Dreams Aside, Huerta Excelled on Court

Rafael Huerta had one dream this school year, and it wasn’t to win the City Section singles championship--he did that for the second season in a row last week.

Huerta’s dream was to play point guard for Chatsworth High’s basketball team.

“I love that game, but I never went out for the team,” said Huerta, a senior. “I’m too small.”

But Huerta, who is only 5-feet-7 yet possesses athletic abilities that would serve him well in a backcourt, is a regular in Chatsworth pick-up games. Basketball, he said, is part of his training regimen--along with running and weightlifting.

Huerta concedes he has imagined leading fast breaks and throwing alley-oop passes in front of the student body. He can close his eyes and see himself in a Chatsworth uniform dishing off to the open man on the wing, driving the lane for a basket, stealing passes and going coast-to-coast for an easy layup the way he does on the playground.

He dreams of dominating a basketball game as he does tennis matches--exhibiting the kind of mastery with which he defeated Arthur Tombakian of Marshall, 6-2, 6-4, Friday to successfully defend his title in the City individual tournament.

He finished his senior season 28-0.

They would have carried him off the court at the end of such a performance were it basketball. But the court on which Huerta plays is not lined with teammates and hordes of fans. There are no buzzers or whistles, no cheerleaders or public-address announcers.

And only about 50 people--by far the biggest fan support of the season--turned out at the Universal City Racquet Centre to watch Huerta go one-on-one for the final time as a high school player.

“I wish I could have played basketball,” he said. “But I play only one sport for Chatsworth.”

Steve Berk, Chatsworth’s first-year coach, said Huerta never pursued his dream to play basketball, perhaps because of former Coach Joe Santellano’s concern about injuries--particularly ankle sprains. Berk was told by his players that Santellano had banned them from playing basketball during tennis season. But Huerta has started playing again in his free time.

Berk, for one, thinks Huerta could have played for Chatsworth.

“His eye-hand coordination is phenomenal,” Berk said. “He’s got a lot of skills you need to be a point guard. Peripheral vision. And if there was a way of measuring his reaction time, he’d go right off the scale with how quickly he gets to balls and returns them off the ground.”

The basketball dream likely will fade away in the coming weeks as Huerta will turn his attention to his college years at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He has accepted a partial scholarship to play tennis there.

For all his success, though, it is ironic that Huerta performed in relative anonymity during his career at Chatsworth.

“Nobody knows who he is except the people on the tennis team and some of the people in his classes,” Berk said.

“He’s so quiet. He doesn’t draw any attention to himself whatsoever. Most of the faculty do not even know who he is.”

Indeed. Most of the student body was caught off guard two weeks ago when Huerta was named co-male athlete of the year.

If that brought some surprise, Berk said Huerta never ceased to surprise him throughout the season. His final match against Tombakian (Huerta warmed up for it in 88-degree heat) was no exception.

“I said, ‘It’s awful hot. You’re only going to hit for about 15-20 minutes, right?’ ” Berk said. “He said, ‘No, no. Forty-five minutes.’

“I was very concerned about him. But he knows exactly what he can do. He has taught me a lot about mental toughness.

“For me, it was really exciting to have the opportunity to watch somebody at that level perform. That was my biggest thrill.”