1979 was the year Joe Montana was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers. Star Wars: A New Hope was released in theaters in 1977. The Golden State Warriors won their first NBA Championship as a Bay Area franchise in 1975. All of these things happened after Fremont’s Miguel Castillo began coaching high school basketball.
Born in Mexico, Castillo’s parents brought him and his four siblings to Sunnyvale in 1962. Castillo was just nine years old, moving to a brand new country. The Bay Area, and specifically Sunnyvale, has been his home ever since.
“Back in those days, we used to go out and play baseball, lots of baseball actually; we rarely played basketball,” recalled Castillo in an exclusive interview with The Voice. “But then my dad got us interested in basketball; he had played some club basketball back in Mexico.”
“As for baseball, it was stickball. We never played Little League. My parents were laborers, so we didn’t have that much money, but we always had Converse. They were only 12 dollars back in the day,” chuckled Castillo. “So, we would play basketball. In high school, I went out for baseball and found out I had to buy baseball shoes, and I was like, ‘Well, that’s not going to happen,’ and gloves, too. We would borrow gloves or even just play barehanded. So, then basketball became my sport.”
As a teenager, Castillo would play one year of varsity basketball at Sunnyvale High School before playing two more years at De Anza College.
Castillo then began coaching high school basketball at his alma mater in 1973 as an assistant coach while attending San Jose State. In 1978, he began his teaching career at Lincoln High School in San Jose. Two years later, he took a job at Milpitas High School and became the head coach of their frosh-soph team.
The man has been coaching basketball and teaching Spanish pretty much ever since. His first year at Fremont came in 1995-96, when he coached the boys’ basketball team until 2011. An illness forced him to step down, but upon getting his health back, Castillo took over the girls’ team in 2013, where he remains coaching to this day.
All these years later, what is it that keeps him going?
“It’s kind of a selfish reason,” admitted Castillo. “I do it because I enjoy it. The kids, they keep me young. I’m 72, and it’s like, well, it would be pretty boring just hanging out with other old people. These kids have a certain energy and it’s infectious.”
“This year, these girls are close. Yesterday, they had a little gift exchange. They made a circle; they were laughing and clapping. They have really bonded together,” said Castillo. “Today, they talked me into letting them do a little media day. They did a little fundraiser and hired a photographer to do a team photoshoot.”
Even at 72, Castillo is clearly making it an emphasis for his players to enjoy themselves and to never stop learning new things.
“In order to survive as a coach, you have to change, you have to adapt,” said Castillo. “You keep some of the stuff that you have learned, but you add new stuff. The players also understand that the game is changing.
“You can shoot threes,” chimed Castillo with a sly grin. “But the ball has to go inside one way or another; you can’t just shoot threes.”
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