Girls soccer aims to surpass last year’s results

To many teams, reaching the CIF finals would be an accomplishment: but for the girls’ varsity soccer team, the finish last season was a disappointment.

“We came so close to becoming CIF champions,” senior Kellie Fox said. “No soccer team in the history of MC has ever won a banner. We wanted to be the first to experience that feeling.”

As if losing in the finals was hard to handle, the way that they lost made it that much harder to accept the defeat.

“We were the better team in that game,” sophomore Briana Pompa-Hogan said. “To lose in penalty kicks is hard to come back from.”

The team has bounced back from that loss last season to win the first tournament of the season.

The girls’ played in the Baron’s Tournament, which took place in the first week of December.

They played through many tough games and played many games in only a week’s span.

“At one point, we played four out of five days,” Fox said. “On that fifth day, we ended up playing in both the semi-finals, and the finals. It was tough, but I am definitely satisfied with the outcome.”

Fox was the go-to player during the tournament. She was the Sundevils’ leading scorer with five goals and she was a big part in the girls’ success.

“I’m glad that she is part of this team,” senior Lindsay Valdez said. “She is a senior leader and she always comes through when we need her.”

Another thing that is going to be somewhat challenging for the team this year is they don’t have as much varsity experience because of all the seniors that they lost last season.

“We lost a total of 11 seniors,” Pompa-Hogan said. “It’s going to be tough because a lot of us are not used to playing with each other. We all come from many different clubs all around San Diego but I feel that we are good enough to overcome this minor obstacle and compete at a high level.”

The team also feels that they have a lot of depth and many good players, so it won’t matter if they have their starters in or some reserves.

“In the finals of our last tournament, we were in overtime,” Valdez said. “The winning goal of that game was by the one freshman on our team, Lindsay Guidotti.”

The team is doing very well and is looking strong coming out of preseason.

Having all of this momentum is very key to the way that they start league play.

Their main competition is Westview, and if they plan on winning league, the two games against Westview are going to determine where they stand.

“They are very good,” Fox said. “Last year we played them strong, and hopefully this year we will be able to play very well against them and end up on top once league is over.”

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