometown team and be a coach that makes an impact beyond the court.