Daily Pilot High School Male Athlete of the Week: Gutierrez brings guts, glory for Estancia boys’ soccer

The first time that Estancia High boys’ soccer coach Robert Castellano saw Sergio Gutierrez, he was impressed.

Gutierrez was in junior high school at the time, and Castellano remembered that he was not intimidated by anyone. His confidence was such that when he did enter the Eagles’ program as a freshman, he took it upon himself to speak out when he felt the senior team captain could do better.

Upsetting the chain of command can have repercussions, but in this instance, it was realized that Gutierrez was passionate about the game.

In his fourth year at Estancia, Gutierrez is a senior captain. He is still an equal opportunity employer when it comes to demanding the most out of each and every member of the team.

“Sergio is a very committed player,” Castellano said. “If he has missed practice, it’s because of his club team. He’s just super disciplined. He disciplines himself. He holds himself to a high standard.

“Because he holds himself to a high standard, he expects his teammates to hold themselves to that, and if they don’t carry their own weight, he’ll let them know about it. He doesn’t care whether you’re a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior.”

In many ways, Gutierrez feels that he was born to play “the beautiful game.” His father was an academy player for Club Atlas in Mexico before a broken leg put his playing career on hold.

The senior midfielder does not hesitate to express his lofty goals, including the hope that he can one day play professional soccer.

“My goal is to play the highest level of soccer that I can,” said Gutierrez, who has been offered by Cal State Fullerton. “It’s what I want to do in life. Ever since I was little, I had no doubt in my mind that’s what I wanted to do. I work hard for it. I dedicate my life to it. It’s what I want to do.”

Gutierrez says he began playing soccer with a team at 4 years old. He began playing club at age 7 in Laguna Niguel, and he has been with West Coast FC since he was 10.

The Eagles’ confident captain has played for the varsity team all four years.

Half the battle in making a varsity roster is taking advantage of an opportunity when it is presented. Gutierrez’s first touch as a member of Estancia’s varsity team was a goal when he tapped in a shallow cross after sprinting in on the attack from the 50-yard line.

“I got subbed in when one of our players got injured,” Gutierrez recalled. “Coach Robert, he came up to me and asked me, ‘Are you nervous?’

“I said, ‘No.’ I really wasn’t nervous. I was ready. I wasn’t nervous. I got my chance.”

Gutierrez is proud to have shared his soccer journey with several individuals. He referred to Luis Millan as a brother, praising the senior’s goal in Tuesday’s game against Laguna Beach that helped Estancia (13-3-6, 6-0-4 in league) to clinch the Orange Coast League title.

Others have also held a key role in the success of the Eagles. Every leader needs someone that can hold them accountable, and Castellano says that Andy Martinez, the team’s other senior captain, has been the one willing to stand up to Gutierrez.

“Andy is a very loud character and also a leader,” Castellano said. “They’ve gotten into it a couple of times. Andy will get on Sergio’s case, and Sergio will get on Andy’s case. They push each other, but they’re very good friends as well, and they click very well together on the field. They play a lot of combinations with each other.

“They know where each other are on the pitch, and they read each other’s movement and mannerisms. They don’t have to look to see where each other are at.”

It may sound like the personalities on Estancia’s boys’ soccer team are too big to share the same pitch. The key to their success may lie in their commitment to forming friendships away from the field.

“It’s four different teams, so I kind of have to adapt to everybody,” Gutierrez said of having new teammates every year in high school. “Me as a player, as a teammate, as a leader like I try to be, I try to form a relationship with every single player on the team. I try to make them feel comfortable with me.

“Once I do that, I try to bring them all together, and fortunately, it worked out very well this year. We already had very good chemistry to begin with, so it made it that much easier.”

Gutierrez noted that he has a handful of teammates that he has played with at every level of his education. In the final year at each school, his teams have won something.

In sixth grade, while attending Pomona Elementary, Gutierrez’s team delivered the school’s first Pilot Cup win.

As an eighth-grader at TeWinkle Intermediate, his team won a league title after finishing second in that race the year before.

Now in his senior year at Estancia, Gutierrez and company have won an outright Orange Coast League championship.

Estancia’s next challenge will be to find similar success in the postseason. The Eagles have lost in the early rounds on penalty kicks in each of the last two seasons.

In the 2015-16 campaign, Estancia lost to South Torrance in the second round of the CIF Southern Section Division 4 playoffs. Last year, the Eagles fell to Paso Robles in the first round of the Division 3 bracket.

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Sergio Gutierrez

Born: May 22, 2000

Hometown: Costa Mesa

Height: 6 feet

Weight: 165 pounds

Sport: Soccer

Year: Senior

Coach: Robert Castellano

Favorite food: Chicken salad

Favorite movie: “Deadpool”

Favorite athletic moment: Gutierrez competed in the 17-and-under national championships in Frisco, TX as a member of West Coast FC. The top eight teams in the country qualified for the tournament.

Week in review: The senior midfielder scored in both of Estancia’s Orange Coast League victories over Saddleback and Calvary Chapel. Coming into the week, Gutierrez had scored six goals in his team’s last seven games.

andrew.turner@latimes.com

Twitter: @ProfessorTurner