by Victoria Ramirez | staff writer
Faith, fight, finish: the three words on the girls soccer cage as they fought through their district season and as they fight through playoffs. Going into round 2, both the girls and the boys hope to make it far.
“We have been preparing everyday, every practice, every minute. Everything has been for these games,” head soccer coach Kara Stracener said.
Using what they learned during districts will be a key to moving up in playoffs and hopefully making it to state.
“We are going to keep doing the things that we’ve been doing, that have gotten us the success during our district play, so offensive strategies, defensive strategies that we have been doing, so we are not going to do anything different for playoffs,” Stracener said.
Even though they have had a few losses in the past throughout their district season, the girls are not letting anything get in the way of them and state.
“Playoffs is kind of, everyone gets a clean slate and it doesn’t really matter what you did in the past because you win you keep going, you lose you are out, so it’s a new ball game and everyone has to step up, everyone is going to have a new game,” Stracener said.
Compared to the boys, the girls have a very few amount of seniors on the varsity team, therefore some of the juniors have taken the initiative to step up to prepare for next year.
“Since we only have four seniors and our juniors, there are about 7 of us, so we have decided to also step up, since the seniors will be gone next year, we will be leaders and take the freshmen under our wings and be ready for next year,” Junior Talin Rizo said.
Even though there are only a few seniors on the girls team, the boys on another hand have 17 seniors which means they will have to give it their all for their last high school year.
“We do have a lot of seniors this year and I think that it is good because we are a really close group of students that play well and communicate good on the field, and I think it is good for the underclassmen to see that,” senior Jacob Hallenberger said.
Going into round three the boys are ready to give it their all and make it to state.
“We are doing really well in playoffs right now, we are playing the third round tonight and I think we are going to do good and hopefully make it far,” Hallenberger said.
Even though they placed first in districts, it doesn’t mean they can relax just yet, if anything it means that the stakes are higher than ever.
“Playoffs and district are two different plays, because in district if you lose you, you go back to practice, work on it than get over it and move on, but in playoffs if you lose you are out completely, so the stakes are definitely higher in playoffs,” Hallenberger said.
In every districts season you win some and lose some, but you never think the losses will be what helps you the most later on.
“I think we have learned from or mistakes from the district season, which have allowed us to make better and smarter decisions for playoffs,”Hallenberger said.
Along with strategies and tactics that help the boys play, sometimes it depends on the chemistry of team for them to be able to work together.
“I don’t know if strategy and tactics have as much to do with it as much as the boys playing together, it is a great group of kids, that know each other great, there are a lot of seniors and we have great senior leadership and more than strategy and tactics as much to do with it’s about those kids playing together and enjoying playing together, so we have done that for the last half of the district season and we continued the other night in the first round playoff game and if we continue that we will be allright,” head varsity coach Barranco said.
While the boys continue to fight for state, they will be playing in the regional tournament to round four friday April 7 at 7:00 pm at Blossom stadium. Even though they played their hearts out and put up a good fight, the girls season officially came to an end after a hard defeat against Lake Travis at round three on March 31.
