AOTW: Alyssa Romero

Age 18 | School Calipatria | Grade Senior

In sports, it’s always best to finish strong.

There’s just something about the crescendo that’s undeniable — a rush of cascading momentum — it’s a tide that lifts all boats.

For Calipatria High’s Alyssa Romero, a strong finishing kick to her high school basketball career just might lead to a storybook ending for her whole team, which is currently in the hunt for a CIF-SDS Division IV title.

She’s been a force over the Hornets’ past three games — all Calipatria wins — leveraging her wicked jumper into a cool 20.7 points per.

The latest of these wins was Tuesday’s playoff date against Orange Glen, in which Romero led all scorers with 19 as her team triumphed 48-30.

In some ways contributing to a playoff win was par for the course for Romero — one of four seniors, along with Jaclyn Vega, Desiree Romero and Sadie Chavez, who’ve been a big part of revitalizing a Calipatria program that had gone through a lengthy playoff drought prior to their emergence in 2016-17 — but she admits that with this being her final campaign, this year’s postseason has an added urgency.

“It’s kind of nerve-wracking,” she says.

“We always say, ‘Just play like it’s your last game.’ We’ve been saying that since freshman year, but now it’s true.”

Romero enjoys the high school hoops stage and the sense of community that surrounds it. She wants to ride it out for as long as she can, noting that, “After high school, nobody really knows you [the same way].”

She feels that the team is in a good place heading into Friday’s road matchup against Coronado High and likes their chances to knock off the third-seeded Islanders.

“I feel like they’re a team we can beat,” she said, noting that Coronado had struggled with Southwest earlier in the season, and that the Hornets had beaten the Eagles three times. “They’re at our level, so we have no excuses,” she said.