Senior right midfielder Sneha Shivkumar jockeys for possession of the ball with an opposing player in the 30th minute of a Jan. 5 game versus Mountain View. She manages to fend off her opponent nevertheless, passing the ball to a streaking teammate down field.

In the midst of her struggle for the ball, Shivkumar had shoved her opponent to the ground, garnering a red card and ejection from the game.

“I didn’t shove her down on purpose,” Shivkumar said. “It was a delayed impact, which should have only resulted in a yellow card at most.”

The team had to play a man down for the rest of the game as Shivkumar watched helplessly from the sidelines. Even with a player down, the team managed to hold off Mountain View from scoring until the second half. The game ended in a 3-0 loss.

“I felt so bad that my team had to play the rest of the game with one less player,” Shivkumar said. “It says a lot about our team that even with 10 players we still managed to hold our own on the field.”

Shivkumar is most valuable for her ball handling skills, so it comes as no surprise that the Falcons failed to score after her ejection. Shivkumar, who has been playing soccer since she was 5 and competitive soccer since she was 12, credits her ability to handle the ball to her multiple years of constant practice.

“I love soccer,” said Shivkumar. “I’ve pretty much been playing soccer my entire life.”

Shivkumar has been on the varsity team for two years now and has come to love the team.

“I love all the players on the team,” Shivkumar said. “We all have really good teamwork, which benefits us on and off the field.”

Shivkumar hopes to help lead the team to CCS this year, despite the fact that the team will be facing much tougher opponents this season.

“Even though we have moved up a league I think we still have a chance to make it to CCS,” Shivkumar said. “We have a lot of great players.”

Having lost their first league game against Mountain View the team went on to beat Gunn 3-2 and lost to Palo Alto 1-0 the following week. The team will now have to win the rest of their games in order to qualify for CCS.

“It’s going to be extremely difficult to win the rest of our games,” junior Evelyn Lee said. “We’re going to have to work a lot harder to work as a team.”

While the varsity team has great team bonding off the field, the team needs to work a little more on their chemistry on the field.

“We all get along extremely well,” Lee said. “Since we have so many new players on the team we just need to figure out how to connect on the field.”

The team will play Los Altos on Jan. 18 at home and will play rival Los Gatos away on Jan. 20.