Head Coach: Ben Maxwell
Last year’s record: 1-11
Recap: Last year, the girls’ soccer team had a hard time in the El Camino Division, resulting in 1 win and 11 losses.
Key Matchups: MacDonald and Palo Alto
Star Players: Claire Chen, Sofia Cintra (goalie), Hillary Gonzalez, Anika Kapasi, Katherine Lu and Keatyn Spendlove
Key losses to graduation: Katelyn Fritz, Reva Gupta, Jiah Jung and Kate Oberhauser
League: El Camino
Prognosis:
After many losses last season in the El Camino division, the team dropped from D2 to D3, a less competitive group with schools such as Harbor, King’s Academy, Fremont, Milpitas, Monta Vista, Lynbrook, Macdonald, Cupertino and Wilcox. This means the overall difficulty and pressure on the players, boosting the team’s confidence. Even though the team lost four seniors to graduation, junior striker Keatyn Spendlove, sophomore left wing Claire Chen and sophomore attacking midfielder Katherine Lu are among the players ready to step up and provide leadership.
The Falcons have also gained many important new additions — including freshman left outside back Hailey Sordello and her twin sister right wing Sienna Sordello — building on a strong, young core of players. Due to the increase in player participation, the team will have a JV team for the first time since 2021.
Meanwhile, the varsity team features 22 members, all looking to improve their record from last season. Under returning head coach Ben Maxwell, they have been working on dribbling and scrimmages during practice in order to gear up for their four pre-season games that began Dec. 3 with a 5-3 home win over Harbor High School.
Chen scored two goals, while Lu scored the other three. On Dec. 7, they played Kings Academy and took home yet another win with a score of 3-2. Chen, Lu and senior Anisha Rahut each scored one goal. Chen and Lu have been filling in the missing gap from the seniors with ease as they have been consistently scoring goals every game.
“We want to keep a certain level of intensity and competitiveness at practice, regardless of who we are playing against,” Maxwell said.
Due to the limited size of their team, it is hard for them to compete with larger schools that have more girls to try out and work with, prompting their decision to ask to move down to the lower league. Moving down a division means they now have the same roster size as the other teams, creating a more even playing field.
“I really hope that our team builds off last season and advances towards better communication and teamwork for this new season and hopefully we’ll improve,” Lu said.
