Girls Basketball: Romero On the Verge of Milestone

Vanessa Romero likes being challenged. And that fight has propelled her to become a leader on the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy girls’ basketball team, where she has been a starter for four years and seen the program go from the bottom of the Mission League to a formidable squad.

With her career winding down, Romero enters Tuesday’s 7 p.m. contest at visiting North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake just seven points short of the 1,000-point mark.

But for Romero, who is averaging 15.7 points per game, none of the personal accolades mean anything.

“I just want our team to win,” said Romero, who also competes in track and field. “I don’t think it is the biggest importance. I’ll do whatever it takes to win.”

If Romero falls short against Harvard-Westlake, she will have another shot when the Tologs host Sherman Oaks Notre Dame on Thursday. The Tologs enter the Harvard-Westlake game with a 14-10 overall record, a 3-5 league mark and are ranked No. 8 in the CIF-Southern Section Division 5AA poll.

“She missed 20 games last year. She only played seven games her junior year, so it’s a pretty amazing stat for her to be accomplishing,” FSHA coach Gino Pacella said. “I knew Vanessa when she was a little kid. She played against my daughter. I got to know the Romero family and by chance she came to play basketball here.”

The 5-foot-5 Romero said her journey to being a player that hopes to continue her basketball career at the collegiate level began during her days in grammar school, when she attended St. Philip the Apostle in Pasadena.

“I saw the boys play at school,” Romero noted of the first-grade experience. “It was an exclusive thing to play.”

Romero said she convinced her parents to allow her to play outside of school and she participated in a local recreation league during those early years.

When she moved onto high school, Romero had her sights on making the varsity squad as a freshman.

“I thought I had a chance. I worked really hard at it,” Romero said. “That was one of my goals. When I have mind set on something, I really work hard at it.”

 Romero, who considers herself a point guard, said she worked with one of her youth coaches to further develop her shooting touch.

But when arriving at FSHA, Romero found that the Mission League competition she would be facing was far stronger than what she had been accustomed to.

“It’s always been tough,” Romero said of the Mission League.

But Romero has played a key role in turning around the Tolog program that went just 1-22 her freshman year. Since Pacella became the head coach her sophomore year the team has improved to 9-17 that year and 9-18 the following season, which saw her miss most of the season.

“I tore my right meniscus at the (Pasadena) Poly tournament,” said Romero who recalled the date of being Dec. 11, 2009. “I remember a month later I had surgery on it.”

While some might have thought the season was over for Romero, she was able to return for the Tologs in the CIF-SS playoffs less than two months after her surgery. But even with Romero back, that playoff run ended after just one game. The Tologs also lost in the first round of the playoffs during Romero’s sophomore year.

So that leaves Romero with another goal she is seeking to accomplish before she leaves the hillside campus that overlooks La Cañada-Flintridge and Pasadena.

“The expectation is to get past the first round,” Romero said. “We got moved down to a lower division, so I have confidence our team will do well.”

When the season is over Romero will have to sit down and think about where she wants to further her education and continue her basketball career.

She said her father has assisted her in talking to a number of schools and one school she is interested in is Sonoma State University.