Winter is the season of giving thanks, giving presents and giving back. It’s also basketball season.

The Falcons girls’ basketball team kicks off its season with a home game against Milpitas on Dec. 14.

Junior power forward Hannah Johnson said that a major challenge she anticipates is fewer players.

“[We have] fewer people,” Johnson said. “So that’s going to be be harder during games. And there are fewer seniors—only four. I think there were seven last year.”

The varsity team was 11-0 in league last year. Its overall record was 19-7.

Senior captain and point-guard Shriya Nagpal said she feels this is “a rebuilding year.”

“I feel like we’ll do pretty well,” Nagpal said. “We were league champions last year. We got to round two in CCS.”

Nagpal said the team plans on employing zone and man-to-man defense.

“Defensively, we press a lot,” Nagpal said. “I think we’re going to press a lot this year because we’re a fast team. It’s tiring, because we don’t have a lot of girls, but hopefully we’ll get in shape.”

JV coach Danny Wallace said the girls basketball team does not have an actual rival, per say.

However, Wallace said that he “always likes beating Los Gatos.”

Wallace said that he is anticipating varsity being strong this year.

“It’s going to be really good, because we have Hannah Johnson and Shriya Nagpal,” Wallace said.

“And those are going to be our two strong starters. Also, we’ve got [senior center] Campbell Oreglia.”

Johnson and Nagpal were bestowed First Team All-League honors last year. Johnson averaged 12.0 points and 3.88 steals per game. Nagpal scored 6.6 points, had 1.8 assists and 4.50 steals per game.

The team is expected to perform well despite the lack of players.

“I think we’re in the upper half of our league, but we’re really limited,” varsity coach Mike Davey said.

“We have 11 girls. If we have any injuries or we’re not in good shape, we could have trouble.”