Since the season is almost over for the girls’ lacrosse team, the players are playing opponents for the second time. Many of the girls are optimistic about their second chance at victory, but the prospects for a turnaround aren’t looking great. The team is 1-8, with the only win against Gunn.

The team has been working hard in practice to perfect skills that are essential to their victory.

Senior captain Kat Nobles has noticed a lot of improvement. She sees more cooperation and reliability as a team, but still realizes that there is room for improvement.

“We need to work on our feet position on defense,” said Nobles, “tighter cradles so the ball does not get checked out and the offense needs strategies on how to break down different types of defense, for example zone, man to man and pressure.”

Junior low defensive wing Stephanie Shimizu agrees with Nobles that the team has been working hard.

“We’ve changed our team mentality,” said Shimizu. “By figuring out our goals, we’ve been a lot more focused. We’ve also been working on different drills and conditioning.”

The first repeat game was against Los Gatos on April 7. While their hopes were high, Saratoga lost 14-7 against the Cats. The next week on April 21, the Falcons took on Leland for the second time, yet fell short with a loss of 10-5.

Coach Merryl Geisse believes that the team can perform better against the rest of the second rounds.

“The girls are all great athletes,” said Geisse. “They have the skills to finish strong in the last couple of games in the season.

According to both Nobles and Shimizu, the hardest game so far was again Pioneer, which occured April 5, that went into overtime and ended in a loss of 16-13.

“We should have beat them,” said Nobles. “They were not better than us. Next time, we need to keep it together during overtime, if we go into overtime, and play our hardest every minute until the game ends.”

The team believes that they will score at least two more wins, one against Gunn again on April 26, and one against Pioneer, also the team’s senior day, held on May 3.

“I really believe that we can bring a better team to the field for the rest if games that we have,” said Shimizu. “We’ve been working so hard and it’s time for us to show everyone what we’ve really got.”