May 8 against Palo Alto at 14-3. After finishing in season rankings by tying with Gunn for third place, the team powered through the semi-finals by giving a last good run with their leaving seniors.
The team has never advanced as far as this season. Because the team had a few free days to prepare for playoffs before their game, Coach Eric Wong took advantage of the extra days in order to keep the team healthy and extensively prepare compared to the shorter time period between regular season games.
“We definitely played hard for the most part despite losing,” Wong said. “We’re always good enough to beat whoever we take the field with. Despite losing and letting some opportunities slip away from us, everyone was fighting and playing hard.”
Palo Alto had a league record of 14-0. While it was their toughest competition to date, the girls showed up and played well, Wong said.
Numerous seniors who have proved their increasing skill from the season are leaving now that the season is over. Senior attack Nessa Kim supplied two goals and seniors Corinne Moran and Neha Vellanki stood strong on defense.
Seeing valuable players leave leads to Wong to depend on incoming players and current younger varsity players.
“We’ll be returning four girls who will be three-year varsity players next fall: [juniors] Jennie Werner, Ingrid Hong, Lena Jewler and Melissa Szenda,” Wong said. “We’ll also have additional all-league players returning and a group of girls coming up from the JV ranks to replace the eight graduating seniors.
Despite the large number of losses the team faces this year, Wong is optimistic on the future years to come.
“We lost a great group of seniors, but we’ll be fine.” Wong said. ”Our program is at the point where we can reload year-to-year.”
Wong records the team’s games and later has the whole team recap their previous games by devoting lunch periods about once a week to watch the videos. Through reviewing key moments of their games, the players are able to improve on their techniques.
“We met less and less throughout the season because we learned enough from each lunch session,” sophomore attack Christina Crolla said. “They really benefited our playing though because we were able to notice the smaller mistakes we were making.”
