Soccer: Girls focus on team unity rather than winning

After winning the El Camino league division with a record of 12-2-3 and making it to the first round of CCS last year, the girls’ soccer team has moved to the more competitive De Anza league this year.

As a result, players plan to minimize their “winning is everything” mentality and stress playing as a team.

“We have moved up to a really hard league this year,” senior midfielder and forward Courtney Brandt said. “It would be great if we could win the league, but we’re going to focus more on playing for each other. ”

The team hopes to improve upon its weaknesses from last season—ball control and making sharp passes.

“We will be playing much more skilled players,” Brandt said. “We do not want to lose the ball on silly plays that we could have prevented.”

Along with facing much tougher competition such as Monta Vista, the team has also lost four key graduates and two players who chose not to continue on with soccer.

“We have a lot of great potential players,” senior forward Sneha Shivkumar said. “We have a lot of really talented juniors that can fill in the holes.”

Senior midfielder Karilynn Clark, who has already committed to play at Indiana University next fall, and Brandt will help transition the team between the two leagues.

“Our coach (Molly Flanigan) has always promoted team bonding,” Shivkumar said. “Good teamwork is always necessary for any team to do well.”

Sadly this year, the girls won’t be able to have a preseason this year, a key part of all sport seasons, due to the fact that the turf is going to be reseeded.

Despite the fact that the girls will not have a pre-season this year due to the fact that the turf is going to be reseeded. The preseason is normally a time for teams to gage themselves. Instead the girls hope to make use of their practices and start their season off at the beginning of January with a bang despite the setback.

“It’s a lot of our last year playing Saratoga soccer,” Brandt said. “We want to go out this year having as much fun as we possibly can.”