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Kapolei’s Dela Cruz A Talent On Both Court And Field

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Ashlee Dela Cruz doesn’t mind a few extra trips to the athletic trainer’s room at Kapolei High School. After all, her eligibility clock is ticking away in not one sport, but two.

“This is what I wanted for my senior year,” said Dela Cruz, who is playing both soccer and basketball for Kapolei this winter.“It’s stressful - I don’t get to spend as much time with my friends - but it has all been well worth it. Lately, my body has been real tired. I’ve been working through injuries - my back, my wrist and my ankle - and our trainer (Alex Lo) has been helping a lot. It is something I just have to get through. It’s tiring, mentally, too.”

Up until last spring, Dela Cruz lived a simpler athletic existence. But when the Hawaii High School Athletic Association was all but forced to move its girls basketball season from spring to winter in order to come up to par with the other 49 states, it meant tough decisions for Dela Cruz and a lot of players who had competed in both basketball and soccer. The support Dela Cruz found within the athletic department at Kapolei made her decision easy.

“Our athletic director came to me and told me that since I was a senior, I could play both,” Dela Cruz said. “I was real disappointed before that. I had played basketball for three years, and even though I’ve played soccer longer, it would have been hard to decide between the two. I was really surprised they allowed me to play both, but we worked out an agreement, and it’s been good.”

Dela Cruz is a goalkeeper for the Hurricanes’ soccer team, which is coached by Brian Beck, while she plays guard/forward for basketball coach Jesse Baugh. Although her attention lately has been focused more on soccer, whose postseason is held earlier, Dela Cruz has been able to juggle both sports on most days - albeit not without some complications.

On a typical school day in which neither team has a game, Dela Cruz spends about an hour-anda-half at each team’s practice, beginning with basketball, which starts at 1:35. During the recent winter break from classes, when basketball practice was held in the morning and soccer practice in the afternoon, she was able to attend both, making for an exhausting day.

Games also have conflicted on occasion, forcing her to choose between the two.

“I usually choose the bigger game,” she said.“In soccer, if we’re playing Mililani or Pearl City, I would go to that game. If the basketball game is bigger, I would switch. I’ve had to miss a lot of games (combined), but my team-mates have made it easier for me and let me have a great time.”

Whether or not Dela Cruz is in the basketball team’s starting lineup often depends on how much practice time her schedule has allowed her, she said.

“If I go to most of the practices, I’ll start, but if I miss some, it isn’t fair to the other girls.”

This week, the Hurricanes compete in the JN Automotive Group Division I Girls’ State Soccer Championships, which will run Wednesday through Saturday at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Park. A year ago, Dela Cruz and her teammates were the “feel good” story of the event, advancing all the way to the title game where they were defeated by Kamehameha in overtime. A week earlier, Kapolei had won its first-ever OIA soccer championship.

“We’d never won a title up to that point, so to win the OIA and go on to states was great,” Dela Cruz said.“We’d like to repeat that (playoff run).”

The Hurricanes earned the OIA’s last spot for this week’s state tournament.

On the hardwood, Kapolei closes out its regular season Thursday against Leilehua and will likely receive either the fifth or sixth seed out of the West for next week’s OIA Tournament. With the JN Automotive state soccer championships to play out this week, Dela Cruz will be able to return exclusively to the basketball courts to finsh out the season with her teammates. But the realization that her prep days are winding down has finally come.

“It’s made my school year and both seasons go super fast,” she said of the pace she lives at.

In the fall, she’ll likely head to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for college.

“I always wanted to go there since I entered high school, and I was recently accepted,” said Dela Cruz, who has a 3.4 grade-point average. “I have family there also, so that’s one of the other reasons to go there.”

Although she hasn’t contacted the coaching staff at UNLV, she hasn’t ruled out playing soccer in college.

“I might walk on, if anything. I’m a really competitive person. I take losing really hard, and it makes me come back harder.”