Belen Jesuit basketball overcomes odds, turns state championship dream into reality

The “rat race” is won.

Belen Jesuit basketball coach Gaston “Chachi” Rodriguez joked all season that while other teams have “horses,” his undersized roster was like a bunch of “rats” outrunning and causing mayhem for opponents on their way to victories.

“I can’t make them grow,” Rodriguez said with a laugh. “We have to play that way.”

On Saturday night, those underdog Wolverines delivered a moment Belen Jesuit had been waiting to experience for over half a century.

Led by senior Javi Rosell’s 22 points, Belen Jesuit followed its familiar script to a convincing 49-30 victory over Daytona Beach Mainland to secure the school’s first ever state championship in the sport.

“This team is a special group of young men led by seven amazing seniors who have done a lot to make sure everyone feels like a part of this group,” Rodriguez said. “It was a beautiful thing to watch them this year and watching them enjoy it.”

Belen Jesuit (28-4) had won several state championships in sports such as soccer, cross-country, track and field, swimming and water polo.

But such a championship in basketball had eluded the all-boys private Catholic school, which opened in Cuba in 1854 and moved to the United States in the early 1960s after Fidel Castro rose to power on the island.

Before this season, Belen had never even advanced past the second round of the playoffs. The Wolverines won their first district championship in 17 seasons, which Rodriguez admitted was the only goal he set for his team at the start of the season.

“One of our guys said, ‘Coach, it might be cool to get past the regional semifinal,’” Rodriguez said. “We didn’t plan past that either, but each step of the way people kept saying we had a chance to do this and that. We just cared about the one game in front of us.”

The significance of the moment wasn’t lost on Belen’s coaches, players and even longtime school officials like athletic director Carlos Barquin, who recently announced he would retire from that position at the end of the school year after 53 years.

Barquin shed tears of joy as he watched Belen’s players race toward their raucous fans, who took over nearly an entire side of the stands of the arena for the second consecutive Wolverines’ game and even chanted “This is our house” before the final seconds expired.

“This is the best feeling in the world to do this with my brothers and really my family,” Rosell said.

Rodriguez, as he has multiple times during his team’s postseason run in recent weeks, couldn’t hold back his emotions on the court as he shared hugs with players and coaches.

For Rodriguez, the victory was another exclusive place in the state history books.

Rodriguez, who also won state titles at now-defunct Hialeah Champagnat Catholic (2000) and Miami Coral Reef (2009), became the first coach in South Florida and believed to be the first statewide to win state titles at three different schools.

“He coaches to his strengths,” guard Kevin Garcia said. “He knows what we have. We like to get gritty and ferocious and we play to those strengths. His coaching style and that flexibility and trust in his players is what’s made him successful.”

And Rodriguez did it with a roster with no players taller than 6-4 or any major Division-I offers for basketball. Sophomore Bryce Fitzgerald, a safety on Belen’s football team with multiple D-I offers to play that sport, became a vital contributor as he was again Saturday with 13 points including 11 of 12 free throws made.

And yet Belen made up any potential height or talent gap continuously on its way to Lakeland.

The Wolverines followed it up Saturday two days after winning their semifinal against Orlando Jones with a buzzer-beater by Alejandro Lopez that conjured memories of N.C. State University’s memorable one in the 1983 men’s basketball national championship game.

Belen methodically broke open a close game that was tied after one quarter, recording 13 steals and contributing to 23 turnovers overall for a Mainland team that was making its first appearance at state in 25 years. Just a few hours after Miami Riviera Prep held a team to 27 points - the lowest points allowed in a state final since 1950, the Wolverines’ 30 points allowed was the least yielded in a final in the past decade.

“All of us have always felt like we were kind of behind with other big basketball schools being the horses in front,” Garcia said. “We loved that and we embraced that all year and we trusted one another, diving for loose balls, causing turnovers. Being the underdogs is something we pride ourselves on and look where we are now.”