Girls’ soccer: Falcons suffer defeat to Los Gatos

Despite dominating the scoreboard for the majority of the game, the girls’ soccer team was unable to pull out a win on Jan. 31 against their rival, Los Gatos, losing 2-1.

Senior center midfielder and captain Stephanie Ho put the team ahead with a goal scored with a free kick from around 30 yards out, six minutes into the start of the game. However, Los Gatos was able to score twice within the last 15 minutes.

“The girls gave absolutely everything, and I was very proud of them,” coach Ben Maxwell said.  “We were absolutely outstanding today.”

Due to Los Gatos’s reputation for a strong offense, the Falcons played with a new formation of four defenders, five midfielders and one forward. 

“When you play a team like Los Gatos, you have to recognize and respect that they have better players than we do,” Maxwell said. “So what [we did] is play with more defenders. [We tried to] make ourselves harder to break down.”

Ho added that the reason that the team lost was because toward the end of the game, “the amount of energy we had left was dwindling, so we had a few more gaps and lapses.”

The team’s current record through Jan. 31 is 7-5-2. They are now fifth in their DeAnza league, behind Los Gatos, Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto, all of which have rosters of 24-25 players, compared to Saratoga’s 18. 

While only the top three teams are guaranteed to make CCS, the fourth and fifth teams make CCS as well if they have a winning record and their power points are high. The team gains power points when they beat high-ranking teams, such as league champions.

“We don’t have that many people who want to play, so we are always punching above our weight,” Maxwell said. “The fact that we are even talking about CCS and power points shows how far we have come.”

On Jan. 29, the Falcons defeated Homestead with a score of 1-0.

“We outplayed them, we outworked them. We created more chances,” Maxwell said. “We should probably have had more than one goal but at the end of the day, we needed to win the game, and we’ve done that.”

This victory was preceded with a devastating defeat to Mountain View on Jan. 27. Despite their good preparation and confidence, the team lost 4-0, their biggest defeat in two years.

“It’s not what we didn’t do, it’s what Mountain View did. They scored four exceptional goals, goals we couldn’t stop, creative, clinical,” Maxwell said. “The overall balance of the game was very, very even but they were frighteningly good in front of the goal.”

To prevent future defeats, Maxwell said the team needs to be a little more careful.

“Next time, our willingness to play soccer the way we want, and our willingness to press needs to be accompanied by just a little bit more focus so that we don’t get punished,” Maxwell said.

The team had its senior night at home against Monta Vista on Feb. 12, and is looking forward to another tough showdown next week against Mountain View, who is currently second in the league.