The Bonita Vista High School girls basketball team may have come up short in its quest to capture this year’s San Diego Section Division II championship, but the effort has certainly placed the Lady Barons “on the map,” so to speak, among section teams.
Head coach Wayne Wooten’s team capped its finest win-loss record (20-7) in the program’s history last season and came back in 2015-16 with a runner-up finish in the section finals to tie for best post-season finish (with Wooten’s 2008 squad that placed second in the Division I finals).
The Lady Barons finished 19-10 this season. The 39 wins over the past two seasons place Bonita Vista among San Diego County’s top teams during that span. The team came within a whisker of winning the Bonita Optimist-Lady Barons Holiday Classic both years.
Many other records were set along the way. Bonita Vista averaged more than 57 points per game in both campaigns, a school record, and was among the leading scoring teams in the county.
A substantial number of individual records were also set.
BVHS co-captain Brooklyn Valdez holds the three-point single-game shooting record with five treys in a 2014-15 playoff win against Chula Vista. Sophomore Shyla LaTone tied the mark with a pair of “fives” against Alhambra and Grossmont, and set a new mark for most field goals in a single game with 14 against Otay Ranch this season.
Co-captain Carol Schroeder, who typically carried a large load for the Lady Barons over her four-year playing career, has set more than two dozen new school marks alone.
She has scored 1,571 points, collected 1,172 rebounds, dished out 489 assists, made 508 steals and blocked 291 shots.
She shot 51 percent from the floor, a remarkable statistic, and 70 percent from the free-throw line. She averaged a double-double (10 or more points and rebounds per game) all four seasons.
Her honors included three first-team all-league selections and two MVP awards at the Bonita Optimist-Lady Baron Holiday Classic.
In all, she has amassed three dozen records for the Lady Barons.
She will continue her basketball career locally at Point Loma Nazarene University, which now competes at the NCAA Division II level.
The number of records broken by coach Wooten’s recent editions of the Lady Barons has to be a record unto itself, according to former varsity assistant Dean Brunson.
“The recent progress made at BVHS girls hoops over the past couple seasons has been nothing short of incredible,” Brunson explained.
