‘They don’t treat me any differently.’ Meet girl blazing a path in SLO County baseball

The fog burned off early on a brisk Easter Sunday morning as Bronco sophomore Andrea Aguilar Castillo — the first female to play varsity baseball at Coast Union — settled in for an interview on a picnic table at bustling Shamel Park.

Beyond baseball, Aguilar is an emerging luminary on the soccer team, and she has ambitions to play either football or volleyball next fall.

If she chooses football, “I would hope to play wide receiver because that is what my brother (standout receiver Cristian Castillo) played, and it has given me inspiration — and, personally, I think I am good at catching.”

Meantime, the morning conversation focused on baseball.

She didn’t play her freshman year because her grades were not satisfactory. So she buckled down academically in order to play one of the two sports she truly loves at Coast Union.

Asked about her initial reception on a customarily all-male high school baseball squad, she said: “At the beginning it was a little weird for me because I didn’t really talk to any of the guys. And I wasn’t comfortable having conversations with the guys. At first I was a bit nervous.”

But in time, “I felt way more comfortable. They don’t treat me any differently.”

She is not among the starting nine players but is given opportunities to play right field (“I’m pretty good at catching fly balls.”) and to step up to the plate as a pinch hitter.

In order to have success as a hitter, the 5-foot-8-inch Aguilar Castillo admits, “I have to work on my swing; I have a habit of dropping my shoulder.”

Bronco assistant coach Gary Stephenson, who works with hitters, said, “Every day that we take batting practice she gets better. She’s hitting the ball at least 50% farther than she did on the first day of practice.”

Her swing is “looking great,” Stephenson added in an email. “She makes consistent contact and has some real power. More importantly though, she’s willing to work to get better.”

This is not Aguilar Castillo’s first all-boys baseball experience.

She played stellar defense, hit the ball well — and in her pitching debut she struck out three batters in an inning and a third — while playing for the Giants Little League team a few years ago, according to her coach, Matt Saunders.

“It was such a great treat having her play on the Giants with us,” Saunders recalled in a text. “She’s always been a very natural athlete, and I could tell that if she loved the game and wanted to stick with it, she absolutely could.”

On family and soccer

Meantime, her favorite sport has been soccer because “there is constant movement on the field. I like running, I am fast, and when I make a (goal), it would feel good to do it, and it would make my dad proud.”

Her father, Mario Aguilar, an immigrant who has played soccer throughout his life and more recently in adult leagues, is proud “of the little things I do. I make him proud in school and the other sports I play.

“But it feels better to make him proud in soccer because he likes it so much. He has such a strong connection with soccer.”

Her 2021 Bronco soccer coach Moises Jimenez calls her “a naturally gifted athlete.”

“She can play anywhere on the field. She has a great eye for the game and is able to adapt to various situations in a match,” he said.

Jimenez positioned her as a goal-keeper because “Her reflexes are quick. … I knew she would be able to make incredible saves at any time if needed.”

In an email, the coach added, “She has an effortless run that makes her speed faster than what it appears to be.”

Her brother Cristian (three years older) — a Bronco sports icon who made seemingly impossible, acrobatic catches as a wide receiver and excelled in baseball and soccer (as a goalie) — had a powerful influence on his little sister.

“We did fight a lot” as siblings are apt to do, “and I never told him, but I looked up to him a lot. It has never come up,” she said, “but watching him play sports inspired me to be the best I can be at whatever sport I am playing.”

Career plans

As to Aguilar Castillo’s career plans, her favorite class at Coast Union is chemistry — and she is adept at mathematics. When she was in eighth grade at Santa Lucia Middle School, she began picturing herself in a career as a mechanical engineer.

“I like building things,” she explained, and she would like to attend UC Santa Barbara after high school, because, “it’s one of the best schools for mechanical engineering.”

According to head coach Brian Machado, Aguilar Castillo is building a successful career in high school baseball. “Andrea is a great athlete and will only get better as time goes on.”

She has “a nice swing, makes contact, and plays great defense too,” Machado added in an email. “I’m happy to say she is the first female baseball player at Coast as far as I know.”

As Aguilar Castillo expressed on Easter Sunday, relative to her comfort zone playing baseball with the boys: “I am happy.”