There is growing excitement and anticipation on the campus of Castle Park High School in advance of Friday’s Metro-Pacific League regular season finales in both boys basketball and girls soccer. With good reason. Should Caste Park emerge victorious in both games against Hilltop, the school will capture league championships in both sports.
The Trojan boys basketball team is shooting to claim its first league banner since the 1986-87 season. The school’s girls soccer team is hoping to add to the CIF banner it won last year.
“What makes this interesting is that we have never had a winning program in the last 10 years,” CPHS boys basketball head coach Paul Cooper explained. “Even this year, we started out slowly but have gotten hot at the end. Castle Park is known as a football school, not as a basketball school.”
At least the last couple decades. The Trojans’ last league championship team 29 years ago has affectionately been dubbed the “Dream Team.”
Cooper and his players would like to believe it’s time to create a “Dream Team II.”
Castle Park took a big step in that direction by defeating host Sweetwater, a school heavily steeped in hoops tradition, by a score of 51-48 on Wednesday to improve to 4-1 in league play.
The Trojans (9-14 overall) will face a Hilltop Lancers team also sporting a 4-1 league record. Should Castle Park defeat Hilltop, the 2015-16 Metro-Pacific League championship would belong solely to the Trojans. However, should the Lancers (12-15 overall) pull out a win, the league banner would be shared by at least two teams – Hilltop and Castle Park – and possibly by as many as three teams.
Sweetwater (8-17 overall) carries a 3-2 league record into Friday’s regular season finale against visiting Chula Vista (0-5 in league, 8-19 overall). The Red Devils would share a tri-championship with the Trojans and Lancers in the event of a Hilltop win and a victory against the visiting Spartans.
But Castle Park would rather take matters into its own hands with a win. Tip off is 6 p.m.
The Trojans’ lone league loss was 74-59 to Sweetwater on Feb. 3. Castle Park edged Hilltop, 38-37, on Feb. 9 on the Lancers’ home court, so it appears that nothing is set in stone.
Cooper feels his team is peaking at the right time.
“I have a lot of football players on the team who never played basketball until high school,” the CPHS coach explained. “Basketball is a sport that you don’t pick up easily. It involves a lot of footwork and technique.
“Transitioning from football to basketball can be difficult. This year, we were able to come togher.
“I started with 12, and it came down to the final 10. We’ve been building for this ever since November. We started out slow. But once we got a couple wins under our belts, the players came together as a team.”
Cooper, who previously worked at Castle Park Middle School, has known many of his players since then, and the group has developed a team chemistry.
“I’ve known a lot of these kids for five, six years,” Cooper said. “They’ve been in the same system for all these years.”
Standouts on this year’s CPHS team include senior point guard Jhim Franco, senior guard Angelo Trujillo, junior guard Charles Tolbert and sophomore power forward Adrian Lee.
Lee poured in 17 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and had six blocks in Wednesday’s clutch victory at Sweetwater while Trujillo scored 10 points, had 12 rebounds and five blocks. Franco dropped in eight points and had seven assists.
Trujillo played quarterback on the school’s football team while Tolbert was a receiver.
Regardless of the outcome of Friday’s league championship match-up, the future looks bright for Castle Park. The Trojans have three seniors, two sophomores and five juniors on this year’s team.
Hilltop is coming off a 58-48 win at Chula Vista on Wednesday. Lancer captains include seniors Baylee Harvey and Dylan Trenga.
Trenga is a football standout and scored a touchdown in Hilltop’s 8-6 non-league win over Castle Park in the teams’ season opener. Will he score the game-winning slam-dunk on Friday?
Stranger things have happened.
Lady Trojans getting their kicks
Castle Park was thrust into championship contention following last Thursday’s home match against Chula Vista. The Lady Spartans walked off the field with a 3-0 victory that appeared to set up Wednesday’s championship match at Hilltop between the two teams sporting 3-0-1 league records.
But it was quickly determined that Chula Vista had used an ineligible player in the game and the Lady Spartans had to forfeit the match to Castle Park. That completely reworked the league standings.
Castle Park received an additional win to improve to 2-2-0 in league play while the Lady Spartans saw their league record drop to 2-1-1. Hilltop, the defending Metro-Pacific League champion, remained at 3-0-1 while Sweetwater remained at 0-4-0.
On Wednesday, the Lady Trojans recorded a key 3-1 victory against visiting Sweetwater to move to 3-2-0 in league play while Hilltop and Chula Vista played to a 1-1 draw at Hilltop. The Lady Lancers, who benefitted from a late goal to knot the game, improved to 3-0-2 in league play while Chula Vista extended its record to 2-1-2.
Three standings points are awarded for each win while one standing point is awarded for each tie.
CPHS head coach Victor Vargas has already done the math. Entering Friday’s regular season finales, Hilltop has 11 standings points, Castle Park has nine standings points while Chula Vista has eight standings points. Sweetwater, at 0-5-0 in league play, has zero standings points.
CVHS head coach Caroline Soto had hoped her team would be able to hang a league banner in the school’s gym but it is unlikely to take place now. The most standings points the Lady Spartans (12-5-3 overall) can now accumulate is 11 – a figure already attained by the Lady Lancers.
Now the interesting part: Hilltop (6-10-4 overall) can sew up the rights to this year’s league championship either by recording a tie or a win against visiting Castle Park on Friday. All Hilltop needs is 12 standings points to win the banner outright. However, the Lady Trojans (11-7-3 overall) can claim undisputed rights to this year’s league championship with a win on Friday.
That’s the exciting part. But Castle Park remains the underdog, though not by as much in the past.
“We’ve gotten better over the last three years I’ve been here,” Vargas noted. “The first year, we ended the regular season with five wins, then we had nine wins last year and we already have 11 wins this year.”
The Lady Trojans lost, 1-0, to visiting Hilltop on Feb. 9. Veronica Romero scored the game-winning goal for the Lady Lancers late in the second half.
“To have the opportunity to play for a league banner and a chance to win a second banner in my third year here is unexpected,” said Vargas, a Hilltop alumnus. “We won a CIF banner before we won a league banner. That doesn’t happen very often. Usually, it’s the other way around.
“The girls know it’s not going to be easy. We played them before. We know it’s going to be difficult. It’s at their place, it’s Senior Night, so they will have a lot of people cheering for them. For us to win would be a big upset. It would be an upset.”
But stranger things have happened in sports. Kick off is 5 p.m.
