Castillo’s Acrobatics Give San Diego Title

San Diego High’s Hector Castillo was excusing himself after his team won its third consecutive section championship, 2-1, over Poway High in Division I soccer.

“I’m sorry,” he told reporters in perfect English. “I don’t speak good English.”

Castillo has been in this country for two years after moving from Monterrey, Mexico. And although he has learned the language well, he still couldn’t describe the goal he scored in the 16th minute.

For that matter, neither could anyone else.

Maybe San Diego Coach Milton Hidalgo put it best when he said, “It was a goal Pele would have been proud of . . . You know, in Pele’s career he scored over a thousand goals, but he only scored eight or nine like that.”

What everyone was talking about was a full bicycle kick that Castillo not only connected on some eight yards from the goal and just to the left of the left post, but one that he managed to put on target.

After Castillo leaped into the air and turned himself upside-down, he got his foot on a cross from Juan Velasco and fired a shot that nicked the underside of the crossbar and into the net.

“I saw him winding up,” Poway goalie Matt Sanders said. “And I thought, ‘No way.’ It was just a hell of a shot. There was nothing (I) could do about it.”

Said Castillo, “I’ve been trying that for a long time, but this is the first time it worked for me.”

And Hidalgo, “They don’t get any prettier than that. Hector is definitely in a class by himself.”

But he did not win the game by himself. The crossing pass on his goal was nearly as perfect as the shot itself. After getting through a slide tackle by Bryan Sproviero and stopping the ball from going out of bounds by getting his foot on it at the end line, Velasco dribbled around Sproviero, then left-footed it across the goal mouth to Castillo.

It was also Velasco who erased a 1-1 tie by scoring San Diego’s second goal.

Velasco scored it off a free kick from Joe Shelley, who booted it into the penalty area from the midfield stripe. Velazco got to it a split second before Sanders did and tucked it behind the on-rushing goalie and into an open net.

It came late in the second half, some 15 minutes after Poway tied the game, 1-1, when Sproviero hit a direct free kick over San Diego’s four-man wall and just inside the left post.