Daily Pilot High School Girls’ Athlete of the Week: Caldera making sweet comeback

Cheryl Caldera is not the most vocal of leaders.

She isn’t going to strike fear into the heart of any opponent by belting out audible celebrations after a particularly exciting play.

But if teams don’t fear Los Amigos High’s gentle giant in the middle, they haven’t played the Lobos this year.

For anyone that may have forgotten her during her year of recovery from a torn ACL, Caldera is taking the measures necessary to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

In last week’s Ocean View Hawk Holiday Classic girls’ basketball tournament, she carried the Lobos to the Premier Flight Division championship. Caldera led her team in scoring (25.5 points per game) in each of the team’s four wins over Loara, Magnolia, Mission Viejo, and Santa Ana, garnering tournament MVP honors for the division.

She was automatic on the low block, using the drop step to get right to the rim.

The time-honored tradition of fouling to stop a big won’t help that much, either, as 20% of her offensive output has come from the free-throw line.

Her hometown junior college team, the Santa Ana Dons, expressed interest in the senior after she had a game-high 23 points in Los Amigos’ 45-25 victory over the Sentinels on Dec. 7.

The fact that Caldera is receiving interest to play at the next level at all is somewhat amazing given that she considered giving up the game in its entirety following the surgery on her right knee.

As so often happens, though, it can be tough to walk away from the thing that makes us whole. For Caldera, that is basketball.

“After my physical therapy, I started rushing through [my recovery] so that I could play basketball again,” she said. “It built my confidence up a little bit more. It was like, at this point: what’s the worst that can happen?”

Those who have coached her, past and present, are happy to see her back in the game and thriving.

Leslie Aragon, her coach at Orangewood Academy, cited the injury and the tough decision to choose between two programs as difficulties that Caldera has had to overcome.

“I’m incredibly proud that she’s playing and that she stuck through it,” Aragon said. “I’m just happy that she is contributing and that she is happy playing basketball again.”

Caldera had flashes of brilliance in her time at Orangewood, which included matching up with Fairmont Prep’s Cierra Hall in a game that helped the Spartans earn a share of the San Joaquin League title.

Hall nearly averaged a double-double as a sophomore (18.0 points, 9.9 rebounds), and Caldera was called upon for major minutes with Orangewood’s starting bigs in foul trouble.

The Huskies scored just 14 points in the second half, and Orangewood won the game, 46-41.

Caldera’s career began at Los Amigos, the school from which her family graduated.

An opportunity to play with a friend from her travel-ball team may have led to Caldera transferring to Orangewood Academy for her sophomore season.

Elizabeth Garcia and Caldera were teammates on the Santa Ana Lakers. Garcia kept urging her friend to take a look at the Spartans, and it happened in the summer following Caldera’s freshman year.

“I kind of thought about it, and the next thing that you know, I’m sitting in Aragon’s office at a freshman orientation,” Caldera said. “We went together, me and Ellie, to the orientation, and I liked the school.”

“It never really was, ‘This is the school for me.’ It was, ‘I want something different now.’”

Parents want their kids to follow their heart. Caldera’s mother, Sylvia, did what she had to do, enrolling her daughter at Orangewood in the summer.

Caldera didn’t have to be the first option on a loaded Spartans team that eventually won the CIF Southern Section Division 5AA title for the 2014-15 season.

Still, being a part of a rotation was an eye-opening experience. It initially lowered Caldera’s confidence before she rose up and accepted the challenge.

Then she battled the mental hurdle of coming back to the game in the immediate aftermath of the torn ACL that she suffered in a fall league game.

Lobos assistant coach Sean Marsh says that Caldera’s ability to bounce back from that adversity is a testament to her mental fortitude. Asked if going through a position battle can boost the willpower of a player to return from injury, Marsh concurred.

“It can be really hard to go from being a starter to playing spot minutes, playing 10 minutes here and there,” he said. “That’s a huge adjustment. You have to be mentally tough.”

“She’s been everything that we’ve wanted her to be. Mentally tough all year.”

Caldera is averaging 21.4 points per game in her senior year as the go-to option for Los Amigos.

So what means more to Caldera – the fact that she is back on a basketball court or the team’s success?

“I think that it would have to be the team, only because my freshman year, when I was playing varsity, Coach Sabrina [White], all she ever talked about was the teams of the past, how well they did, the teams that went 9-1, 10-0,” Caldera said.

“That honestly got me really hyped. I wanted my team that I graduated with my senior year to be one of those teams.”

Los Amigos went 29-1 in the Garden Grove League from 2011 to 2013.

The Lobos have ridden the center to a 8-1 record through Thursday to open the year. The last time that the team started 6-1 was the 2004-05 campaign, when Los Amigos won its first six games to open the season.

Looking back on the record books, Los Amigos Athletic Director Chris Sandro said the 8-1 record stands up against any start to a season dating back to at least the late 1970s.

Los Amigos has not been a traditional power in girls’ basketball. Prior to the league three-peat earlier this decade, the last league title for the Lobos had come in 1979.

There is something to be said about having a scoring big that changes the outlook for a program.

“Your shots outside are more open,” Marsh said. “When the ball does get inside, you know that there is a good chance that you’re going to score. It’s a huge difference. It completely changes the way that the game is played.”

Cheryl Caldera

Born: July 20, 1999

Hometown: Santa Ana

Height: 5-foot-9

Weight: 185 pounds

Sport: Basketball

Year: Senior

Coach: Sabrina White

Favorite food: Chicken Alfredo Pasta

Favorite movie: “My Sister’s Keeper”

Favorite athletic moment: As a sophomore, she played a significant role in Orangewood Academy’s home victory over Fairmont Prep, 46-41, which helped to secure a share of the San Joaquin League title that season.

Week in review: The senior center was named the Premier Flight Division MVP after leading the Lobos to a title in the Ocean View Hawk Holiday Classic. She averaged 25.5 points per game over the team’s four wins, including 26 points and 12 rebounds in the final against Santa Ana.