He’s a junior, but that makes this 6-10 center an old guy on his Catawba Ridge team

Mark Caslaru would be the student on most basketball teams.

But most high school teams aren’t like the Catawba Ridge boys squad, and because of that, Caslaru has the role of a leader, rather than a student.

“I’m one of the more experienced players on this team,” said Caslaru, a 6-11 jiunior. “And that means I’ve got some of the leadership role.”

Coaches sometimes talk about their teams being young, but few have the kind of roster that Brett Childers is working with at Catawba Ridge.

“Man, we are young!” said Childers, who has coached the Copperheads since the school opened in 2019. “Many of our players are still learning.”

Catawba Ridge (5-8, 0-1 in Region 3 5A) hosts Northwestern on Friday night in a regional game.

The Copperheads will do so with five freshmen, four sophomores, four juniors, and only two seniors.

“We lost 12 of our 14 players from last year,” Childers said. “It’s essentially a whole new group. We have a lot of freshmen playing at some time or another.”

Caslaru is among the new faces at Catawba Ridge. He transferred from Nation Ford, where he averaged 1.9 points in limited playing time last season. This season, he leads the Copperheads with 12.8 points and 8.3 rebounds a game. Caslaru has done that against teams that frequently double-team him.

“I’m getting used to dealing with that,” he said. “I get doubled a lot. I expected to face that, and it’s why I spent a lot of time working in the weight room in the offseason.”

Organizers of last weekend’s Phenom Hoops New Years Bash at Marvin Ridge, where Catawba Ridge played three times, described Caslaru in a scouting report as having “good size and skill set.” He was praised for having the ability to shoot over either shoulder and being able to shoot from distance too.

He is among the biggest players in South Carolina’s Upstate and is getting attention from college coaches.

“I started playing basketball around the second grade, and I’ve always been tall,” Caslaru said. He has spent a lot of time working on his post skills but said he also has worked on being able to spread defenses by stepping away from the basket and shooting.

He is not a finished product.

“I have stuff to work on,” he said. “I’m still working on my interior moves, and I keep working on that perimeter shot. But I’m not afraid to take that shot.”

Childers said that while Caslaru continues to develop, he is seeing more and more signs of what the junior center can do.

“You see flashes of what he’s capable of, and it’s really promising,” Childers said. “He is interested in learning.”

In a game against Charlotte Country Day last Friday at the New Years Bash, Caslaru twice missed scoring on alley-oop passes. Childers called a timeout and reminded his big center to drop the ball in the basket while airborne — not slam it down.

Moments later, the Copperheads got another alley-oop opportunity. Childers soared above the basket, took a pass from sophomore teammate Isaiah Thomas, and dropped it into the basket.

“He had a really good tournament,” Childers said of Caslaru’s play at Marvin Ridge.

But with all the freshmen and sophomores, Caslaru must mix leading with learning.

“I’ve tried to be a leader,” he said. “It helps that the guys on this team want to succeed, and that we’ve bonded so well.”

Caslaru said the Copperheads already are a better team than in early November.

“We’ve grown a lot,” he said.

He promised that people will see an ever stronger Catawba Ridge team by late January and early February.

“This team will look a lot different in February than it does now,” he said. “We’ll keep improving.”