Antonio Veloso, Half Moon Bay girls’ hoops coach, steps down

Veloso will replace Corey Cafferata as Mission’s head coach.

“It was unexpected, I can tell you that much,” Veloso said.

Cafferata resigned his coaching position suddenly in June, citing health issues. A Daly City native, Cafferata was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was a freshman in college. Since then, he blazed a trail as the winningest coach for Westmoor girls’ basketball before taking over at Mission in 2009-10 and went on to post a 192-150 record in 12 seasons with the Saints.

“It’s plain and simple,” Cafferata said. “I wish [Veloso] nothing but luck. I’ve known him a long time. He’s a good dude and great coach.”

Cafferata declined comment as to the severity of his health issues, but said he is on the mend. He is still on staff at Mission College as a part-time kinesiology instructor. He also said he intends to coach again and is open to taking a post at a different program as soon as the 2022-23 season.

“I got sick 46 days ago, I got better, extremely better, about 10 days ago,” Cafferata said. “I got sick, and I was out … and now I’m better. And I will be back somewhere.”

Veloso’s departure from Half Moon Bay was an emotional one. In 2020-21, the Lady Cougars captured their second straight Central Coast Section Division IV championship, and the program’s third in five years. They advanced into the CCS Open Division in 2021-22, one of just two public schools to reach the pinnacle tournament, along with Palo Alto.

Half Moon Bay graduated just three seniors from last year’s team.

“I told the girls Friday and that was tough,” Veloso said. “That was really tough.”

The Cougars were called into an on-campus meeting Friday morning. The players were stunned when Veloso delivered the news he’d be stepping down.

“Everyone was pretty sad,” said Delaney Dorwin, who recently wrapped up her freshman year at Half Moon Bay. “He is such a big part — well, he is the program, basically. So, it is a big loss for us. So, everyone was really sad.”

Veloso, who lives in Half Moon Bay, took over the varsity Cougars in 2012-13 and immediately went to work putting together a winning legacy. In 10 seasons, he recorded a 178-87 career record, including nine winning seasons.

“The five-year plan was essentially building from the grade school up … because that’s what public education truly is,” Veloso said. “Not one word in those five years was ‘winning.’”

As part of the unique sports landscape in the city of Half Moon Bay, Veloso built the high school program through a dedicated effort as a community builder. He coaches at the Boys & Girls Club of the Coastside and developed the first CCS champion Cougars team in 2016-17 out of a core group of players from the club ranks.

That senior group including Addison Walling and Ally Longaker — who played for Veloso at the Boys & Girls Club since their seventh-grade year — was known as the “Nobody’s Gonna Break My Stride” Cougars, as the 1983 pop music hit permeated the team culture as its mantra.

“We still play it, but tell you, it never resonated like that group,” Veloso said. “Because that group got us over the hump.”

It was also one of the most essential building blocks for the modern girls’ basketball landscape on the Coastside.

Dorwin has only played at HMB for one season, but her connection with the program goes back to the 2016-17 CCS championship team. It was Dorwin’s fourth-grade year, but she was introduced to the Cougars varsity squad thanks to a community outreach effort installed by Veloso inviting youth players from the Boys & Girls Club of the Coastside to attend a HMB game and meet the team in the halftime locker room.

“I started going and I ended up going to every single game,” Dorwin said. “And I don’t think I ever saw them lose that season. … It really inspired me to want to get my own accomplishment of my own.”

Five years later, Dorwin would debut with the 2021-22 HMB team that found its own place in program history.

“The way that Antonio coached us is he constantly pushed us to see that whatever we wanted we could accomplish,” Dorwin said. “And he wanted us to get our own accomplishments. Like a Division IV championship would have been great, but he wanted to push us to do things we didn’t think we could do.”