Colin Castro Helps Undefeated Out-of-Door Academy on Both Sides of the Football

LAKEWOOD RANCH

Colin Castro is the type of high school student-athlete who prefers staying occupied.

The Out-of-Door Academy senior stars on the school’s football, soccer and lacrosse teams, a captain on the first two. Playing the guitar, piano and ukulele keep Castro busy away from his various fields of competition.

Even when on the gridiron, the Sarasota native likes to multi-task. About the only thing Castro doesn’t do for head coach Chris Kempton’s Thunder team is kick.

Other than that, the running back/free safety is always putting his best foot forward, as he will Friday night when the 3-0 Thunder host Bradenton Christian.

“I can’t say enough about him,” Kempton said. “I’ve been coaching for 33 years at the high-school level and the college level and he’s in the top five of all I’ve coached. The whole package.”

Last year the 6-foot, 175-pound free safety was named to the Herald-Tribune’s first-team All-Area defensive squad. His 43 solo tackles, five sacks, one interception, two forced fumbles, one fumble recovery and four pass breakups were numbers indicative of someone always in the right place on the field.

 

“He knows the defense as well as I do,” Kempton said. “We talk on a different level. He’s one of those kids who you can talk to like he’s another coach. You don’t get a lot of those kids in your career who you get to coach like that.”

“I’ve been called ‘the general’ on the defense a couple of times,” Castro said, “and I feel like whenever I notice something we can use to help us or something the coach mentioned in his game plan, I can point it out and put my teammates in the right position.”

But as formidable as Castro is patrolling the Thunder secondary, he’s more valuable to Kempton with the ball in his hands.

His defensive performance last season was matched by an equally productive showing out of the ODA backfield, where Castro rushed for 1,039 yards with 13 touchdowns. Through three games this season he’s rushed for 400 yards and seven touchdowns.

In fact . . .

“He’s a better offensive player than he is a defensive player,” Kempton said. “He’s legit. He’s as good as there is in the (Sunshine State Athletic Conference). I’d put him up against anybody in the league.

Said Castro: “I think my stats show me to be a better offensive player, but I feel like my mind on defense also makes some pretty good decisions.”

He joined the Thunder as a freshman wide receiver and chose No. 81. “I didn’t want to pick something that everybody knew was special,” he said. “I figured it would be special to me.”

When he was moved from wide receiver to running back for his junior season, Castro kept the number. “I figured ‘why change?’ I wanted to stick with it.”

And once he saw Castro carry the football, displaying good speed and a decent amount of wiggle, Kempton wondered what took him so long to make the change.

“We put him at running back and we went, ‘OK, I guess we missed the boat on that one,’ ” he said. “We had him in the wrong position.”

“I’m kind of a strange running back,” Castro said. “I don’t exactly play like a lot of the guys you see at a high level, but I always try to be shifty whenever I see people. You’re never going to know what I’m going to do.”

He thinks playing multiple sports enables him to use all his muscles and helps prevent injuries. Castro also has a logical reason why football is his favorite sport.

“I feel like my favorite part of football is that it has the perfect balance of tactics and getting dirty,” he said. “Physical.”

Armed with a 4.07 GPA, Castro sees a future of playing college football at a Division III level, with academics taking a front seat.

He just hasn’t yet decided on a major.

“Right now I’m just going on the path that life takes me.”

Friday night, that intended path is through the heart of the Bradenton Christian defense.

“He’s put his heart and soul into this program,” Kempton said. “The biggest thing I can say about him is he’s an ultra-competitor.”

And always with a full plate.

Source: Herald Tribune