Lompoc and Cabrillo high schools sit on opposite ends of a small town. They draw from the same school district and are natural rivals. For the first time in recent history, both schools have girls’ basketball teams heading to CIF playoffs.
“Our rivalry with Cabrillo is probably the biggest on the Central Coast of California,” said Lompoc junior Rylee Sager. “We’re so close with each other, and we’ve played with those girls since we grew up, so we want to be better than them.”
For Junior Devan McCune, of Cabrillo, the rivalry with Lompoc was a central focus of the season. “Our goal right at the beginning was to beat Lompoc and get that league championship,” McCune said.
Cabrillo has come a long way in the past four years. When the senior Conquistadores were freshmen, the team picked up a sparse two wins in league play. This year, they put up an ironclad 13-1 in league.
Lompoc, on the other hand, has consistently made league playoffs only to be bounced out by losses to Santa Margarita. This year, they cruised to CIF on a 13-1 league season.
The two teams, with only a single loss to their name each, claimed the league championship title in a tie for points. Their losses are the fruits of two mid-season head-to-head matchups.
In their first match-up, on Jan. 14, the Braves put up 28 points in the second half to pull past Cabrillo for a 51-37 win.
“Lompoc overplayed us in that game,” said Cabrillo sophomore Erin Jenkins. “They rebounded us. They’re a really good team.”
Cabrillo senior Gaby Baumgardner said she was crushed by the loss, but clear on the goal of her season.
“To lose at all is hard, and to lose to Lompoc is even harder. We were like: ‘We have to get them next time’ to get where we wanted—the first championship bagged for Cabrillo girls’ basketball.”
During the second match-up, on Feb. 4, Cabrillo hustled to tie things up at the end of the fourth quarter with 16 points, and slipped past Lompoc for a win in overtime.
“The sound of that bell,” Baumgardner said, “I couldn’t have asked for a more music-to-my-ears sound.”
For Lompoc sophomore Cheyenne Marmolejo, that loss was a heartbreaking wake-up call that made her feel that she needed to prove herself.
“It’s a rival team,” she said. “You never want to lose against Cabrillo.”
The rivals have similar strategies on the court. Lompoc Coach Claudia Terrones describes her team’s style of play as “run and gun.” Her team presses the ball, playing full court basketball as fast as they can. Sometimes, they “overplay,” forcing too much and falling into the trap of bad passes that can be picked off by their opponents.
Senior Chrissnay Brown, the fearsome shooter who drives Lompoc’s offense, thinks that Cabrillo is “a good team” that shares some of Lompoc’s aggressiveness. Nonetheless, she thinks her team has an edge.
“We’re fast,” she said. “We play a really fast-tempo game. We control the game. We want to slow the other team down.”
When opponents get past half court, the Braves press hard, trying to shut them down and flip the ball back to their offense as soon as possible.
“We’re more aggressive,” Brown continued. “When there’s a ball on the floor, we’re going to be the first team to go and get the ball.”
Rival Marmolejo echoed Brown’s thoughts on the matter. Last year, she said, Cabrillo was not as quick as they could have been.
And this year? “We’re going to push until someone can stop us. And I don’t think that anyone can stop us,” Marmolejo said.
Cabrillo Coach Jared McCune said that the Conquistadores play basketball focused on defensive fundamentals. Offensively, they strive for a balance between players on the inside and on the perimeter who can make baskets.
“Our strength is we have multiple players that can score, so if a team wants to take away one of our players, we have other players that can make up the scoring for us,” he said.
Cabrillo senior Baumgardner confirmed that her team’s strength rests on a strong roster of girls who can score.
“We have a really balanced scoring attack,” she said. “Our team goes really deep into the bench. We don’t have one star player or two star players. Our team is very team oriented. If one player’s having a bad night, that’s OK.”
Lompoc coach Terrones thinks that the Cabrillo and Lompoc are comparable, evenly paired, in terms of guards and posts.
“We both have girls who really want to play the game,” she said.
Rival coach McCune thinks that the two teams play slightly different styles of basketball. Lompoc, he said, plays ball in a way that’s a bit more rough-and-tumble.
“We can both can pressure the ball, but they tend to be a little more physical and in-your-face than we are,” he said.
Erin Jenkins, a Cabrillo freshman who moved to Lompoc from Idaho during middle school, said that despite the fierce competition, it’s not all bad blood between the teams.
“The other teammates, they like to socialize with them,” she said, adding something that the rivalry might not suggest: “Because they’re friends with them.”
Contact Staff Writer Sean McNulty at smcnulty@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 5, 2015.