Stuck in another winless season, boys’ soccer struggles tries to build fundamentals for future seasons

February 10, 2020 — by Andrew Lee and Jun Lee

The team finished the regular season with 0-8, and their senior night game will be on Feb. 12 against Milpitas.


 

The team went into the season with an optimistic outlook in the lower El Camino league, but have struggled mightily throughout the season, currently holding a 0-8 league record as they near the end of their season. The Falcons failed to win a game last year, and the trend hasn’t reversed itself this year.

However, coaches Chris Stott and Alex Booth and senior captains midfielder Joe Bruun-Jensen and Brian Wu believe that this year’s rough season will serve as a good foundation for future seasons.

“The team is looking really promising for the upcoming season, and I expect great things from these guys,” Wu said.
The team, led by three seniors and nine juniors, tried to improve its  physicality. The other 10 players are sophomores. Having a majority of non-seniors on the squad brought a few problems to the team as the season progressed.
“It’s a very inexperienced team,”  Bruun-Jensen said. “We have a lot of young players, but they don't seem to know the varsity rules, which are to respect the upperclassmen.”
The team has struggled with chemistry on the field, and they haven’t been able to execute team plays well or to encourage each other when they make mistakes. This has contributed heavily to losses..
“It’s good to have fun and mess around, but we’ve got to take it seriously at some point, and we haven’t really done that,” Bruun-Jensen said.

The Falcons learned an important lesson about effort when they narrowly lost to league-leading Wilcox 2-1 on Jan. 27: They can play well if they put in the effort. By contrast, the 4-1 loss to Monta Vista, another struggling team, showed them what happens without 100 percent focus.
The team hoped to finish their senior night game against Milpitas High School on Feb. 12 strong. (The Falcon could not provide the results in this issue because of printing deadlines.)
Bruun-Jensen and Wu hope to see the rest of the team grow physically and mentally so they can bring out their full potential as a team and have fun together. The team’s leading scorer is sophomore Etienne Casanova with 11 goals, including ones scored in preseason games.
“High school soccer works like this: we have off-seasons and on-seasons based on the players on the team and the type of team chemistry we have,”  Wu said. “This year is just one of the off-seasons we have, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how much these young players will do after I graduate. I’m excited to come back and see these guys play on the field.”

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