Serra hoops fixture Dave Villaroman hanging up his mop

With Villaroman’s youngest son Joey graduating this year, the longtime mop guy officially worked his last game Feb. 20 when Serra hosted Santa Cruz in the Central Coast Section playoffs — this after 11 years of (occasionally) hearing Serra students chant: “Mop! Mop! Mop!” when he’d run onto the floor.

“Yeah, that was pretty fun, hearing that,” Villaroman said.

Since Villaroman brought such a big league air to the Serra gym, it’s fitting I conducted a telephone interview with him from the press conference room at Golden 1 Arena, home of the Sacramento Kings. It was March 11 during the California Interscholastic Federation’s state high school basketball championship Saturday, and I was able to get the press room to myself for a few minutes.

Placing my cellphone on the press table, I switched on the speaker phone and interviewed Villaroman, his voice resonating from behind the mic seen on many a Sacramento Kings postgame show. It only seemed appropriate.

And with this, it was appropriate he shared an anecdote of one of his all-time favorite memories from when current Denver Nuggets star Aaron Gordon played high school basketball in the West Catholic Athletic League at Archbishop Mitty. It was during Gordon’s senior season, on Feb. 2, 2013 — just a little over two weeks after he worked his first gig at the ‘Jungle Game’ — that he ran out to mop the top of the key while Gordon was lining up at the free throw line.

“And he thanked me for mopping sweat up for when he was shooting free throws,” Villaroman said. “I appreciated it.”

Villaroman’s three sons were all Serra standouts. Tyler, the oldest, went on to a serious baseball career, as he played four collegiate seasons at University of San Francisco. His middle son Shane was a gridiron standout and was a senior on the CIF Division 2-AA state championship team in 2017, setting the program records for career receptions, single-season receiving yards and career receiving yards during his three-year varsity career.

Shane still holds the receptions record, while the other two were broken in 2019 by Terence Loville when Villaroman’s youngest son, Joey, was a freshman. Joey went on to become a standout two-sport athlete at Serra, playing both football and basketball.

Villaroman said he always wanted to see Joey slam dunk a basketball in a game at his end of the court. He almost realized his dream in this year’s ‘Jungle Game,’ when Joey got free on a fastbreak. As the senior gathered his approach to attempt the dunk, however, he lost his footing and wasn’t able to finish. Villaroman said it was his fault because he missed a spot when he was mopping in front of the hoop.

One other ‘Jungle Game’ will live on in Villaroman’s personal highlight reel, that being the 2017 season when sophomore Parker McDonald hit a buzzer-beater 3-pointer in front of the Serra student section to set off a party with an iconic 60-59 victory. With Villaroman stationed on the baseline, he had a perfect view for McDonald’s epic jump shot arcing toward him in 3D.

“I know when it went through the hoop, the buzzer sounded,” Villaroman said. “And I had a view of it. I saw it coming towards the hoop … and it was just a great ending to a ‘Jungle Game.’ That was probably the best ending I’ve seen in the several I’ve done.”

A lifelong sports fan who has spent years bouncing around watching his three sons play every sport imaginable — while rarely, if ever, seeing them play for the same team — Villaroman said he didn’t expect taking over as mop guy from Serra dad Mike Watkins, who held the post previously, to be as much fun as it was.

“I just enjoyed going to [the games],” Villaroman said. “It was a lot of fun.”